Everything, Everywhere, All At Once

It’s no secret I adore nature. One look at my Instagram profile and you’ll see my unabashed nature fiendery on full display, often with wishes that there was a swoon emoji (btw- if anyone knows of such a thing, please share!). Truly, nature is incredible and I can’t get enough of it – the wildflowers and grasses, the trees, the sky, outcroppings of rock, water in all its forms. I’m continually mesmerized by the interplay of components and organisms, and fascinated by the fact that nature simply shows up as itself.

I’ve always thought Alice Walker said it best, “In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.”

So many of the glorious things I see on my morning walks or my hikes just grew there, right where they are. They didn’t ask their neighbor if it was okay to move in, they didn’t ask the sun or the air if it was time to bloom. They just sought the light, or the land, or the water, and they became whatever they needed to become, for however long they needed to be that way. Then, in their own timing, whenever the season for that particular phase is done, they shift to another form.

It’s miraculous to witness this cycle, and part of why I enjoy visiting nature preserves and state or national parks regularly. I love seeing the same places in different seasons, in different states, in different forms. And I love the gentle reminders that we are more than the sum of our parts, that there is beauty in every season, function in every form. And in the midst of all our various states of being, we simply are.

Nature is good like that. As Gretel Erlich said, “Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are.”

Part of the beauty of nature is the way it simultaneously encompasses a spectrum of stages as the various organisms and components participate in the dances of expansion and contraction, activity and rest, each in their own timing. And in the midst of all that, seeds germinate, plants grow, creatures are fed, souls are nourished, leaves are dropped, creek beds dry up, grasses wither, tides ebb and flow, things decompose, rains fall, and everything has its own timing for whatever stage it’s in. We are no different. We’re a part of nature after all. And we have our cycles, our own shifting seasons, and countless iterations of ourselves, sometimes in the span of a single day. Wherever we are in this moment, it is not forever. And it is right on time. Here’s to showing up, to trusting the timing, and to being as we are, wherever we are.