I may not change the world, but I can enter into it.

The view of nature from inside and outside my office

An autumn skyscape from fall, 2022. Taken at Jehl Park in my neighborhood.

For March, my theme is to focus on essays involving nature. This essay was written in October 2024, so the observations may not fit with the current season, as we transition from winter to spring. Still, it speaks into the reality that the natural world can teach all of us something about ourselves, and each other.

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To listen to the audio version of this essay, please click here:

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I have been inside the house for hours, sitting at my desk. The house is quiet now, all five children at school. I can exhale, but my breath feels stilted, uneven. I turn my head to the left as I do when I can’t think straight or my heart feels like a spider entangled in its own web.

The double panes and screen splattered with hundreds of gnat bodies obstructs this glorious sight: old silver maples with goldenrod leaves, some with tips painted a salmon pink. They are releasing their life cycle from each branch, but on a still day like today this is not a violent act but a gentle one. I needed that—tenderness, I mean. To witness it in some way, even if it is happening outside of myself.

If I lean back in my chair, I catch a glimpse of the bush whose name I never learned, and sometimes I am lucky to notice a scampering squirrel, acorn in its mouth, hastily digging at the earth while there’s still time before it hardens with subzero temperatures. There are birds, too, usually diminutive sparrows and unremarkable robins. I am used to these critters. Still, they comfort me.

Everything that has breath reminds me that noticing things draws me away from the chaos of what’s unknowable and uncontrollable in my life. Now, my breathing is rhythmic, a cadence that matches the stillness of the outside world.

Maybe I am drawn to trees and birds and wild creatures, because they teach me that communication among living entities doesn’t have to be complicated, as I often make it to be. Much can be conveyed in the silence between two hearts.

I may not change the world, but I can enter into it. I can immerse myself into the sanctuaries that surround and envelop me and allow them to offer me succor and strength.

Now feels like an appropriate time to step outside for a walk. I hope I’ll feel less constricted, less suffocated. Something about the wide expanse of the outdoors seems to open my mind and my heart.

After I saddle Daisy in her doggie harness, she and I step out of the front door and cross the front lawn, which means I am passing by the window to my office. But now I am on the outside looking in. I am surprised to see that I can’t view the inside of my house from this angle. The trim on the window’s perimeter is matte brown and blends with the rustic brick and dark shingles.

The trees, too, are more than maples here. And the colors more vibrant than yellow. There are hickories, both young and old, plus oaks and I think, elms. We have reached the pinnacle of autumn now, as October wanes and we find ourselves on the cusp of November. As I pass underneath the canopies of leaves the color of fire and corn and clementines, the wind picks up and scatters what’s already fallen to the ground.

The leaves dance in a swirl-like motion at my feet, then drift across the newly asphalted street. Soon, I know, the branches of all deciduous trees will become skeletal and barren, but even then, the stark nature of minimalism carries its own version of beauty.

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