Go Outside and Play!

With Spring right around the corner, I'm getting excited to be outdoors a lot more. Extra hours of light and warmer nights means I can get outside more and soak up nature. Clean air, beautiful scenery, and warm sunlight are just a few of the perks to being outside.

Sunlight and nature are like medicine to me, I don't know what I'd do without them. Whenever I'm getting irratable or stressed, I take a hike, go for a trail run, or stroll through the woods. Nothing beats it, especially when there's that quiet that permeates the area, not dead quiet, the peaceful ambiance of natural sounds. Here's a piece of writing I had in the vault I pulled out, I Hope you like it.

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“The ancient precept, “Know thyself,” and the modern precept, “Study nature,” become at last one maxim.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

There’s a depth to nature that one seldom finds indoors.

Some people say our outside world is a reflection of the inside world. When we’re in nature, we can find that peaceful, powerful place within ourselves, that unadulterated depth of soul that’s in each and every one of us.

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I spend 9 hours stuck in an office with square walls, square floors, square desks and screens, square paper and picture frames. Everything is square, linear. There’s lightly textured walls, low carpets, and a few plants here and there so we don’t all go mad. It’s boring and simple, something we can easily ignore. It lacks the depth and complexity I feel we all need in our lives, it lacks challenge.

Being inside all day doesn’t feel healthy. That’s why I walk outside everyday, snow or shine. It’s healing. It makes me marvel at the world, which is something I think is lacking in our culture nowadays. Nothing wows us anymore. We’ve been desensitized. It's a problem when what we see on screens is more interesting than the beauty of nature.

Hiking through the mountains in Montana is soothing. The trees and plants are all unique, incredibly complex in their geometry, strewn about the area. Bird songs serenade the scene while bugs buzz by and the wind rattles pine needles together. Furry rodents scurry along logs and race up trees when Lola gives chase. The forest speaks, but we don’t always listen. And when we do it’s usually the grasping type of listening or observing. We try to identify each little thing, or we ignore the landscape in favor of thoughts.

I used to get tunnel vision on hikes. Watching my steps closely, one foot in front of the other, the world just kind of slipped by. I had to make sure I wouldn’t trip or roll an ankle. Only the most pronounced sounds would get past my thoughts as I was lost replaying memories, thinking about how I messed up, or getting lost in imagination and daydream. A thought would come up and I would latch on and follow it until a new thought came around, enticing me to follow that one, and all the while one foot in front of the other.

But just off the trail Lola had the right idea. On walks she’s always “being present”. Running through the underbrush, smelling the incredibly diverse forest, leaping over logs, pouncing towards squirrels, finding trail treats (bones, dirty old tennis balls, any stick worth a chew.) Out on the trail, she’s in heaven. She loves it, she’d go for hours if she could, and everyday when I got home from work she’s amped. She knows what time it is. It’s her time to live, to truly live and experience the world. The dog is ten years old and she still acts like a puppy when it comes to being outside.

Eventually I caught on to what she was so excited about, I got hooked on hiking, walking, and trail running. It’s helped me find more balance in life. After a long day at work, it’s the perfect fix to settle my mind. It’s healing.

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People need depth, the senses need a good challenge, even to be overwhelmed form time to time. Go try to take in every detail of nature, the intracacies of tree bark, smells or moist earth, touch of wind on your face, and the songs of birds. It’s impossible to focus on everything.

We need to figure out that we can’t fully grasp our environment, our world. We can’t fully grasp life. That that’s not how the we operate naturally. We’ve been trained to think we know exactly what everything is and exactly what is going on around us, and if we don’t we need to figure it out.

Letting go is a better solution in my opinion. Open yourself to what nature has to teach us about how to simply be in the world.

What do you go outside for? Maybe brainstorming new ideas, or working out, or playing, it's all good, so let me know your favorite reasons for being outside in the comments! Have a great night everyone!

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@jakeybrown