Nature writing

Recently I’ve noticed so much discussion around how important it is for us to spend time in nature and how good it is for our mental health. I agree with this, but I think it can be hard to understand what that means and what we’re supposed to do with that when for the most part we can’t go outside.

I’ve been reflecting on this a lot, and thinking about how helpful it can be to tune in to everyday nature, and by that I mean the nature that’s around us all the time, even if we’re in our homes.

So often we think of “being in nature” as traveling to a national park or going on a long hike, when actually we’re constantly surrounded by the beauty of nature—when I’m in my house there’s air, there’s light, there are smells, there’s small changes and movements throughout the day. For me, tuning into these micro environmental experiences has been really interesting and has helped me stay hopeful. Here’s a short piece that is an ode to micro, everyday nature.

In the early mornings there is a faint wind that blows about my house. It is a pale and purple air that sings lightly through the small cracks I leave in the windows with the hope that the morning breeze will creep in in at sunrise and spice me awake. It is an air that tells me that I am close to the sea, it brings faint echos of sea-brine and light scents it picked up on its journey from the ocean to my door—jasmine that has bloomed after light April rains, dry flour from my kitchen, a pollen that smells like sweet heather. It has done its job, today; it is dark still and I am cozily awake.

I look around my bedroom. The room around me is a navy inky darkness, as if I am swaddled deep in the sea. The sun is still a pale memory from yesterday, it has only just begun to creep dimly along the bottom of ridges, the house tops and the tree furrows, getting ready to pounce. I know that in an hour or two the sun will gilt against the windows of my bedroom and the windows of my street, and blaze them up like subtle rows of pink-gold teeth. But for now it is still dark, and the air is inky purple, and my breath is sweet and slow.

In frayed socks I pad across my bedroom, into my living room to sit beside the windows, and I begin to take in the day.

I live in San Francisco, in the center of the city. I live with a man, in the top of a tall thin building three streets from a park and two streets from the tram line. I don’t have any pets; I have some plants but I would not call them pets as I don’t look after them very well, and anyway I don’t think they’d love me back even if I did. My house is old, the rooms are tall, the walls curve up to meet the ceilings in a big grand arc that holds light in strange pockets and makes everything feel soft. My house is where I wake up every morning, and for reasons known to me and to you I have been waking up here more slowly lately and spending more time at home contemplating small idiosyncrasies of the house, its light, its daily movements.

By the windows of my house there is a tall tree. I don’t know her name, I call her Ingrid. Her leaves fill the frames of two rooms. Lately bright spurts of orange have sprouted from the tips of her branches; they are clusters of thick leaves that look hard and waxy. It rained a little overnight, I think, because her hard leaves are still speckled with small pearls of dew. The tree waves gaily in the purple breeze—Hello Ingrid, I say, and I walk to the kitchen to boil water for tea.

My house is a bedroom and a living room, both facing north towards the street, towards Ingrid. The floors are wood varnished orange-brown, and the varnish is worn away in the corners and the wood peeks through light yellow like a toasted biscuit. Behind the living room is the kitchen, big and old and facing south, and above the old white kitchen sink there is a tall window that looks out onto rows of morning houses climbing up a gentle hill that leads towards the ocean. I look at the houses while I fill my tea kettle at the sink. It is early, they are dark, and the rooftops are shining-wet from the rain. Probably someone is filling up their tea kettle looking back towards me, wondering if my house is awake.

I put the kettle on my old white stove and there is a burst of activity—a click, click, click of the gas lighter and a whoosh of bright flame. The first small frenzy of the day.

Making tea in the still cool darkness, my feet warm and cozy in my thick frayed socks, becomes a small ritual. The frantic sparking of the gas on the front hob of my old oven and the eventual sharp whistle of the overeager kettle feel blasphemous in the damp stillness of the morning, and I want to stifle their sounds, excited, like I have a hot secret. While the water boils I pinch out small clumps of dark dried tea leaves that smell of tobacco ash and bergamot. The tea is called tiny red pants, the rolled leaves crackle between my fingers. The kettle shrieks, my rooster, the day is here.

My tea warms my hands as I move to sit by the north window. It is morning now, really, fully; an ambush of colors is lifting up in the eastern distance and carves a sharp outline around the buildings between my window and my horizon. It is pink, then yellow, then a small snip of bottle green before cascading up into the full blue sky that is still a little dark. Small birds start to sing. I want to describe them, but I’m sure you know what birds sound like in the early morning, and there is something in that familiarity that reassures me—this is a little morning song that is sung around us nearly every day when the sun rises, and sometimes we hear it, and some days we don’t. Today I am listening, raptly, and I hear two birds singing back to each other, like a choir round. One is in front of me, I think, maybe sitting in the tree by my house, and the other is behind me. They call back and forth to each other, merrily, sometimes mirroring each other’s long pauses, sometimes singing back to each other quickly. The bird outside my window, the one sitting in the tree, has a high, upward song. The song is short, only two notes. It is clear and sharp like ringing crystal. She sounds elated, full of vigor. When she sings I feel a faint prickle on my skin, my heart rises a little, there is a warmth in my throat. The bird at the back of my house has a low song that sounds a little melancholy—it is three long, downward notes that are rich, oily, viscous. When she sings I feel a smooth cooling it my chest, my arms and legs relax a little.

I sit like this for I don’t know how long. The sky is now a fruitful blue everywhere, and the air is a salty mist; less clear, less bright, a little headier. Cars and people make small sounds on the street below me. Ingrid, the tree, with her long spindling branches, moves less perceptibly as the breeze calms. The sun is rising above me and shining small golden patches onto Ingrid’s smooth bark. The bark is peeling at the joints, where branches meet trunk, and it peels back in small curls like thin, dried paper. Ingrid’s bark is an ashy red, with a hint of brown, and her leaves are a rich, olive green, long and thin with a pointed tip. In the sunlight the leaf stems glow creamy yellow like honey-milk.

I have finished my tea, and the cup is cold in my hands. It is a light clay mug with a long swooped handle, tawny brown with umber flecks, and it has a black etching of a squat building and a thick-trunked tree in a small town where my Dad lived when he was a little boy. Under the etching it says Claygate, the name of the town. This mug was my Dad’s when he was young.

I move to the kitchen, now full of yellow sunlight, and empty the last drips of tea into the sink.

I have been learning to bake bread this week, a little haphazardly, and my kitchen smells lightly of yeast. I pull together thick masses of flour and warmed water and salt into a bowl on a scale, and begin to knead them together, not deftly, building a thick, spongey dough that sticks to my fingers. It smells warm and sweet, a little like damp earth, and it reacts to the pressures of my hands like a living thing. I lift it slowly onto my kitchen table and cup it in my hands, turning and pulling it with an unpracticed gentleness, trying to coerce it to a ball. It doesn’t work, but no matter, I am still learning, and lift it softly back into the ball and cover it with a blue towel.

This is the bulk of my activity today. Like the slow sun, I am moving softly against the earth for now. I rise, I drink tea, I listen, I feel the morning air on my skin. I bake bread, maybe, sometimes, for a little something to do with my hands and a small way to share. I read books or do small stretches. I eat slow meals beside the windows. Sometimes light rain comes and the gentle sounds of people on the street slow down, and the birds are quiet and the air becomes furtive and smells like wet ground. Sometimes the sun shines warm all day, and I hear people with bright dogs walking peacefully down the street. The day passes, I am home, tired and restless, making small meaning from small actions.

The hours pass, the sun falls behind the house, the sounds from the street grow quiet. The dough for my bread has puffed up and is dotted with great arching bubbles, round pockets of airy skin stretched thin and translucent. The air is cool again, I can smell salt from the ocean lilting in through the windows. My lamps are on and there are round puddles of orange light pooled about the house. Kyle, the man I live with, is reading quietly on the sofa. I am back by the window, sitting with Ingrid. There are no stars in the sky, it is a dark icy blue. Heavy wisps of slate-grey clouds creep across through the distance. Ingrid is lit up by the street lamps, and cast against the darkness behind her. Everything feels cold and peaceful. The night is creeping back in through the openings in the windows, tapping us softly, ushering us towards sleep.