Confessions of a Nature Dweeb

August 29, 2010

Occasionally, I get razzed from my friends for my nature-based online observations. The razzing is always good-natured (pun possibly intended), but there is, nonetheless, a certain, dark undercurrent running through their commentary, the suggestion that I am somehow quaint or out of touch or maybe even a bit touched, to use an old-fashioned term.

But, really, how can I ignore the moment I just shared on our patio with a ruby-throated hummingbird that hovered just inches away from me? How can I shake from my memory that low hum his wings made as they flapped faster than I could possibly register with my aging eyes?

The thing that nature always delivers to me is hope, something homo sapiens can’t seem to tap with much consistency. Sure, I draw energy and enthusiasm for the future from my students, family and friends. And my confidence in the future almost always is strengthened by the feel-good stories that appear in Section B of the Sunday paper, where the focus regularly turns to those who foster good, not guns.

But, in the long run, these human high points can’t hold a candle to what my backyard buddies and birdies offer me. I don’t say this naively, either. I “get” that the daily life of of birds and bugs and beasts of burden is just that, a burden. I realize that, for every wing-flapping fledgling that squawks for its ma, there are a dozen predators just looking for the right moment to pounce. This non-human world can be downright inhuman. It is violent, dangerous and rife with parasites.

But it is rife with “aha” moments, too. It’s as though all of the natural world abides by St. Paul’s words “Do not let the sun set on your anger.” For, each evening, every bug, bird and beast seems to let out a collective “Uncle!” calling a truce that will be honored all night long, while each settles into its sleeping quarters (minus their nocturnal cousins, of course, who take their recess while the sun is still high in the sky).

Therein lies the hope. The consistency and unshakeable rhythm of the natural world—along with its seasonal flashes of color, cohabitation, and capitulation—brings me great heaps of comfort in a world where humans so often seem unable to follow the lead of their “lesser” cousins.