What my city girl with the rural heart taught me...

With this recent semi-lockdown, I realised yet again how connected to nature we actually are. I can see why mental health issues are an increasing problem if people are locked up in an urban environment for too long. We as humans are not meant to be locked up in a house. Especially kids should be raised connected to nature as much as possible.

With this recent lockdown, my eldest became a bit grumpy and sad. Not much, just a tad.

She just lost her sparkle.

But I could notice it. I made sure she stayed connected to friends and had plenty of interesting activities to keep her occupied. Lucky for us, she loves reading too. Just before things got worse, the schools opened up again and she could spread her wings a little bit more. But still I could see that she is not 100% her usually-happy self.

With the Western Australian long weekend looming and regional travel restrictions lifted, we quickly connected with friends on a farm, asking if we can visit.  

And her eyes started twinkling…

She literally started counting the hours. Wet weather became apparent. But that did not deter her. She still counted the hours. She hummed while packing. She couldn’t sleep the night before. We drove to the farm while it was bucketing down, yet we couldn’t go fast enough for her.

Within half an hour of arriving on the farm, she was waist deep in the creek. No, not with bathers, but with her warm tracksuit pants and gumboots (so much for rushing out to go buy gumboots for the weekend. I should’ve known better).

She was freezing cold, but her face was radiant with pure joy!

Well, that was from what I could see through the stripes of mud. She reminded me of those video clips on YouTube of the golden retrievers flying out of the car into the dam or heap of autumn leaves or someone’s lap. If she had a tail, I’m sure it would’ve gone round and round at a hundred miles an hour.

That night, as she hugged me ‘good night’ she leaned in for her hug, for the first time in weeks.

And then I knew her heart was on the mend. She just needed a green band aid to make it all better. That is the beauty of children, I think. They remind us that our spirits long to connect with nature in an intrinsic way. No wonder green is a calming colour.

In nature we can see the days rolling into nights and follow the biorhythms of life, then connecting to the seasons as nature goes into a resting phase after a productive phase. An ebb and flow. But in the concrete jungle where our lives are dictated by the clock and a diary crammed full of appointments and deadlines, we can easily miss this natural flow of life. We can easily think we should always be in a ‘very productive’ phase, running and producing all the time. And too late we realise we are running on a hamster wheel, ending up at the exact point where we started.

Often we go camping, because we can see that the girls need it. But then, once there, I realise that we as adults also need the green band aid of nature to stop, catch our breath, and rest before we start again.