ature onnections By Minnie Kansman
Nature's Medicine
Credit: Annca_Pixaby.com
As I write this, much of the world is reeling with change and in lockdown due to the Covid19 virus. This virus is a part of Mother Earth, just as we are. It is here to teach us something. I am not positive what that lesson is, though I have some theories. One is our connected relationships with each other. This sickness is not discriminatory; it afflicts old and young, rich and poor, and is found in every location that people are. I believe it is our wakeup call to see what we are made of. How will we react under pressure? Will we flourish or fail? In order to flourish, I also believe Mother Nature holds many paths to assist and support us. She wants to “ Give us her Medicine,” as only she can. The first step to receiving this medicine is to strengthen your relationship with her. Our busyness in the world with jobs, money, competition, politics, and greed have allowed us to lose focus on that relationship. We
lost having enough time to take a Nature walk, follow the moon cycles, or even just gaze out a window. We stopped growing our own food and flowers, relying on some other business to do that for us. We stopped getting dirty, placing our hands in the earth, and smelling her fragrance. We started labeling soil as smelly and muddy and gross.
I know many are in city communities that do not have rich forests available to you. But you may have a city park with some large trees, and perhaps a small stream or river running through it. I live in the city of Loveland, Colorado, and there are not abundant forests like those found in the farmlands of Michigan, where I moved from.
We rarely walked on bare ground. Choosing the cleaner, flatter, easier route of the paved sidewalk and covered airway bridge. We closed our windows, turned on the air conditioning, and lost our screen doors.
This means I have to go searching for “wild places.” I have found such wildness in a city park, called Fairgrounds Park, in my community. It is surrounded by soccer fields, planted green spaces of picnic areas and playgrounds, and busy roads, but the Big Thompson River runs through it. With the main sidewalk above the riverbank, most walk on that and never venture down to the wildness at the water’s edge. But someone or something has, as there always seems to be a narrow dirt path following the rivers or lakes I have explored. Get yourself down that bank and
This mandatory pause now, in our lives everyday structure, allows us the time and space to make this connection a priority again. Now is the time to go sit on the ground and hang out with a tree. Her medicine is there for the taking, offered to us every day when we allow ourselves to receive it.
Star Nations Magazine • April 2020 • 41
