As I think back, my relationship with nature has been mixed over the sum total of my 65 years here on earth. Most of that can be attributed to being raised in towns and cities.

My guess is that the bigger the city you live in, the less time you will spend outside enjoying nature, mostly because there are less natural areas to enjoy…

The early years of my life were spent in small towns in Iowa and Kansas. The fact I was raised by a botanist, a naturalist and budding environmentalist certainly influenced my early education and my tendency to be drawn to nature. My Dad was outside every chance he got, collecting plants, bird watching and teaching us about the wonders of nature constantly, much like being raised by Sir David Attenbourough. But this early training only blossomed inside of me later in life, when I spent enough time to stop and consider what I am naturally drawn to and what I now love to do.

As we all know, when you are younger you need to go where the jobs are and that is often cities. In my case it was universities as I was an academic librarian for 25 years.

But I always found ways to retreat to nature, like the many week-long river trips I took while working at my first job at the University of Utah. On a serious river trip there is no way to go home. You will be on the river until the trip is over! And no, there are no motels along the way. You must wash in the river…

I also developed a budding interest in plants and gardening along the way, as I moved from place to place to change jobs or learn Chinese. The worst year of my life was spent in Taipei, Taiwan where there was no natural beauty, except on our bus trips down to Kenting at the southern tip of the island. I had never lived in such a horribly polluted place in my life! There were days when I couldn’t even see across the street the air pollution was so bad.

After Taipei I ended up in Boulder Colorado, a virtual garden spot compared to Taipei, but I soon realized the air pollution was plenty bad there too! Then I moved to Fort Collins which I thought would be better, as I was suffering from terrible bouts of bronchitis every winter. Fort Collins turned out to be no better.

I know, most of you might think that places like Boulder and Fort Collins are quite clean compared to other cities, but no. The traffic is terrible there and the air there can be just as dirty as Denver. My test is if you can see and taste the air, you are in trouble!

Thank goodness and my husband Mike’s better instincts, we moved to a beautiful natural part of Colorado in the summer of 2014.

Since moving here I have re-gained my LOVE of the natural rhythms of the earth. Living in silence surrounded by nature’s glory is the only way to go for me now. I did not discover until we moved here that I now have difficulty breathing at this elevation but so what!

I choose to live where the natural beauty I am surrounded by everyday far surpasses the ugliness of this great pandemic. I can hardly wait to welcome a new season of beauty into my sky garden! For me, now, living close to nature is the only way!

BEAUTY IS THE GARDEN WHERE HOPE GROWS!