31-Day Kindness Challenge: Day 5

Today’s act(s) of kindness: Water your house plants with conscious care. Spend time with a pet and pour all your attention into the interaction. Pick up garbage in a naturalized area near your house.

Gifts of Nature this Holiday Season

In part one of the book, Vitamin ‘N’: The Essential Guide to a Nature-Rich Life by Richard Louv, suggestions are given on how to give gifts of nature. Here are three of my favourites:

1. Books that inspire nature
2. Family Park Pass
3. Radical Amazement 🙂

Books, books, books

When I was homeschooling my daughter, I used the Handbook of Nature Study to create our nature study program (along with some connections to literature and poetry…lots of Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry). It is a huge book, packed with incredible content, but still really heavy so we didn’t bring it along with us on hikes. My daughter was also quite young at the time so on the trail we used Fun with Nature Take-Along Guide along with Ontario guides to birds, trees and flowers.

Fiction is also an effective way to whisper to and nurture your heart’s longing to feel more connected to the natural world. Here is a short list of books that come to mind. Note that the YA fiction is so incredible it shouldn’t be listed separately (really) but I will anyway. I have linked to Amazon.ca so you can check out these titles but consider supporting an independent bookshop. Having the option of walking into a bookstore sometimes seems to me like an underrated luxury and privilege.

Young Adult Fiction

• Wishtree by Katherine Applegate
• The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill
• Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell

Adult Fiction

• The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
• Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver
• Circe by Madeline Miller

Family Park Passes

Christmas 2020, before we knew what was around the corner with the pandemic, my parents gave us a Grand River Parks Membership. During the first lockdown of course we couldn’t use it but we have used it again and again ever since. The Grand River Parks membership card allows entry to 10 parks and the Luther Marsh Wildlife Management Area, every day of the operating season, for up to 6 people in one vehicle (or walking in). If you live outside this area, have a look at what is available locally for you.

Radical Amazement

As quoted in the Vitamin ‘N’: The Essential Guide to a Nature-Rich Life,

“The great teacher Abraham Joshua Heschel once wrote that our goal should be to live life in radical amazement…[and] take nothing for granted: ‘Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.’ Along with sharing time, radical amazement is the best present you can offer, best delivered by example. And you don’t even have to wrap it.”