Webster’s definition for the word “garden” just about covers everything: a plot of ground, usually near a house, where flowers, vegetables, or herbs are cultivated. Or, “a piece of ground or other space commonly with ornamental plants, trees, etc., used as a park or other recreational area, e.g., as an arboretum.” Or, “any beautiful, pleasing, restful piece of land.”

Most of us are aware of the notion that a pebble dropped into the ocean will, via a cascade of interconnected mechanisms, eventually affect the entire ocean. Sounds far-fetched, but the idea holds more truth than most people wish to accept.

How long has it been since you’ve experienced a moment of genuine healthful silence, a time during which you were profoundly, silently, reverently alone with yourself, or with Nature, or with another (your soulmate, perhaps), or with your God? Such rich moments are possible when you are watching, watching beyond motive, beyond any demand—just watching. When you see the beauty of a lone tree in the field, a single star in the void, when you watch your soulmate, or your internal self—or speak to your god—silence is something that comes naturally.

I treasure the first time I was motivated to look past the surface of a wild scene, to ponder the meanings, the fates, of the natural structures or wild organisms I was watching. It was the first time that I tried to consider the meanings, the ramifications of the interactions between the organisms in my view. Perhaps you have known the same joy.

Earlier this year, I attended the celebration-of-life service for an old friend. Hazel had died at age 103, but I first met her in 1943 when she was a young married woman and I was a 12-year-old new in town. Her passing meant the shuttering of yet another window through which I once could see “way back when.” The last living person who knew me during my childhood.  

There once was a time when the order of my day included playing with my buddies, fighting with my sister (13 months younger), wishing mightily that this fourth year of grade school were over, doing a couple of assigned farm chores, and putting off homework as long as possible. That arithmetic workbook was the sinkhole of my existence.

A recent late September hike along Meadowlark trails quickly confirmed the obvious: our campus biology is sliding full bore into fall—a wonderful time to be out, moving slowly, or sitting quietly, and watching the changes going on all around. Leaves are dying, preparing to drop, and changing colors as they do. Soil and water microbes and fungi soon will begin the large scale digestion of those leaves into their constituent minerals and chemical compounds.

If you grew up in a family that camped or liked to sit around a patio firepit, an open fire was perhaps one of the first memorable outdoor mysteries you encountered. What young mind wouldn’t be mesmerized by that flush of heat on the face, or those flaming, leaping tongues that disappear quickly into smoke and air. Ancient humans probably felt the same reactions.