Different places, different times, but always Nature’s wonderful surprises.

Because of all the travel I done in my life I used to consider myself a restless person; one who feels anxious being in one place for too long. Even when I’m still restless for the most part, moving to and from one country to the next has taught me something; it has taught me to appreciate what you have while you have it. What does that have to do with Nature? This coming and going meant that my surroundings were always changing; they were always different and unique in their own way. There was Buenos Aires, the concrete city with little parks but change of seasons, and then my family’s “in between moves home” in Arelauquen; a place that seemed out a fairy tale- surrounded by the mountain range, miles of forests and vast lakes, touched little by the population there. However, time would pass and in trying to adapt to a new “home” I would eventually take these natural surroundings for granted. This was as a consequence of having lived in each of them a handful of years, till it I would assume nothing new could happen.

But then, when I least expected, just when I think I know the limits of all there is to see around me, Nature would reveal something in each of these places that had me turning around and suddenly, staring in awe at another of its gift.

Like her anecdote about her younger self hiding pennies, resulting in the joy of people had of finding them, the author describes how Nature has a way of making us realize, like the penny-finding individuals, that in our surroundings, “There are lots of things to see, unwrapped gifts and free surprises”
(Dillard 17).

So when I looked again into these old familiar places and let my mind wide open I am able to see these gifts.

Buenos Aires, the grey concrete city has my memories of the massive shrub labyrinth of plants surrounding my old school. Now, when I turn and see it... there is spring, and the shrub labyrinth is covered in red gerberas so bright in color that they look like they caught fire. I turn around. I see behind it a small, overgrown tomato and turnip garden; now covered in vines and weeds. A closer look now. Among the weeds and the vines I see hundreds of different butterflies, all flying or eating out of little white and purple flowers.

Arelauquen, the usual view is the Middle Earth-esque lakes and mountains. But one rainy, foggy day I turn around And I see two enormous rainbows, one beneath the other one with their colors as bright as if I were to be seeing them on a High Definition TV.

Lastly, in Arelauquen Nature also provides the gift of seeing what is always there, but out of sight. It is a clear, cloudless night, in the middle of an open field, where I feel the wet, short grass beneath my feet. I look around to see not one person or house miles from me. I look up expecting to see a few, bright familiar stars....

And Nature does once again. Every inch of the midnight blue sky is covered in bright and dim stars... like angels had splattered white speck all over the sky in an attempt to turn it white.... like someone had scattered millions of diamonds over the sky, making my eyes hurt from their beauty and from trying to find which one among the thousands is the brightest...

So my relationship with Nature can be best described as one where I always turning around trying to find what new old thing it has in store for me.