Mother Nature

Feeling a bit off from many points of view, I decided that a bush walk might be in order. Considering that the beautiful Australian bush is right behind my unit, it wasn't such a hard feat to achieve. The reason for why I don't do it more often is because lack of time gives me an excuse for being lazy.

I love my solitary bush walk. Because I leave my worries and my thoughts next to the first tree, it is very much like meditation, just that I carry my loyal photo camera with me. Today was the same like always. A sunny day with deep blue skies that bless the city mainly in spring, nature coming to life and me with my Nikon around the neck.

I'm not sure if it was beautiful. Or better said, only beautiful. It was real. The leaves just moving in the breeze, things moving under the dead leaves, most likely lizards but as i am terrified of reptiles I trying to pretend they were not there, birds softly singing, the water slowly flowing, flowers that came to life... Rocks older then time suspended in physics defying positions... It was real and it was alive.

I love all nature, but the parts of nature that resonate most with me are the mountains and forests. Could be because I spent a good pat of my life in the mountains, or it could be because i am an Earth sign. Most likely are both. Sydney can not offer me mountains or dense forests. But in the bush I find enough of my beloved mountain forests to captivate me.

If I am quiet enough, I can feel the life force of nature resonating in me. Not only forests. But nature in general, pushes me to accept the fact that beyond me and my limited capacity of understanding, there is so much more, that something that I can not see. It reminds me that the same life force that sustains me, exists in every other atom. I'm not good at physics, but I studied it enough to know that once we look at atomic level there is an energy or magnetic field that holds the atoms together. It is what I call life force. And sometimes, stolen by life, I forget to step beyond my ego and see that there is not much difference between me and a rock. I get lost in the egoism typical to my race and consider myself better then the rock.

A walk in the nature reminds me that it is not so. I'm no better or worse that anything else on this planet. The only difference is that I think of myself as more important.

It also fills me with gratitude, another think that I tend to forget in the storms of life. Gratitude that I exist in order to see the beauty around me, gratitude that I can feel, listen, touch, smell, taste and hear. Gratitude that no matter how hard my life seems to be, there are other beings that have it harder.

Nature goes into all my senses. It is real... It is beautiful or terrifying, majestic and gentle, forceful and kind. It can also be unforgiving, more so when we provoke it.

Walking, I wasn't thinking. The entire purpose of my walking was to be a meditation, not a schizophrenic discussion with myself. However, as I was happily losing my self  in nature, I notices all the rubbish around me. Normally it makes me angry when people just dump their rubbish everywhere. But today it made me sad. I was looking at a flower trying to get a little bit of sun from under  an empty can of soft drink and I felt like crying. Not only for that flower. But for every millimiter of this planet drowned in rubbish. For every tree that can not breathe and grow because someone threw their dirty towel on. For every flower that could not exist because a plastic bag was on the ground.

Sitting there, with the empty can in my hand, I could imagine my children stepping on the same path in few years and not being able to see the beauty I was seeing, but only the rubbish dumped everywhere. What a loss! And how unfair!

My walk became a rubbish collection. In one of the plastic bags I so easily found on the ground, I started to pick up empty cans, broken balloons, broken bottles, pieces of plastic and cartoon... I won't go into all the things I picked up and carried to the rubbish bin... I won't even go in all the things I could not pick up...

Why? Why can we not respect the beauty around us? Why do we dump our rubbish everywhere, even though we would not do it in our homes? Isn't our planet the home of our home?