Everyday Nature
How I rediscovered wonder as a grownup.
Crater Lake seemed to rumble when I first saw it. Heavy, impenetrable blue water basked in the midday sun. I thought it might yank me down into its belly. My two best friends, Sean and Forrest, stood beside me on a ridge bordering the lake. We gaped like children.
I hadn’t felt entranced like this in a very long time.
For the last week we’d been roaming the Pacific Northwest, feasting on the ecstasy of the outdoors. Historically, I wouldn’t call myself a rugged outdoorsman or nature lover. But the geographic splendor I saw that summer stoked my curiosity and inspired me to do something unprecedented: buy a field guide.
I would later find that the curiosity that led me to buy a field guide would awaken wonder in my mostly wonderless life.
Our trip disintegrated shortly after the hallowed Crater Lake event because Sean rubbed poison oak all over his eyes (supposedly an accident). I didn’t enjoy looking at him. When our journey ended two days sooner than planned, I lamented that my return flight would drag me back to Washington, DC, where I lived and worked.
In the District, city clamor, pupil-destroying computer screens, and corporate, political gobbledygook smothered the awe I held from the week prior. Having tasted the ambrosia of the outdoors, I could no longer stomach the stale crumbs of my urban ecosystem.
I grieved at my desk one day and thought of college. In school I didn’t have a post-graduation plan. At the time, Sean, Forrest, and I lived like kids in a fort in a teeny house near the Central California Coast. Laughter and spontaneity defined that era, and I probably was too busy making memories to care about my future. In any case, I can tell you that I didn’t fantasize about a future where I sat on my ass all day repeating tasks. I didn’t dream of a life where my deep yearnings withered while I watered somebody else’s garden.
As a healthy grownup with a job, I was grateful that I wasn’t battling cancer or starving. But I worried that when I died I would look back on my years and see that I had spent my best time and energy securing a stable income while forfeiting the fire of life.
As disenchantment and anxiety bore down on me, a prayer of late theologian and mystic, Abraham Heschel, sprang to mind. He prayed, “I did not ask for success; I asked for wonder. And You gave it to me.”
As I hinted earlier, wonder had mostly fled my life. The cruel transaction of time-for-money left me pining for the awe I felt in preschool. Each day raced into the next one. I’d wake, eat, read a little, go to work, delete emails, hit Ctrl+C all day, and on and on.
Still moping at my desk, I, too, asked God for wonder. And He gave it to me.
God has supplied me with wonder in many ways, but one way over which I have daily control is delighting in nature — everyday, ordinary nature.
It came the following spring when I was looking for work. During the calm of the day while other people emptied themselves at their jobs, I ambled about the neighborhood. On these strolls, I noticed flowers. Varied colors, shapes, and sizes adorned each block. Curious, I turned to a field guide to identify the flowers I saw.
I first identified hydrangeas.
Spongy flower clusters rested like clouds on dark green leaves. A creamy mix of white and sky blue dressed the petals. The sun lit the flowers aglow with mild phosphorescence. It struck me that I could stumble upon such a splendid morsel of nature in a setting so at odds with nature. I suppose that noticing beautiful flowers in spring isn’t novel, but it was novel for me.
I discovered many other flower species that spring. Eventually I got a job and plunged back into the profit chase, but I kept my newfound delight in nature’s beauty in my midst.
Curiosity followed me through the summer and into autumn when the leaves caramelized. Field guide in hand, I stared stupidly at sugar maples, those trees famous for the orange and red hues that merge with grace on palmated leaves. I gawked at hallways of Ginkgos that shimmered with lemon yellow. Their branches, plush with pliant, fan-shaped leaves, hung like long grape clusters. Each sighting hit me with a jolt of wonder. Never before had autumn been such a festival for me.
In winter, my wife — a thoughtful person — gave me binoculars. She reasoned that they’d enhance my outdoor play time. She was right! My new magnifying tool launched me into a fascination with birds: their plumage, talons, and habits. I studied American Robins with their ruddy brown breasts, who foraged for worms anywhere they could find them in the District of Columbia. They would tilt their heads and scan the soil with wide eyes fringed with white rings. I’ve since spied myriad bird species including cardinals, white-breasted nuthatches, and Cooper’s hawks on my daily path.
As trees shed their leaves in autumn because they can’t bear the winter cold, so I had shed much of my childlike wonder over the last six years. Perhaps wonder couldn’t survive the cold of a country that worships profit, success, and fame. Or maybe I’ve felt entitled to a more wonderful life and while bemoaning wonder’s absence, it left. Whatever the reason, wonder has begun to bud again.
I still dream of seeing more Crater Lakes. But for now I will celebrate the daffodils next door, the redbuds fighting their way out of planter boxes downtown, and even the sparrows who bicker outside my bedroom window for hours on end. I will exult in the nature that’s in front of me.
