Nature…Now I Get It aka 4 Ways Nature Informs my Parenting
Shawn amongst the California wildflowers
(From my COVID diaries)
I’m a city dude. Born in a major city, lived in major cities all my life. When my wife and I found out she was pregnant, we got a little place in the pseudo-suburbs so we could have a yard (which I’ve never had in my life) and just more living space, with no shared walls. At first, I was lonely. We live in a quiet neighborhood, on an even quieter block. People are friendly, but they don’t really kick it. There’s 10-20 feet between each house, trees line the boulevard; some houses have little library nooks in front (and not a one has been vandalized), and people seem to be more relaxed than our neighbors in the city. Every yard has trees, bushes, all type of flowers…sometimes it stresses me out. I’m used to hustle and bustle, EMS sirens blaring at all hours of the night, the rumble of the train in the background like a comfortable white noise companion.
In my current neighborhood, the ice cream man will stop in front of every house and wait until the kids come out to get something. When I was a kid, change would be wrapped in a scarf or tin foil and tossed out of windows where our eager little hands plucked them from the sky, and then we’d have to chase the ice cream truck for a block or more. It feels so alien. Still. After 12 years of living here.
Those past days, those previous neighborhoods, were energy: danger, love, excitement, and terror all at the same time, played out on concrete, steel, and glass. Now it’s some terror (my family is one of the few chocolate chips on a very large cookie, and there are tons of animals around: deer, possum, raccoons, a mountain lion once in a while, and birds. All the damn birds there ever was, chirping all day) and sneezing. Lots and lots of sneezing. All this blooming greenery and flowers unfolding wreaks havoc on my allergies. Never experienced any allergies until I moved out to the pseudoburbs.
When I tell people where I live, almost uniformly, the excited responses mention how close I am to the Bay and all the parks I can hike in. Many express lighthearted jealously that I’m so close to all that nature. During one conversation, I told someone that I’d never been to any of the parks they mentioned. They looked at me like I violated some sacred trust.
I heard something rustling, back there.
Flash forward a year, and we’re in the middle of a government mandated shelter-in-place order due to COVID-19 (the Corona virus). Everything is shut down and there isn’t (for a guy like me) anything to do. So, fueled by boredom and the desire to not put more weight on an already taxed frames, I decided to explore the Bay and all those magnificent parks folks crowed about.
I am transformed.
Only twice before—seeing Prince in concert and witnessing my daughter being birthed—have I felt something like a transcendent religious experience. While being fully immersed in nature still makes me a little nervous, I finally understand why so many people get their entire lives by being in it. I’ve been walking in various parks and shorelines for five weeks, close to 140 miles of walking in nature. Gives a man time to think. My walks have done for me what all those years in undergrad and grad school philosophy and religious studies courses couldn’t—an incredible sense of wonder and how I have a duty to protect and share that wonder.
Here are four things I’ve learned from walking in nature, four to five miles every single day, and how these things have informed my parenting.
1-We are all radically interconnected. As if COVID hasn’t already shown us this. But I’ll go another way. I was walking on a path near the shore on Monday when I felt a crunch. I’d killed a snail that was out after the rain we had. For some reason, I was overwhelmed with guilt. My not paying attention caused me to hurt (kill) something. A hard lesson, but being mindful and intentional about how we move through the world is important. Most of us are on autopilot and when we aren’t challenged about our actions and intent; we go about things business as usual. Causing damage along the way. I want my daughter to be more mindful how she negotiates our shared world. I want her to know to adjust her steps before killing the snail.
2-Slow down. Never had to drive until I moved to California. Now I’m in the car all the damn time, rushing from place to place. Sheltering-in-Place has forced me to slow way down. I’ve noticed things in the past five weeks that I’ve never noticed before, even though I’ve been by these things hundreds of times. I hope I can teach my daughter to take her time. Not be too methodical, but to allow herself the luxury of really getting to know and understand something, know and understand people, instead if just rushing, trying to get to the next thing. See the thing or the person for what is, not as an obstacle you have to overcome to get to the next. This will come in handy with her homework. She rushes, trying to get to the next assignment. I want her to slow down and see homework as a privilege and not as some kind of adversary barrier to overcome, only to reach another barrier to overcome.
3-Beauty matters. Nature is gorgeous, my G. I have a form of colorblindness where I can see colors, but have a really difficult time discerning different shades/tones of the same color. But nature gives me so much visual, auditory, and tactile information that I don’t think I’m missing out on anything. It’s overwhelming, but in a good way. Beauty matters. It can take your breath away as well as give you life. I was walking near the ocean (see photo below) and I saw a cigarette butt and got angry. What kind of moron would spoil this beautiful scene by throwing their filthy chemical-filled garbage on the ground? I picked it up and tossed it in a trashcan later that day. Never in the history of ever have I picked up some strange mouth-touched garbage and tossed it in the appropriate trash receptacle. Nature’s beauty is worth it. My kid knows this because after witnessing me pick up the nasty thing, she nodded and mouthed ‘thank you’. As parents, one of our jobs is to make sure our kids have a healthy and clean world to grow into—that they are able to experience the beauty of nature like we’ve been able to…despite some of us understanding this late in life.
4-It ain’t about the money. I grew up violently poor. Once I got some money, I spent the hell out if it. I never saved. I wanted to know what it felt like to walk into a place and buy what I wanted instead of stealing it, or crying that I couldn’t have it. For a long while I had an unhealthy relationship with spending. I had to have all the books, all the DVDs, all the records and CDs. I had to see every movie on opening night, go to as many concerts as I could, but before I went to the concerts I had to have the newest and flyest clothing. When I got married, I had the same mentality. When we had our daughter, same thing. My kid had everything—but I was working so damn much that we didn't really spend as much time together. She’s never told me how much she liked something I bought her. But she can’t stop talking about the four baby deer we saw on our walk. We saw those deer three weeks ago and she’s still bugging out. Money is great. It provides access, stability, and security. I’m very lucky to have a house and a car and health insurance and money in the bank. But they are necessities. They don’t give me that Marie Kondo that nature has been giving me. Spending time > spending money.
Will I be the same nature dude after the shelter in place? I hope so. If I can’t be fully immersed, like I have been, I have to make sure that nature is part of my living practice. Journal, meditate, read, get my black ass in nature. I’m getting the vibe that so much of the future well-being of me and my family depends on our relationship with nature. Looking forward to seeing how this will play out.
