An Urban Nature Oasis

Its easy to get wrapped up in our lives, anxious about all the little things that are like tiny little burrs that make life miserable.  I think humans evolved in such a way that they need to take time and just walk in nature.  Its been a pretty difficult early spring with the death of my grandmother and Amy's surgery.  All is well now but the strain takes a toll.

Today Amy and my son Jeremiah and I visited one of the Little Edens I had written about back in February.  The Anita B. Gorman Discovery Center is an urban  conservation area and nature center whose purpose is to teach city dwellers about nature. If anyone needs to take time to walk in nature its city dwellers.  Life is so hectic and the Discovery Center is a real gem.

We strolled around the area which includes a small pond, larger lake, a prairie and a woodland habitat, in miniature.  Highlights of our walk included some American Goldfinches, a beautiful singing House Finch, Norther Cardinals, a flyover by our neighbor the Red-tailed Hawk, a pair of Blue-winged Teal and an American Kestrel.

The Kestrel was having a difficult time of it with a single Blue Jay that objected to its presence, flying at it and trying to drive it off.  The Blue Jay was persistent but could not raise any of his companions and thought better than to try and take on the Kestrel.  So he flew down into the bushes and continued is verbal harassment of the intruder.  

There is life all around and it shines with beauty, grace and awe.  The trick is to look beyond the burrs of life to see it.

Little Edens

The story of the Garden of Eden, of paradise lost I think is a very human story.  More than anything I think it tells us something about our relationship with nature.  When people cast about trying to explain the origins of humanity they chose to tell the story of a garden of delight, bountiful with all we could imagine we would want.  I believe they told this story because it rang true to our need, our human need for wildness.

"In wildness is the preservation of the world"   Thoreau

Human history is filled with stories of little Edens, places where people go to look inward, find peace and to heal.  From the Greek idylls, poetry that depicts a simple life, close to the land, to the poetry of Wordsworth or to Thoreau's Walden. We find people looking for that quiet sanctuary, that place in the wild that brings peace, that centers....

I've been thinking about the little Edens I've had in my life and what they've meant to my personal growth and my understanding of nature. I think we all have our little Edens.  I hope to share some of mine from time to time.