Back to Nature

I promise you will feel better after reading this week’s column; just bear with me.

I spent the other day with a dear old friend, a soul sister. Before I moved away from her, she and I went to lunch once a week and “solved the problems of the world.” This past Monday, we sat in a wonderful little bookstore in Clayton and shared our hearts with one another, catching up on our lives apart. We eventually got around to the world’s problems, which we agreed are way beyond us now. We discussed what I suspect is a universal experience for those of us who are getting older – the feeling that the world is a strange place that doesn’t feel like home anymore. The politics, the economy, the popular culture – all of it feels unfamiliar and a little bit scary. We agreed that we sometimes want our old world back, knowing perfectly well we will never get it.

The world I grew up in was a much different place, one that somehow felt far more hopeful and secure, even if we were in the midst of the Cold War. We may have had a false sense of security in that pre-9/11 world, but we enjoyed it nonetheless. While I witnessed the turbulent Sixties on the TV news, it all seemed surreal and far away from my life in rural Georgia. The closest I ever came to being a hippie was to iron my long hair straight and wear bright orange bell-bottom pants with giant flowers all over them. (Yes, they were as ugly as you imagine.)

As a twelve-year-old girl, I spent long summer afternoons riding my bike down lonely dirt roads with my friends. My mom didn’t know where I was for hours at a time. Imagine letting your daughter do that today!

There were a few relatively mild recessions along the way, but I had no doubt that my standard of living would far surpass that of my parents. The future looked bright.

The most shocking thing in popular culture was the Beatle’s long hair, and even though I listened to songs about drugs, I didn’t even know it at the time! (I thought that horse in the desert really was a nameless horse, and it never occurred to me that Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds referred to LSD!)

It is all so different today. We lost our innocence on a bright September morning in 2001. We are currently experiencing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and I do not expect my son to have a better standard of living than my husband and I have enjoyed. Our nation’s budget is unsustainable, and the entitlement programs we’ve come to rely on are in jeopardy. Politics is increasingly partisan and vitriolic. Healthcare costs continue to soar. Oil inundates the Gulf Coast while wildlife suffers. As for popular culture, I watched the American Music Awards a few months back (remember the Adam Lambert fiasco?) and wondered what planet I was on. It was sick.

But now for the good part… I have found the perfect remedy for those days when it all starts to get me down. I return to nature. Being outdoors working in the garden, taking a walk, or just sitting on the porch watching lightening streak across the mountaintops reminds me that the world God created is alive and well – and as amazingly beautiful as it has always been. Honeysuckle, mimosa, and rain-soaked woods still smell the way they did in my childhood days. Chiggers still hide amongst the blackberries, and tree frogs continue to make far more noise than their tiny size should allow. Dirt still feels good between my toes, and homegrown tomatoes still taste better than anything. (I can live off tomato sandwiches and corn-on-the-cob all summer long.)

Last week I hiked the trails of the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest. In the midst of those tall trees that have stood for centuries, the contemporary world and all its problems ceased to exist. I was reminded that God is still in his heaven, and life is good. That is something that people on both sides of the political aisle can agree on! (And yes, Mrs. Roberts, I am aware that I ended that sentence with a preposition.)