Falling in Love with the Earth

Emails and doomscrolling make up too much of my life these days, and if I’m not grieving what I know is coming for our planet in the next twenty-odd years, I’m grieving what’s happening to our country and what feels like an inevitable collapse into entrenched authoritarianism. To be honest, I’ve found this reality really difficult to stomach. Between a blood pressure scare at the doctor a few weeks ago and constantly feeling bombarded by more bad news, I’ve wanted to curl up into a ball in a cave somewhere and just disappear.

I told myself multiple times this year that I just needed to get out and reconnect with nature – that at the heart of my angst is how disconnected and isolated I feel, and a simple stroll into the woods could give me the boost (and the reminder) I needed to know that there’s still good in this world and that I’m a part of it.

Sometimes, though, we need nature to give us a good slap in the face.

Suffice to say, this morning, a hike made a lot of sense as a good celebration of 42 years on this rock. The excess rain in the Poconos this year has made for unusual overgrowth. The greens are greener; the ground is replete with moisture; the temperature is subtropical, and walking through the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area feels a bit like walking through a rainforest as the water droplets fall on you from above even while the sun streams through the canopy.

It’s a sacred, shaded spot for me, an escape of sorts, and the end of the hike culminates with a small cascade where the temperature drops the nearer you get to the falls. There, I was tempted to strip down and go for a swim in the watering hole but decided against it. In my head, I wanted to touch the dirt. I wanted to feel the cool spring water against my skin. No phones pinging. No computer humming. No concrete and steel. No metal or plastic. Just what’s always belonged here and nothing more. To love that and be loved back is something we too often dismiss or forget carries the significance it deserves.

This is what we’re made for, but we choose its absolute opposite near constantly.

On the hike back, while walking over a small, wooden footbridge about a foot-and-a-half off the ground, I felt my hiking shoe slip against the wet wood, briefly thought I’d recovered, only to have my other shoe slip as well. I went flying through the air, as if in ‘slow-mo,’ and planted face first into the creek my entire body clapping against the quiet stream. It was a hard fall. A mossy rock nestled into my ribcage. My hands felt the brunt of the force and were fully submerged as my knees were eating the pebbles in the creek.

I realized, or thought, almost immediately that I was okay. I checked my hands to see if they were bleeding. They weren’t but they were shaking, and apparently, you can bruise your palm – who knew. My whole body was stunned but also relieved.

Rather than getting up, ringing out my wet shirt, and dusting myself off, I just lay there. I was face-to-face with the woodsorrel, a kind of water clover, and filled suddenly with the sense that this was exactly where I wanted and needed to be. I dipped my head into the water, as if to go deeper, as if being baptized by nature, and began laughing. I filled with a joy I haven’t felt in too long.

I’m tempted to say the joy was a matter of relief, knowing I was okay and nothing was broken. Or that it stemmed from the realization that I’m alive – just that deep sense of feeling something real, and I think both of those are slightly true, but when I really reflect on what I was feeling in that moment, I actually think it was freedom.

Is there anything more free than nature? I was awkwardly sprawled out resting in a creek, but the birds were chirping, a small breeze blowing, tadpoles frolicking, insects scampering, none of them confined to borders or demands, none of them belonging anywhere but where they find themselves. They are, all of them, threatened, by the moment we’re in, and yet, they are also, all of them, continuing on as best they can, the very simple task before them to just be.

We scheme and make plans, we hope and fear, embrace and betray, and there’s freedom in our choices as well, but I suspect we are most ourselves when we simply choose to live as nature does, or perhaps one with it. Maybe our best choices are made when we’re communing with rather than responding to.

I could have laid in that creek the rest of the day, to be honest. I sat on the footbridge for a few minutes, breathed the air, ached enough to feel like I was actually 42, hiked out, and rinsed off, because well, that’s what we do. And as I write this, again with a computer and the pinging sounds of my phone, a ladybug walking across the screen, it strikes me that we’ve spent so much time talking about the importance of getting back up when we fall that I think it worth saying something different – that sometimes when we fall, rolling around in the dirt and mud a little while before we hop right back up might actually be worth the reminder of what we’re made of and set us on the path we really need to go.

That is to say, why all the rush and restlessness when there’s so much to be gained if we just let ourselves fall in love with the Earth and what its made a little more?