Some days ago I had the opportunity—note that I did not say ‘the pleasure’—to go on a 5½ kilometer hike in the bushes, and even now as I write this I still feel the echoes of the hike in my bones. Admittedly it could be morning runs that might be responsible for the echoes I now feel. Anyways, back to my brush with the bushes.
There I was with my brother, my cousin and my pseudo-uncle, trudging through bushes taller than we were, and stalks of guinea corn indistinguishable from the bushes that enveloped us all. It was eerie, quiet and nerve-racking, particularly considering the current security situation in Nigeria. But it was also beautiful and peaceful in the way nature tends to be when it’s in communion with kindred spirits. This was a place where nature broke through the skin of the earth and swayed in the wind in all shades of green and bark.
I saw a few trees I don’t remember seeing since I was seventeen, and other plants I can’t remember ever having seen my entire life. We heard birdsong where in the cities you would hear cars honking and the buzz of a different kind of nature. The closest settlement to us was a little peaceful farmstead with great old trees and a stream that ran behind it, and it seemed like a thousand miles away from where we were, when in fact it was a little shy of two kilometers away.
The stream behind the peaceful little farmstead.
This was a place where nature broke through the skin of the earth and swayed in the wind in all shades of green and bark.
But all that isn’t what captured my attention or commanded my admiration. It was the wild flowers that blossomed in vivid colours under the watchful eyes of the thick bushes, and a particular red insect, Morris, that seemed very keen on letting me know I was invading his personal space.
Morris the opinionated.
Seeing everything the way it was made me think of the critically acclaimed short film, Powers of Ten, by Charles and Ray Eames and how detail is relative to the observer’s distance away from the subject. Only in this case, the thought led me to imagine that all these simple colours we see before us in nature are what come together at a certain distance to give the Earth its characteristic alien inviting blue colour and make the planet look so stunning and full of life from outer space.
Milk thistles.
But existing in the midst of it all, we sometimes forget just how breathtaking our world is ten feet away as it is from thousands of kilometers away. We even forget the responsibility we owe to the planet from ten feet away.
Yellow flowers I've failed to be able to name. 😅
I’ve always loved the world and nature, even though I’ve seen less of it than I’ve wanted to. But whenever I come across the generous beauties of nature—yes, even the very opinionated red insect, Morris—I always realize just how lucky I am to be able to experience this little dot in the universe and call it home, and even if it turns out that we were in the matrix after all, what an amazing world we have around us, where everything stands beautiful and free.
