Nature - extra notes

On my recent and unplanned break from blogging, I've started to remember how much I love nature.

I feel like nature is somewhat ingrained in most people in different ways, even if they don't realise it but the older I've gotten, the more I've learned how important it is to realise it. While my teenage years may not have been involved spending every day outside, I do remember hikes during boy's brigade camps and enjoying the nice weather with my family where I could during the spring and summer, whether it was going on walks, going on trips, or even spending time in the garden. I also got more politically aware during my mid teens, where I fell into all the Green Party had to say when speaking to them at a stall on my local high street. From this, I started to acknowledge just how bad climate change was and began to take nature a bit more seriously.

Lockdown helped with this both personally and worldwide.

I've always been introverted, especially as a teen I spent a lot of time stuck in my room by choice doing the usual teenage things - playing video games, listening to music, doing my writing and learning guitar in between school work, but I enjoyed it because I chose to do it and could leave at any time. There was no pressure to stay inside. When lockdown hit, things changed for me. Not being able to leave made me want to get out more. I had just finished school and was about to turn eighteen in a few months and thought I should be out enjoying myself while I had the chance. Due to this, I took every chance I had to get outside. I utilised my one walk a day and then the unlimited walking when it began to open up. I explored the burn near my house, I took routes I hadn't gone in years, I watched the sheep from afar in the nearby field. During this time, I began to deeply appreciate how beautiful this world is.

Throughout the rest of the world, a lot changed nature-wise. With people slowing down, the world began to heal. I remember hearing the news about Venice where with everyone staying indoors allowed dolphins and jellyfish to return to the local canals. As well as this, air quality began to improve in places due to cars and public transport being infrequent as few people had places to be. (https://abcnews.go.com/International/venice-canals-clear-fish-coronavirus-halts-tourism-city/story?id=69662690).

This all helped to further open my eyes (and many others) to the beauties of this world that we're in to much of a rush not to see.

Another thing that helped me grow to love nature was the 'nature writing and ecology' module I did in my third year of uni. I wasn't supposed to do that module, but the one I was supposed to be doing couldn't run that year, so we joined the literature degree in this class because it had the closest learning outcomes to the other module.

I had a love/hate relationship with that module. While the marks took far to long to get back to us, I enjoyed the lecturer - Ian Blythe - who it was clear loved teaching that class and was passionate about all things nature writing. Even now, I'm looking at writers we studied in his class, recently reading Kathleen Jamie's 'Cairn' (a book in which Ian is mentioned in as they know each other, a fact he mentioned, but was still a nice surprise), and buying a biography of nature poet Ted Hughes. I saw just how inspirational nature has been to people across both the world and time. We examined so many kinds of writing during this module, between prose, poetry, and newspaper columns focusing on different places of nature during different eras, from the first world war all the way to modern day. The module opened for me a whole new kind of writing. Not that I haven't written about nature before - I've a previous blog post and hundreds of poem about different kinds of nature, but this made me interested in it more and to try different styles and places to base my writing on.

At the time of writing this blog post, I'm away on holiday at a Centre Parcs. I've done these holidays with my family before and I've always loved how much wildlife and nature is important, nay necessary for the area. The appeal of holidays like Centre Parcs is to getting to see all sorts of wildlife that you don't see as regularly in built up suburban areas. Even a few days in to my trip, I'm always excited to see the ducks and birds, and have a few badgers to show up on Badgerwatch. While I'm yet to see a squirrel, I still have time and hope to see at least one.

I was going to end this post by saying that there was no major reason for me writing this post other than wanting to, but I don't think that's true. There's so much beauty if this world, particularly in nature, and between industrialisation, capitalism, and every day life, I feel like we don't get to appreciate it enough. So, if anyone is reading this at any time, please, take a break, go outside if and when possible, find some nature, even something small like one tree, take a deep breath and take in it's beauty. Enjoy that even now, life thrives, that beauty exists around us, even when it doesn't feel like this. Remember what life is really about. Sometimes, it's all you need to remember that it's going to be ok.