First Connections: When and Where

 As a society we are currently investing a lot of time and money in attempts to connect people of all ages with nature. By "nature" I think we mean various aspects of ecology: the interwoven fabric of geography, geology, and living organisms. Often the first step is teaching people to identify something, i.e. attach a name to a picture or specimen. But naming is an adult activity, and connections starting this way are "adult". Being introduced to nature at this adult level is a wonderful step forward in life, for adults. But there is a more primitive way of connecting which is seldom discussed. That is connecting through the senses, by immersion without the use of language and with no holds barred i.e. turning ones curiosity loose on the world and soaking in an experience with no adult feeding information into the mind. This can only be a solo moment: an individual in a situation. It can be re-experienced later, recorded, shared with others. But the moment of connection can involve only one person's unique self.

The connections to the natural world that shaped my early life all happened while I was alone, even if there were other people nearby. They happened without the benefit of language and explanation. The most impressive ones happened when I was young. They were comprised of feelings more than thoughts. And that is what I think of yet today as experiencing nature.

I'm sure I am not the only person who met nature this way. I'm sure it  happened to lots of us, but as we moved on into the more cerebral role of adult human being we left those feelings and memories of them behind, buried under a mound of busyness.

Here's an example: I must have been three or four years old. I was visiting my grandmother for some reason. Probably with a parent. I wandered out into the yard. (I now know her lot was a full block deep, a gardeners dream. And the place I wandered to was "down back" a naturalized area of flowers that more or less took care of their own propagation.) At some point I became aware that I was standing in the middle of a patch of blue, and white, and pink. I looked and looked at the flowers that surrounded me, that sprouted from stems taller than me. I absorbed their colors, their shape, their lacey leaves, even a certain odor the plants exuded. This experience permeated my nervous system without benefit of words. It was just a wonderful feeling of being there, at that moment, knowing these nameless flowers in great sensory detail. I felt good being with them. I was transfixed, awed, even though I didn't know at the time that there was a word for this feeling. This was such an intensely wordless experience that I never thought about describing it to anyone until today.

Years later, as I grew up at my gardening grandmothers elbow (or should I say at her hoe handle) I learned that these flowers were called larkspurs. The shape of the little spurred flowers was fixed in my brain. There they seemed gigantic compared to the little larkspurs I saw as an older and much larger person. Through this bridging I learned the appropriateness of the name I had never known before. Later yet I learned about the seeds they produce. And even further on in my adult life I learned a bit more about where they fit into the botanist's array of plant families. But above all, to this day when I love all sorts of plants, I still have special warm  feelings for larkspurs.