All the Better

On getting outside

Outside, there is much to delight in, even in winter.

Upon rising in the morning, I pad to the dark kitchen, careful to avoid tripping over the cords along the floor that have powered the overhead fans for forty-six years. The sodium lamps outside the cabin cast a green glow through the windows, giving me enough light to make my way. It’s another couple of hours before sunrise, but I don’t expect to see sunlight break through the thick winter clouds anyway.

I set the water to boiling and tap out herbs into my little pot: black cohosh and dong quai for hormonal support, gotu kola for my brain, nettle for the minerals and a touch of licorice root for its adaptogenic support. I pour in the hot water and let the whole thing decoct for about ten minutes before straining in to my ceramic mug. Does it taste good? I think yes, the entire endeavor does: the quiet of the house, the old orange cat rubbing on my ankles, the time it takes to put a drink together. Then there is the sound of the water simmering, the scent as it is decocting, the perfect weight of a warm mug in hand, and the heat as the liquid cuts through the esophagus. The flavor doesn’t matter as much, but still, yes. It does taste good as well.

I return with it to my bedroom, to the small girlhood desk with a Bible awaiting the day’s plowing. Later, I will eat a small breakfast (leftover meat, an egg, a handful of blueberries), exercise (rotating sets with small hand weights), dress, and make the bed. I might get a load of laundry started before my young son wakes, but if not, he will follow me downstairs and “help” me to do so, chattering incessantly.

And then I am off to another day of not accomplishing all that I hope to, need to, want to, do. Somehow, even with all of the cleaning, cobwebs appear. Even with movement and nourishment and good sleep, hormonal fluctuations and other odd symptoms harass me. Sometimes supper time shows up and I’ve forgotten to defrost the meat. All day long (and, I’m convinced, even during my deepest sleep) my mother-mind is in constant reconnaissance scouting for all of the areas and people that need or want my assistance. I am hard pressed to find completion in any of those areas, and while I am tending to one (or to someone), there are easily a dozen other requests patiently (or not) awaiting my attention. But I am slower to attend them all, even as “do not grow weary, do not grow weary….” echoes in my heart (Gal 6:9).

Well, pish, this getting older and slower and all that nonsense. But lately I’ve been collecting little books not so much for the interior but for the titles that sit stacked where I can see them: The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, Permission to Rest, and for good measure when I cannot rest, Keep Moving. The weariness is real, and drags upon my soul.

After clearing breakfast, I do the unthinkable and leave the dishes in the sink where I know they will now rot until early afternoon. I zip up my black jacket to join the kids to “go outside and get some fresh air; it’s good for you". It’s another day of heavy marine layers covering the sky and casting its bluish light, and though it is not (yet) raining, the air is damp and cold. But the natural light penetrating my eyeballs gives my mood an instant palpable lift. I join my children on the swings, noting on every back-swing that the rose bush behind me has gotten out of hand.

There are some days I never get out of the house. I need to remedy this in some way, because I feel more alive after I’ve been outside, and all of the scheduling, herbs, routines, decluttering, supplements, exercise, light therapy, sleep and proper nourishment (etc ad nauseum) isn’t going to make up for a lack of time in natural light. Half a million subjects in a recent study agree with me, and they were outside an average of two and a half hours a day! Ha, I think, maybe that’s why my childhood was so happy. Every afternoon, every weekend, I was outside and didn’t come home until Mom called (and called and called) me in for dinnertime.

I don’t know how to get outside more, I think, while leaning way back on the swing, letting my hair come close to brushing the ground the way I used to when I was ten.

Eventually we all leap from our swings (granted, mine was more of a hop) and we go back into the cabin, leaving our boots scattered upon the floor.

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Later that week, I decide to put myself back in school. This will shock no one who knows me, as I love all things school and learning. This time however, I don’t sign up for another professional or university course. Instead, I go back to the outdoor nature study challenges that I gleaned from when my oldest children were small and eager to play in the woods. Of course, the whole thing has changed from when Barbara put it together, and it has been sold and reorganized into a membership site. But all of the helps are still there, using one of my most favorite books to look at and read, The Handbook of Nature Study.

The next day, I start at the beginning though I most want to leap into all of the good winter curriculum that is being used throughout the community. Step one: read the assignment (check). Step two: spend 15 minutes outside, basically enjoying just being outside.

I have a tinge of trepidation. The kitchen is still in a post-lunch mess. The laundry on the sofa, as usual, needs folding. There is a real opportunity to send everyone ELSE outside so I can have a moment of quiet. In addition, there’s no real “good excuse”; I don’t have a garden that needs weeding or an animal that needs tending.

Sometimes I hate being an adult.

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At least five days later, but who’s counting, I finally get to day two of the “getting started” ebook. I remind myself that this is just another new habit to form, or rather, for the girl I was in yesteryear to bring into remembrance. I set the stopwatch on my phone to have a realistic take on how many minutes I am actually outside and meander through my wooded property. I find old trails. I watch cedar branches bob in the slight wind, and notice a small woodpecker climbing up the trunk. Bulbs are already a couple of inches up from the ground, a testament to this year’s mild winter. I try, really really really try, to not look at the time.

Standing in the middle of the large, abandoned pasture, the one with much of its fencing down, I’m reminded of a moment when I sat on a grassy field as a child, alone, waiting for other boys and girls to come for a soccer game. I recall eating a banana-butter sandwich while watching little birds skittering between brush and sky. Here, I see similar brush and sky and birdies flitting about, and find myself wishing again that even one of these feathered creatures would find me quiet enough to approach and befriend. I rarely think such thoughts anymore. I rarely find myself quiet enough for those kinds of sentiments to even have the opportunity to arise.

And yet here I am, in the middle of my pasture. Watching birds and remembering. Remembering and watching birds.

I don’t want to go inside.

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Last Friday, afternoon tea, a blend of assam with orange peel, pepper, cinnamon chips and cardamom pods. I gently open my Handbook of Nature Study for today’s assignment and thank Harold B. Shinn, of Chicago, in December of 1911 for signing my copy of Anna’s book. I do love this book’s age, with its hard forest green cover and gilded spider’s web in the corner. Anna’s book reads as an older, no-nonsense friend, the kind that will look you in the eye and poke at it at times, with love of course.

Such as: when addressing teachers about their nervous exhaustion, she asks, “Did you ever try a vigorous walk in the open air in the open country every Saturday or every Sunday of your teaching year?” Naturally, all despair of lack of time and energy to do such a thing, because every down moment is committed to the devil’s addictive and impotent drug of Catching Up.

“Yes,” she responds. “Catch up with more cares, more worries, more fatigue, but not with more growth, more strength, more vigor and more courage for work. In my belief, there are two and only two occupations for Saturday afternoon or forenoon for a teacher. One is to be out of doors and the other is to lie in bed, and the first is best.”

Well.

And then there is this: “Love of nature counts much for sanity in later life.”

Anna, much like Mary Poppins incarnate, hands me my coat and tells me to stop whining about the chill.

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I desire to present a report card of sorts, one in which my miscellaneous symptoms have resolved by spending more time outside, and how the sink and sofa have remained clear despite less attention to them. However, this would be most unfair, as neither is true.

What is accurate, however, is that when I am outdoors during the day, my mood lifts measurably and somehow I have more energy for the remainder of that day to, indeed, play that fool’s errand of catching up. I am not a scientist and cannot possibly explain all the reasons why. I also still carry my phone for its stopwatch, ensuring I don’t head back prematurely. I know that this crutch will wear itself out at some point, but for now it is welcome.

One thing I did do was delete my plant and bird apps. Oh, I did love them, to instantly (if not, at times, INaccurately) give name to the flora and feathered friends. But I used to delight in the process of keying out plants, slowly picking way through the taxonomic work of isolating sepals, counting petals, and learning the vocabulary assigned. George O’Keeffe would understand.

It’s still cloudy, cold and damp; maybe someday I’ll get to be a snowbird. But on this random Monday in January, a short exploratory excursion awaits to enlighten the eyes, and I expect my well being to be all the better for it.