My simple encounter with nature

Image Source

As I stood there looking at the evening sky, the soft wind caressed my hair. I could smell the wetness of the soil and the freshness of the greenery around me. I was feeling light and fresh. Standing like that I wanted to dissipate into the cool breeze like sawdust and travel through all the plains, flying between the trees, touching and playing with the soil, hitting the mountains and splashing the mighty sea. I felt aroused by just being present there at that time.

The lady of the house came around explaining how much she enjoyed staying in such a quaint place away from the busy city. Taking her seat in a chair she explained to me about her small vegetable garden in front of her house. I could sense the child in her while she was talking. She said “I plant one seed of a bean and that one seed sprouts into a plant which bears about 20 beans and each bean has at least 10 seeds inside it. Look at how nature is giving back to us”. Wow! It was such a powerful statement.  I could not help but wonder at the power of nature. But how much do we appreciate the nature that gives us so much? 

She said that every evening she sits in front of her little garden and watches the tiny garden lizard come to the garden and hide in the plants. They sumptuously feed on the moths that come to eat the plants. And thus this small garden sustains an ecosystem. It felt wonderful listening to her speak with the enthusiasm of a kid. Being a gated community away from the city, there is vast empty land around her house. She believes in natural farming and hence she simply throws various kinds of seeds all together onto the empty land around her house. She waters it daily. All these seeds of various plants sprout and grow together. For her, it is more about the happiness and satisfaction than the outcome of it. In this method she has grown beans, ladies finger, green chillies, Green leaves, tomato and may other vegetables all together like a vegetable forest. Initially, the residents of the colony were against her using up the free land. But she convinced them that anyone could bulldoze her garden and she would not feel for it as she looked at enjoying the current moment than worrying about the future. 

I stood there listening to her words and it kindled a sense of happiness within me. All my tiredness of the travel and the long day’s work vanished. I wanted to leave my life in the city and move into that small village. I felt like I could stay there forever and would never want to return to the city life. Nature truly is a magic. We get so much engrossed in our race to earn a living in the city that we have lost touch with nature. Like she said, we are stuck in an imaginary world filled with man-made comforts. We don’t know the real comfort. Comfort is not living in a busy crowded fast paced city and spending a rare weekend in a village paying for the experience. Real comfort is living in a village and living life with nature forever. I wish to live such a life soon. I look forward to those days.