A cardinal chose to build her nest on the light outside my back door. I’ve been watching her for weeks, only going out that door when she flew away to run her bird errands, turning off the timer on the porch light and just admiring her doing her momma bird thing. Two days ago, I awakened to find one of the babies had fallen out of the nest. Momma came to the window, perched on the ac unit as if to tell me that she needed help with this situation. I tried to save that fledgling and a second one too, but they didn’t make it. However, a third one did! I placed it back in the nest and secured it, and now momma and papa are tending to their little one, with the help of a nosy robin. This backyard drama took up most of my day, as I couldn’t stop checking on them every 5 minutes. That particular day marked the one year anniversary of losing my only child, an avid outdoorsman and nature lover, to brain cancer. I had expected that I would hide out all day, crying and journaling, but instead I allowed myself to be distracted by another mother just as desperate to save her baby as I had been. I’m so grateful that the universe presented me with that assignment.
What a precious gift from the universe. Your son is so proud of your attention to the sweet birds. I am so happy you found joy in the sacred day honoring your son.
I am so very sorry for your loss. I’m sure your son would have been very pleased that you spent that anniversary day helping the cardinals. Brings meaning to”the universe provides”……
I’ve noticed this with sunrise & sunsets nature… or live action experiences all reduced to a captured consumable never as good as the real thing. I’ve started leaving the phone out of the conversation. Who am I documenting this for? Return to the living. The archives have their place. Breathe & embrace the somatic world
I think we will all be thinking differently after this prompt. We lived for how many years without these devices at our ready? What have we evolved into?
One of the few ways I have retained a sense of childlike wonder and presence in my life are these moments of being captivated by nature and animals. I still rescue ants and bees and mosquitos from pools, and love pausing to marvel when I stumble across a blooming flower or squirrel scurrying along a branch.
I still remember being at the Grand Canyon for the first time and feeling a sense of sadness at witnessing all the people staring at it through their phone screens. Not one person was standing at this miraculous place with presence or awe. It made my heart so sad, and now when my kids ask me to take a picture of a beautiful scene or cute animal, I always say to them: Pretend you’re in the olden days and take a photo with your heart. And then we just stand and stare at whatever has caught our attention and be in it. It’s glorious.
When I try to bring back childhood wonder, I’m met with resistance from memories of fear and confusion. But there were little moments, like when I’d stare at the mountain that looms behind my hometown of Bakersfield, often obscured by dusty air and shimmering heat. I wondered why it was called Bear Mountain, whether because of its shape that resembled a sleeping bear, or if there were actual bears roaming its slopes. I had never walked through forests, so I could only imagine what kind of place a mountain was.
Yesterday I took a long walk around the island of Inishnee on the Wild Atlantic Way in Ireland where I have been staying, a long ways from the dry place of my youth.
I took slow steps, and let my eyes wander over the rough landscape of prickly gorse and waving grasses, of grazing sheep, and the countless rocks and stones that litter the fields and make up the miles of walls. My fingers stroked the petals of yellow cowslip and nodding bluebells.
It’s here that I feel like a child again, the way I think a child should feel, unencumbered by worries and concerns, only mesmerized by wonders around me. I stared at the shimmering waters and distant peaks and wished that life could always be this easy and lovely, that this could be what heaven is, a place to be a child in love with all that nature provides.
100% agree. Poetic. I wish that children could still feel "unencumbered by worries and concerns, only mesmerized by wonders" -- I fear that they cannot.
Hello All. I love both of the writings today. " As I’ve gotten older, that kind of attention hasn’t disappeared so much as fractured. It’s become something I step in and out of. Something increasingly negotiated." We see deer, groundhogs and more in our yard and yesterday the red fox returned. My husband and I stood there in our window and watched. I did not move, I wanted to grab my phone and did not. It was beautiful. I find this more and more to watch and be with nature, Helmut, my mom, folks I work with, people in the treatment room and more. I also appreciate more and more the smallest of gratitude. And I still am frustrated with what life brings, folks not taking care of my mom at her facility and they are overwhelmed, my being affected again after treatment this week, and more. And so seeing the fox was beautiful. Today a short walk in our favorite place the wildflower reserve. Take care
Thank you for the reminder of not reaching for my phone every five seconds to take a picture or ask a question about something and missing the fox. My memory from I think at least 50 years ago was a hike with my Dad and sister to the top of Hawk mountain in Pennsylvania near where I grew up. It was a beautiful day, beautiful hike, so many different bugs , birds. The best was in those days no phones , only a real camera which I think we might have taken 2 pictures, one of us and one of the snake I almost sat on on a rock. The memories I have of being at the top and watching all of the migrating hawks still is in my memories as a beautiful, quiet, and majestic birding experience spent with family.
Hawk Mountain! Thank you, Maureen! Loved this because I lived nearby too & have precious memories of the beauty of my home state. Watching hawks from my little balcony in Tucson now. This brought a smile to my face.
You’re thoughts regarding how the Fox vanished as soon as you went to snap a picture of your phone reminded how many events and concerts go to and video the whole experience on their mobile device. It makes me think about how much of the experience we are missing when we try to extend that moment into eternity. 🙏
I just want to say how much I love this week’s essays and all of your comments. This is such a wonderful community. My most recent nature moment happened just this week, on my birthday no less. I was stopped at what I already knew was a long red light, so I put the car in park and just looked up. Off to my left was a beautiful hawk wheeling in circles in the bright blue sky. I had only a few minutes to watch it until the light changed and I had to go, but even so I felt transported out of myself by this beautiful creature.
The first time I went snorkeling off a boat in Puerto Rico. The boat owner tossed me over the side of the boat-I was terrified for a brief moment but 4 of us in our part held hands and viewed the beautiful coral and exotic, colorful fish below! I was in shock when the captain on board threw me overboard, but honestly, I probably wouldn’t have done it otherwise. As a memory it’s beautiful plus my love Michael wrote me a poem with my name Sherri& it was beautiful. What a wonderful, magical experience
When I was growing up, there was a field behind our house filled with wildflowers—Queen Anne’s lace, blue corn flowers, goldenrod, and milkweed. I can still see them sparkling in the sun. My favorite was the milkweed—especially in the fall, when the gray pods formed and then sprung open with the softest, silkiest fibers I had ever felt! And each fiber was attached to a tiny seed. I would gather the fibers and pretend I was making a nest, and then throw them up in the air and see how far they traveled, up with the breeze way over my head and into the bright blue sky. It was so amazing!
We gathered to watch the shooting stars and lightning bugs. A lady bug crawling up our arms was magical. Even now I am thinking about those quiet nights and the magic therein.
So I was in my sad little neck of the woods yesterday and some type of amphibians were singing their hearts out and I once again pulled out my phone wanting to share it, save it, maybe just to acknowledge it. But simply listened as I shuffled along with my old dog, whom I’m also trying to simply be with as opposed to keeping him around by stuffing him with vitamins and medications and boiling him bone broth and recording every cute and funny thing he does. The gift of age, of awareness that we must love what every second goes away (thanks Ross Gay).
Talk about serendipity! Last night I watched a Youtube video titled “The Lost art of Looking” by Sam Hamper. He offers the sketchpad as an alternative. The ten minute video will provide you with gorgeous views of blossoming cherry and magenta trees in the UK. (wanted to jump out of bed and paint a room in my house one of those orange-pink colours…will have to settle for a pillow case when I come across some fabric).
Sam carries a sketchpad and coloured pencils. He looks and draws. Most importantly, he emphasizes that the goal is not to create something magnificent on the sketchpad but rather using the sketching to improve one’s looking and essentially enjoyment.
I just returned from Morocco and took so many pictures. Some of it pertains to wanting to share. But definitely distracted me and I eventually put my phone away on day 4 and let the colours and patterns permeate my brain.
In fall of 2024 everyone was posting aurora borealis on Facebook. Those pictures through an iPhone actually looked more dramatic than the real thing. I remember rolling my eyes at all of it and posting a meme I found of a pink highlighter scribble across the night sky: “I saw the aurora!!” I don’t use Facebook anymore for partly this reason. I noticed I was looking at what I was seeing with a view to social media and it really bothered me.
My childhood was filled with such nature moments. I do have a vivid memory of a nearby stream running orange with pollution and my dad explaining that it was mine acid and not to go near. Fortunately a lot of that has been cleaned up. Let’s hope we don’t go backwards…
I am so very blessed to have spent my childhood in nature. My father was in sales, so we moved a great deal. My parents always chose to rent obscure, older houses, outside of little towns, nestled in the fields and forests of upstate NY and CT. I spent my days capturing crayfish in Dixie cups, lining them up on my windowsill, and bumblebees in baby food jars that I would stack up on our back porch. Of course, my mother made me release them all. We had feral cats that lived around our home, giving birth to litters of kittens in boxes my mother stuffed full of old towels and placed out back. We rescued baby bunnies, and baby squirrels that fell out of their nests, and baby birds - a blue jay, a robin, a cardinal. Once even a young hawk and a pidgeon I found while walking home from school. I remember the delight on my mom's face, and feeling of satisfaction when those babies grew up and we released them back in the wild. Just because. We didn't have any special training, just love in our hearts for all of God's creatures and a kindly veterinarian who would advise us what food to feed, when and how. Frogs, tadpoles, snakes and turtles were allowed to stay around for a day or two, then I was sent out to put them back where I found them. I often think back on those idyllic days, and how fortunate I was that my parents instilled in me such a passion and respect for nature. And because nature fills our hearts and souls, we want to share the wonder. With today's technology we can, and I see that as a positive. My mother lives on the west coast and gets weekly Snapchats from me of the green anoles and purple sunsets and wild horses on the beach near where I live; she loves that I can still share these experiences with her.
I took it for granted and now, looking back, I was truly blessed! My parents were not your average Joes, and we were often isolated which led to a deeper connection with nature 🙏
I just had a moment. Suleika is first and foremost a writer. I get clouded by her story, her articulate way of responding to curiosity, and her eyes. In the introduction today I was just reminded that like me, her leukemia is the least interesting thing about her, first and foremost she is a great writer. (Now I’ll go and look at the prompt!)
I find myself often forgetting this fact about Suleika too, because so many other things about her are so prominent to me: her stunning writing, her observations, the personality she shares with us.
A cardinal chose to build her nest on the light outside my back door. I’ve been watching her for weeks, only going out that door when she flew away to run her bird errands, turning off the timer on the porch light and just admiring her doing her momma bird thing. Two days ago, I awakened to find one of the babies had fallen out of the nest. Momma came to the window, perched on the ac unit as if to tell me that she needed help with this situation. I tried to save that fledgling and a second one too, but they didn’t make it. However, a third one did! I placed it back in the nest and secured it, and now momma and papa are tending to their little one, with the help of a nosy robin. This backyard drama took up most of my day, as I couldn’t stop checking on them every 5 minutes. That particular day marked the one year anniversary of losing my only child, an avid outdoorsman and nature lover, to brain cancer. I had expected that I would hide out all day, crying and journaling, but instead I allowed myself to be distracted by another mother just as desperate to save her baby as I had been. I’m so grateful that the universe presented me with that assignment.
What a precious gift from the universe. Your son is so proud of your attention to the sweet birds. I am so happy you found joy in the sacred day honoring your son.
I am so very sorry for your loss. I’m sure your son would have been very pleased that you spent that anniversary day helping the cardinals. Brings meaning to”the universe provides”……
Oh my goodness Caroline. There was SO much beauty in your comment. The bird errands. The saving fledglings. Your son. 💗
Caroline, I adore this story. Mother Nature could not have been more tender on such a signifcant day, sending you a little feathered one to rescue. ♡♡
There is a love that loves us. That loves you. It was there with you that day. And all your days.
So beautifully put.
Caroline, so sorry for your loss. So happy for you that the universe gave you this to take it’s place in some small way.
This pierced my heart. I'm so deeply sorry for your loss. Thank you for this beautiful story.
Beautiful 💗
A truly moving story. Your ability to find joy on this difficult anniversary is nothing short of inspirational.
I’ve noticed this with sunrise & sunsets nature… or live action experiences all reduced to a captured consumable never as good as the real thing. I’ve started leaving the phone out of the conversation. Who am I documenting this for? Return to the living. The archives have their place. Breathe & embrace the somatic world
I love your point about leaving the phone out of the conversation with the natural world. Our personal growth doesn't need to go viral to be valid.
Mmmm love this @mamafarmette
Thank you so much! 🩷
I love your question Stacia!
I think we will all be thinking differently after this prompt. We lived for how many years without these devices at our ready? What have we evolved into?
One of the few ways I have retained a sense of childlike wonder and presence in my life are these moments of being captivated by nature and animals. I still rescue ants and bees and mosquitos from pools, and love pausing to marvel when I stumble across a blooming flower or squirrel scurrying along a branch.
I still remember being at the Grand Canyon for the first time and feeling a sense of sadness at witnessing all the people staring at it through their phone screens. Not one person was standing at this miraculous place with presence or awe. It made my heart so sad, and now when my kids ask me to take a picture of a beautiful scene or cute animal, I always say to them: Pretend you’re in the olden days and take a photo with your heart. And then we just stand and stare at whatever has caught our attention and be in it. It’s glorious.
I love this post Suleika 💖🫶🏽🙏🏽
When I try to bring back childhood wonder, I’m met with resistance from memories of fear and confusion. But there were little moments, like when I’d stare at the mountain that looms behind my hometown of Bakersfield, often obscured by dusty air and shimmering heat. I wondered why it was called Bear Mountain, whether because of its shape that resembled a sleeping bear, or if there were actual bears roaming its slopes. I had never walked through forests, so I could only imagine what kind of place a mountain was.
Yesterday I took a long walk around the island of Inishnee on the Wild Atlantic Way in Ireland where I have been staying, a long ways from the dry place of my youth.
I took slow steps, and let my eyes wander over the rough landscape of prickly gorse and waving grasses, of grazing sheep, and the countless rocks and stones that litter the fields and make up the miles of walls. My fingers stroked the petals of yellow cowslip and nodding bluebells.
It’s here that I feel like a child again, the way I think a child should feel, unencumbered by worries and concerns, only mesmerized by wonders around me. I stared at the shimmering waters and distant peaks and wished that life could always be this easy and lovely, that this could be what heaven is, a place to be a child in love with all that nature provides.
Your last sentence was so beautiful Teri.
100% agree. Poetic. I wish that children could still feel "unencumbered by worries and concerns, only mesmerized by wonders" -- I fear that they cannot.
Hello All. I love both of the writings today. " As I’ve gotten older, that kind of attention hasn’t disappeared so much as fractured. It’s become something I step in and out of. Something increasingly negotiated." We see deer, groundhogs and more in our yard and yesterday the red fox returned. My husband and I stood there in our window and watched. I did not move, I wanted to grab my phone and did not. It was beautiful. I find this more and more to watch and be with nature, Helmut, my mom, folks I work with, people in the treatment room and more. I also appreciate more and more the smallest of gratitude. And I still am frustrated with what life brings, folks not taking care of my mom at her facility and they are overwhelmed, my being affected again after treatment this week, and more. And so seeing the fox was beautiful. Today a short walk in our favorite place the wildflower reserve. Take care
Sometimes I wonder if we appreciate these moments more when we are more openly in the presence of the fragility of life.
A wildflower reserve? LOVE that idea.
It has been around 60 years. And it really is beautiful
Thank you for the reminder of not reaching for my phone every five seconds to take a picture or ask a question about something and missing the fox. My memory from I think at least 50 years ago was a hike with my Dad and sister to the top of Hawk mountain in Pennsylvania near where I grew up. It was a beautiful day, beautiful hike, so many different bugs , birds. The best was in those days no phones , only a real camera which I think we might have taken 2 pictures, one of us and one of the snake I almost sat on on a rock. The memories I have of being at the top and watching all of the migrating hawks still is in my memories as a beautiful, quiet, and majestic birding experience spent with family.
Hawk Mountain! Thank you, Maureen! Loved this because I lived nearby too & have precious memories of the beauty of my home state. Watching hawks from my little balcony in Tucson now. This brought a smile to my face.
You’re thoughts regarding how the Fox vanished as soon as you went to snap a picture of your phone reminded how many events and concerts go to and video the whole experience on their mobile device. It makes me think about how much of the experience we are missing when we try to extend that moment into eternity. 🙏
Sometimes I think I come back to moments more when they are in my memory than when they are in my phone/photos.
I just want to say how much I love this week’s essays and all of your comments. This is such a wonderful community. My most recent nature moment happened just this week, on my birthday no less. I was stopped at what I already knew was a long red light, so I put the car in park and just looked up. Off to my left was a beautiful hawk wheeling in circles in the bright blue sky. I had only a few minutes to watch it until the light changed and I had to go, but even so I felt transported out of myself by this beautiful creature.
That sounds like a perfect meditation!
The first time I went snorkeling off a boat in Puerto Rico. The boat owner tossed me over the side of the boat-I was terrified for a brief moment but 4 of us in our part held hands and viewed the beautiful coral and exotic, colorful fish below! I was in shock when the captain on board threw me overboard, but honestly, I probably wouldn’t have done it otherwise. As a memory it’s beautiful plus my love Michael wrote me a poem with my name Sherri& it was beautiful. What a wonderful, magical experience
When I was growing up, there was a field behind our house filled with wildflowers—Queen Anne’s lace, blue corn flowers, goldenrod, and milkweed. I can still see them sparkling in the sun. My favorite was the milkweed—especially in the fall, when the gray pods formed and then sprung open with the softest, silkiest fibers I had ever felt! And each fiber was attached to a tiny seed. I would gather the fibers and pretend I was making a nest, and then throw them up in the air and see how far they traveled, up with the breeze way over my head and into the bright blue sky. It was so amazing!
We gathered to watch the shooting stars and lightning bugs. A lady bug crawling up our arms was magical. Even now I am thinking about those quiet nights and the magic therein.
So I was in my sad little neck of the woods yesterday and some type of amphibians were singing their hearts out and I once again pulled out my phone wanting to share it, save it, maybe just to acknowledge it. But simply listened as I shuffled along with my old dog, whom I’m also trying to simply be with as opposed to keeping him around by stuffing him with vitamins and medications and boiling him bone broth and recording every cute and funny thing he does. The gift of age, of awareness that we must love what every second goes away (thanks Ross Gay).
Talk about serendipity! Last night I watched a Youtube video titled “The Lost art of Looking” by Sam Hamper. He offers the sketchpad as an alternative. The ten minute video will provide you with gorgeous views of blossoming cherry and magenta trees in the UK. (wanted to jump out of bed and paint a room in my house one of those orange-pink colours…will have to settle for a pillow case when I come across some fabric).
Sam carries a sketchpad and coloured pencils. He looks and draws. Most importantly, he emphasizes that the goal is not to create something magnificent on the sketchpad but rather using the sketching to improve one’s looking and essentially enjoyment.
I just returned from Morocco and took so many pictures. Some of it pertains to wanting to share. But definitely distracted me and I eventually put my phone away on day 4 and let the colours and patterns permeate my brain.
In fall of 2024 everyone was posting aurora borealis on Facebook. Those pictures through an iPhone actually looked more dramatic than the real thing. I remember rolling my eyes at all of it and posting a meme I found of a pink highlighter scribble across the night sky: “I saw the aurora!!” I don’t use Facebook anymore for partly this reason. I noticed I was looking at what I was seeing with a view to social media and it really bothered me.
My childhood was filled with such nature moments. I do have a vivid memory of a nearby stream running orange with pollution and my dad explaining that it was mine acid and not to go near. Fortunately a lot of that has been cleaned up. Let’s hope we don’t go backwards…
I am so very blessed to have spent my childhood in nature. My father was in sales, so we moved a great deal. My parents always chose to rent obscure, older houses, outside of little towns, nestled in the fields and forests of upstate NY and CT. I spent my days capturing crayfish in Dixie cups, lining them up on my windowsill, and bumblebees in baby food jars that I would stack up on our back porch. Of course, my mother made me release them all. We had feral cats that lived around our home, giving birth to litters of kittens in boxes my mother stuffed full of old towels and placed out back. We rescued baby bunnies, and baby squirrels that fell out of their nests, and baby birds - a blue jay, a robin, a cardinal. Once even a young hawk and a pidgeon I found while walking home from school. I remember the delight on my mom's face, and feeling of satisfaction when those babies grew up and we released them back in the wild. Just because. We didn't have any special training, just love in our hearts for all of God's creatures and a kindly veterinarian who would advise us what food to feed, when and how. Frogs, tadpoles, snakes and turtles were allowed to stay around for a day or two, then I was sent out to put them back where I found them. I often think back on those idyllic days, and how fortunate I was that my parents instilled in me such a passion and respect for nature. And because nature fills our hearts and souls, we want to share the wonder. With today's technology we can, and I see that as a positive. My mother lives on the west coast and gets weekly Snapchats from me of the green anoles and purple sunsets and wild horses on the beach near where I live; she loves that I can still share these experiences with her.
Your childhood in nature sounds glorious Terri!!
I took it for granted and now, looking back, I was truly blessed! My parents were not your average Joes, and we were often isolated which led to a deeper connection with nature 🙏
I just had a moment. Suleika is first and foremost a writer. I get clouded by her story, her articulate way of responding to curiosity, and her eyes. In the introduction today I was just reminded that like me, her leukemia is the least interesting thing about her, first and foremost she is a great writer. (Now I’ll go and look at the prompt!)
I find myself often forgetting this fact about Suleika too, because so many other things about her are so prominent to me: her stunning writing, her observations, the personality she shares with us.