By Robert Burgess
New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill Senior Communications Manager
We’re living in uncertain times. No one knows for sure what’s going to happen next. We hope for the best. We make prudent choices. And we wait.
But nature doesn’t wait. Nature moves forward regardless of what we face. The sun looms a little longer each day. The ground thaws beneath our feet. The sap runs. Buds break. Bulbs emerge.
Just in time for us to shake those winter blues. To leave behind that cabin fever. We emerge from our half-hearted hibernations to find a spring like no other before.
Nature’s seasonal cycle continues as it ever has. But we are different than we ever have been. We suddenly have more time to observe, to reflect, and maybe to appreciate.
The list of things we can do seems to shrink by the day. One of the few left: Go outside. And more of us are out walking than ever before. Underutilized trails are being discovered. Some of the more popular green spaces are over run as we try to maintain six foot buffers from each other. Trailhead parking lots are often maxed out. Who would’ve thought woods walking would become the new sliced bread?
With so much an unknown, nature is the constant, providing beauty, inspiration, hope (say nothing of clean water to drink, fresh food to eat, and invaluable air to breathe). But we’re not always very kind to nature.
Don’t you think that when this storm passes we should do better on nature’s behalf? After all, nature was here for us when we needed it the most.
Let’s not go back to being so overbooked that we neglect our time in nature. Let’s not put communing with nature at the bottom of the never ending To Do Lists. Let’s spend more of our capital on nature – when those of us who have some to spare are able. And let’s increase volunteering our most precious asset – our time – to protecting nature, to advocating on behalf of nature, to improving access to nature.
Nature, it seems, is back on the map. Let’s not take it for granted when life returns to “normal.” Let’s be better.