Yesterday afternoon, I got to the school of the boys a good half an hour too early. Way too early, you could say. So I walked to the back, where the concrete school yard ends and the grass field begins. It’s a piece of nature with a grass field, trees winding aling with the short footpath, a few bushes on the edges.
It was a cold, gray day, but as always, the grass remained green among the grayish-brown of the leafless trees and bushes.
I stood there, resting my back against the school fence, looking out at the little patch of nature between the paved streets and sewn-together rows of apartments and houses. It was relatively quiet, especially for being in a city. The children were inside the school building, only some distance away there were noises of the odd car driving by. The rest was the sound of birds and the quiet rustling of the wind among the bare branches of the highest trees.
I was at ease and I observed. I saw a tiny little tomtit in the bushes just a little distance from where I was standing. I saw the leftover brown leaves, that decorated the green grass around me, like a repeat pattern on the cover of a stylish notebook. I saw a group of black birds sitting on the top of a high tree, chatting with each other. There were still some small goblets, sitting on the higher branches of those tall trees. I was wondering why they were there.
The wet, cold air had a surprising freshness in it and a heaviness at the same time. The humidity crawled over everything in sight, creating tiny drops on the fence, the wooden climbing structure, the swings. My shoes collected tiny pearls of water as I was walking in the grass. Now that I stood still, they sat there, glistening like glass beads, reflecting the gray light of the sky.
As I was breathing it all in, the sights, the smells, the sounds and sensations, I realized I was in nature there as well. At a quiet moment, a tiny patch of green on a gray winter day can be just as magnificent and awe-inspiring as a huge stretch of wilderness. It touched my soul, as nature and I connected.
In the middle of that normally noisy place, in the middle of a smaller city, I felt completely at peace.
Our True Nature 