Reflections - Becoming Part of Nature

View from the Grassy Knoll

Metaphorically crossing my fingers and toes, I set the phone timer for thirty minutes. Inserting the phone into the folding chair’s cup holder, I leaned back and willed myself to do nothing.

Gene Ware, author and Presque Isle enthusiast, inspired the idea for this adventure. His face had glowed like a sunrise over Lake Erie when he’d explained his December 2016 GoErie blog. “I sat on a bench in the woods at Presque Isle and did nothing.” 

Doing nothing didn’t thrill me. After a walk around Wells Wood with my daughter in the 1990s, she and I had sat on a bench in front of the old cabin. My legs kicked. I started a conversation.

“You don’t know how to relax,” her surprised voice said.

I can relax—reading a book, stretching for yoga poses, putting pieces into a jigsaw puzzle. But Gene’s idea of doing nothing?

His eyes had sparkled. “I became part of nature. A chipmunk walked across my shoe as if I wasn’t there.”

Gene’s enthusiasm and the idea of a cute critter crossing my shoe because I’d become part of nature enticed me for years. Blending into nature for large creatures did not. When I venture into the woods alone, I hang a jumbo jingle bell on my belt to avoid surprising an ambling black bear. Yet, if I failed to do nothing because of imagined dangers, I would be a wuss. I didn’t want that. I’d do nothing. This summer.

While my husband and I walked under the tree canopy along our dirt road the morning of July 13, I obliquely tested the imagined dangers on him.

“I need your help selecting a spot for a Joy of Nothingness adventure.” I glanced at Spence. He stared at a female Diana Fritillary flitting over Queen Anne’s Lace. “I want to sit in the woods and do nothing. Is there a log across Deer Creek I could sit on, or should I take a chair to the grassy knoll?”

Waiting for his admonitions, that’s dangerous or don’t forget your bear bell, I bit my lip.

He said neither.

“Do nothing?” He guffawed then coughed to curb his merriment. “The grassy knoll would be perfect.”

Okay. He wasn’t worried about bears. I wouldn’t either.

That afternoon, under a forget-me-not blue sky dotted with puffy white clouds, I lugged gear for doing nothing. Though I only needed the canvas chair,  I packed a tote bag with my cell phone to time the vigil, a spiral notebook and pen in case I got inspired, and my camera. If a great blue heron or a pair of mallard ducks flew upstream above Deer Creek, I could postpone the nothingness adventure for another day and take their pictures. I left the bear bell at home.

Grass grew calf high on the grassy knoll. I settled the chair behind a row of Christmas Ferns and sat. The chair tilted slanting me toward the drop off to Deer Creek. I pushed the chair further back, sat, and tipped. Gene didn’t have this hassle with his park bench. Repositioning the chair onto ground with the least slant, I pulled the phone out of the bag, set the tote on the ground, and sat. Time to do nothing.

The screen on my phone darkened.

Moments passed like millennia.

If this got excruciating, I could always quit after fifteen minutes.

Checking the phone is doing something.

Maybe I could breathe in rhythm with the gusting breeze.

Breathing is doing something.

I’ll listen for rustling bushes to warn me that a bear is on the way.

Worrying is doing something. Just relax!

My body melted into the chair. I rubbed the pad of my thumb against the other thumbnail.

Sky

Maple leaves swished overhead. Deer Creek babbled over rocks. A wood thrush sang its flute-like melody with trills.

My calves got a twitchy-creeping urge to move.

If I wanted a chipmunk to scramble over my shoes, I dare not move them. Inside my shoes, I rocked my feet—toes to heel. 

Sunlight flickered through the treetops creating a kaleidoscope of shifting greens in the leaves. Branches bobbed and twirled in an arboreal ballet.

The more I relaxed in the chair, the more my legs wanted to party. I gritted my teeth.

A Monarch flitted along the creek bank, and a Cabbage White Butterfly flapped helter-skelter between maple trunks.

I had to move. Restless legs, the reason doing nothing doesn’t agree with me, made me march in place.

A bullfrog by the creek didn’t see my moving feet and bellowed its raspy-twang.

By the time the Cabbage White made its second dizzying trip past the grassy knoll, my legs calmed to urges to move rather than demands. And nature’s theater electrified my senses—the breeze bounced my hair, the light dimmed under drifting clouds, and cheeps harmonized with distant twitters.

BEEP-BEEP-BEEP. The cell phone shattered nature’s calm.

So soon?

I made it?

Jumping out of the chair, I pulled the camera out of the tote bag. As I stretched my legs, I photographed the views from the grassy knoll. I didn’t pull out the notebook. Nothing could wait.

Gathering the gear, I giant-stepped to the log house and imagined the pleasure of shucking fresh peas.

Spence met me on the porch. “How’d it go?”

Should I admit my internal noisiness and fascination with nature’s drama? “Nothing happened.”

He chuckled. “That’s what I thought.”

My nothing adventure will hardly inspire anyone like Gene Ware’s enthusiasm inspired me. Without getting restless legs, I can relax with yoga poses and absorb nature on quiet woods walks. However, I did find a use for Gene’s Joy of Nothingness.

This past Wednesday, like most mornings, Spence stopped tapping keys on his computer and said, “Okay. Ready when you are.” (Translation—time for a walk.)

I gave him my standard answer. “I need to change.”

In the bedroom slipping out of my yoga sweats and into my RYNOSKIN, bug protecting shirt, I could hear Spence walking around the great room greeting the cats. “Nice tummy, Mr. Ande . . . Looking good, Mr. Gilbert . . . Mr. Rills, my buddy!”

While tying my shoelaces, the banter changed to computer keys tapping.

Walking to the great room, I called, “Ready.”

“I’ll only be a moment.”

Waiting on the deck, I did nothing. No worries about large critters or extended restless-leg-challenging passage of time. I stood as still as the pots holding the petunias and pansies.

Inside, Spence clumped into boots and scraped his dresser drawer open to get a T-shirt.

A chipmunk scampered up the deck ramp.

I did nothing.

It flicked its tail and stared at me.

I’d become part of nature.

Spence tramped onto the deck. “Ready.”

The critter dashed away.

One of these times I wait for Spence on the deck, I’ll do nothing, and a chipmunk might scamper across my shoes.

Christmas Ferns