Naming Nature
Step outside your home for a minute. I’m serious. I’ll wait for you to do that.
Okay, are you standing outside? Good. If you absolutely can’t or if there’s a storm, look out a window. Now, tell me what you see. And tell me in as much detail as possible. You can write it down, or you can describe it out loud but actually “speak” what you are observing into an audible or written being. Paint a picture for me of what waits every day just outside your door.
Here, I’ll participate too. (What, you think I’d ask you to do something that I wasn’t willing to do as well? No way!)
My front lawn is a small, green hill that’s a pain to mow. In the landscaping that borders our large front porch, an old Weeping Higan Cherry tree drapes it’s branches so low they catch in my hair when I cross the yard to our driveway where the car is kept. Every spring, the blossoms look like pink popcorn. A scar runs down the center of the trunk from an especially cold winter that had cracked it while it was young. I remember pressing my finger to the hard, clear sap that came up in it’s wound the following spring. The neighborhood is full of old ancients, and their leafy crowns dot the landscape between houses with life and vibrance. On our street alone are ash, oak, a giant maple, sycamore, ginkgo, and locust trees. I am at home in their shade.
So, how much detail were you able to put into your description of the scene in front of you? It’s okay if you realized you don’t know the name of anything yet! It’s taken me years to slowly learn the names of the nature around me. The beautiful thing is that nature is always waiting for us to explore and know her! There are some beautiful, easy to use tree identification books you could probably find at your school or public library. They also make them for birds. Immersing ourselves into the natural world right outside our door is a deeply therapeutic exercise. The fact is that we are more invested in something when it has a name and is known.
Here’s an idea: go on a walk in the area where you live and try creating a list of the number of things you see that you can name vs. the number of things that you can’t and then slowly start to work on figuring out what those unnamed flowers, birds, critters, and trees are. You’ll be opening your eyes to a whole new way of viewing and appreciating the world. As Natalie Goldberg says in “Writing Down the Bones”, “When we know the name of something it brings us closer to the ground. It makes me more awake.”
Challenges/Points:
One of the easiest ways to relax and center yourself is to go out into nature. Even if that is just a walk around your neighborhood, take the time to see how many of the forms of nature you know and how many you mentally write off quickly as “bush”, “tree”, or “bird”. It’s incredible when we start to realize how much there is that we don’t have names for!
You can find books that help with plant, bird, or tree identification at either your school or local public library. Amazon also carries various nature identification books for sale and there are apps like Seek that while not always completely accurate, can help you learn or narrow down some items in nature when a book isn’t handy.
Collect the leaves of trees and play a game with yourself to see how many you can begin to identify by the leaf shape alone! You may find you start to feel even more at home in your home once you know the names of your leafy and feathered neighbors.
Questions:
How do you feel when you are out in nature?
Why do you think so few of us know the names of the life forms around us any more?
What type of nature are you the most interested in?
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