How to SEE the Beauty in Nature

Going through my "Through the Lens of a Nature Lover" archives, I found this piece from June 2023. It reflects on a valuable lesson my wonderful husband taught me many years ago.

If you’re anything like me, you can gaze at the scenery around you and never SEE a thing. You go for a walk with a head full of thoughts, worries, cares, or problems, and when the hike’s finished, you don’t recall anything you saw or remember which trail you walked.

On the other hand, your temporary amnesia could result from tunnel vision – looking down or straight ahead instead of gazing all around, or just plain ole impatience preventing you from observing and appreciating the world around you.

My husband taught me to look at and truly SEE the marvels around me. I’ll never forget his lesson on appreciating nature’s beauty:

When you look at this tree, what do you see? Leaves? Branches? Bark?

There’s more to it than just the obvious things you expect. Greta, I want you to take a closer look and actually SEE the tree.

Look at the patterns in the bark. Touch it. Feel the rough texture. Use your finger to follow the ridges in the bark. There’s a pattern. See and feel how it bows out to either side of that bump. That must be an old injury. Over time, the wound healed, and the bark covered it up.

Up here, a branch came off close to the trunk. It healed around the outside of the empty socket but left a hole in the center. A bird or squirrel must have made a home there and left some bits of its old nest behind.

Now, step back and look at the branches. Notice how their shapes and sizes vary; no two are alike. This one has a dip where it goes around that larger, older branch. And it’s the same with the leaves. They all have a similar shape but are distinctively different.

This tree is an individual, a unique life. It looks different and is different from the neighboring trees. This magnificent work of nature’s art adapted to whatever happened to it over the years and survived. If it could talk, I’m sure the tree would have an exciting story to tell about all it’s seen and experienced.

So remember, when you’re out here in the woods, everything you see is special and deserves to be regarded with our utmost appreciation and admiration….

That was nearly 40 years ago. Robert is no longer with us, but his words are still just as valid today as they were then. I can no longer look at a tree without seeing his finger beside mine, tracing the lumps and bumps of the rough exterior. I still hear his voice reminding me that we need to show respect to Mother Nature and all her lovely creations.

Robert got me started loving and appreciating our natural world, and I’ll never stop. Over the years, I’ve seen how greed, ignorance, laziness, and disrespect have brought about severe ecological damage. Restoring what we’ve lost and conserving what we have left is important to me, and I hope important to you, too. Let’s all do what we can to help Mother Nature. Let’s do it for future generations, and if you have or had someone like Bob in your life, do it for them as well.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear Reader,
I’d be ever so grateful if you would take a few minutes to recommend Let’s Get Our Hands Dirty to your followers on Substack and other social media platforms.

Thank you!
Greta

                                                            ---------------------------

Let’s Get Our Hands Dirty is a reader-supported publication. This post is free as are all my posts. Please subscribe so you can receive notification when new articles are published. I’d love for you to become a part of our nature-loving family. Basic subscriptions are free, but if you sign up for a paid subscription as a love offering, that would be wonderful and greatly appreciated!

Have a fabulous day,
Greta

Please use the buttons below to Like, Comment, Restack, and Share my post on Substack and other social media platforms.
THANK YOU SO MUCH!