What follows are excerpts from email replies I wrote this week to a couple of women I have met via Zoom over the past nine months and don’t yet know well. They both live far away – thousands of miles, or across an international border. Though we have no in-person experience with one another, we have connected deeply around a single focal point: nurturing reciprocity with nature. These writings feel like “spiritual ecology pen-pal reveries.”
“As I type this to you, I'm gazing on the partially-unfurled, light pink petals of my neighbor's little apple tree; each pink blossom is rising just above cozy clumps of magenta buds (waiting for their right time to open). Some robins who have built nests are belting out their vibrant spring song in the trees lining the property, and some violet-green swallows who weave multiple nests around here every year have just finished another acrobatic dance at my office window (a treat I get to witness many times a day). The sky is the deepest blue it has been since last summer, and black, gray, white, and ecru clouds are scattered low, hovering - it seems - just feet above the tall firs. Oh yes, and the greens – green! green! green! of every hue - are just lighting up everything ... and especially beautiful with the yellow sprinkles of fat dandelions. There's so much more I could add to this reverie - insects of many sorts, other bird species, the big wildlife wandering through (coyote, cougar, deer), the breeze, Earthy scents, and the angle of sunlight.”
“I continue to deepen my experience of reciprocity with the nonhuman world. I'm not sure how to tell you more about it in an email, for it is a deep and detailed journey - nuanced and fluid. But my visual creative media projects, written works, and photographs recently are tiny reflections of this profound and dynamic intimacy with the living world around me. I feel like I'm being transformed in the process, unsure what the outcome will look like or reveal. This moment by moment presence - abidance, really - is immersive and amazing.”
"Yes, this springtime is 'exquisite' indeed; that's just the word I've been using too. Last spring, I found myself trail running through our neighborhood forest. In retrospect, I feel like maybe I was trying to run away from the pandemic and into a deeper spiritual orientation to the wilds around me (natural and otherwise!). The former didn't work, obviously. But the latter did! This spring - though I am still engaging in exercise in the outdoors, too - I am taking many opportunities throughout the day to slow down and savor nature: birds' activities and sounds, blooming beings, colors and textures, sky and lighting ... "
May you, dear reader, follow your curiosity into the natural world outside your door. Breathe deeply of the sweet nectar of springtime, and find your own kinship with the nonhuman beings who inhabit your community.
