When Do We Fall in Love with Nature?

When do we fall in love with nature?  Are we born with the capacity, or do we learn it?  Both.  At least that's what I think.  Some of my first childhood memories involve gathering Goldenrod and Queen Anne's Lace into massive bouquets while sitting under the sycamore tree of my parent's first back yard.  Neighbors told me the plants were weeds, and I didn't know what that meant other than that it was a negative thing, and the beautiful flowers were somehow discounted in my mind.  Today I plant them in my garden.  Nowadays Solidago (AKA Goldenrod), a native plant, is prized for its gorgeous golden glow and easy care in late summer gardens.  And Queen Anne's Lace, a wild carrot which actually made its way to the U.S. from England generations ago, has earned its rightful place in American gardens as a naturalized citizen, accenting our landscape with its delicately patterned white blooms.

As I ponder the nature of our bond with our natural surroundings, I realize I've never heard anyone say, "I hate nature."  Think about it.  People say, "I hate bugs," "I hate bees," or "I can't stand smog or pollution (not actually products of nature)."  People love to gripe about rain, sun, wind, heat, cold...the list goes on and on.  But nobody dislikes all of it.  It would be like hating to breathe.

This past weekend I headed north, to the Adirondacks, where my family owns a modest place, an honest-to-goodness summer camp, with original plank doors, plenty of the iconic Adirondack chairs scattered about, and a slew of memories clinging to it like the birch-bark wallpaper decorating my childhood friend's lake house walls, down the road.  And for the first time in many years, a few of those buddies from long ago made their way back to our lake on the same day as I.  They dropped by to catch up, and brought with them memories of our shared love affair with nature.

My mind catapulted to a time, further back in years than I'd like to admit, when skinny kids scrambled up pine-needle-strewn paths to the summit of Buck Mountain, hid in the birch trees during an impromptu game of Cops & Robbers, and sat on a jutting point of rocks in the middle of the night, dipping toes into the lake, and staring up at the stars in the vast night sky.

These days, most of us have kids of our own.  We share with them stories of how we sailed in our little Sunfish boats, jumped off the nearby cliffs, and fed the ducks in the swamp, even as we make new memories with them.  I fondly recall the morning a friend and I struck out across the lake in a rubber raft as I paddle my kids around in our kayak.  I look for bullfrogs out past the beach, remembering my

friend's kid brother searching for them in the exact same spot many years earlier.  And a feeling swells within me: part nostalgia, part contentment, but all love.

Are we born with this love of our natural world?  Yes.  But it's by experiencing nature together that we allow it to flourish and grow.