Trees and fields of green blur past me as I kick my legs out and soar down the hill, smiling, laughing, and embracing a feeling I have not experienced for quite some time. I am biking eleven miles across Cades Cove in the Great Smoky National Park, seeing the firsthand beauty of an entirely new area. Yet, the view is not the most mesmerizing part; instead, it is the reality that this is the second time I have ever ridden a bicycle in my life. That’s right: at nineteen, I am just now learning to do what is commonly one of the most fundamental activities for a child. This does not, however, extend to only riding a bicycle. Since joining the Highlands Biological Station two weeks ago, I have been able to rekindle my childlike curiosity and joy, something I once thought would never come back.
Growing up, I was an incredibly anxious child. It took me several minutes longer to go down the seemingly never-ending slide or climb up those tall trees with branches that looked as frail as straw. I rarely played in the mud or the streams for fear of a venomous snake or spider popping out, and every run amongst the rocks was mainly spent wondering which ones would hurt the most if I fell. The older I became, the more insecure I was in my abilities and the more anxieties I held of the world. When my mother tried to teach me to ride a bike, I fell once and was so distraught that I refused to try again–until now.
These last two weeks, I have been allowed to finally explore the wonders I denied myself so long ago. I’ve run through the trees and jumped over their roots. I’ve swam through unfamiliar rivers and made art from rocks and mud. I’ve closely inspected slimy salamanders, touched discarded snake skin, and listened for the flutter of bat wings in the middle of the night. While my anxieties are still with me at every step, I am finally learning that they are not always right.
Most of us have experienced a block from the childlike way of viewing nature as we have gotten older. Whether this is because age brings new anxieties, as it did for me, or because life got in the way and appeared so distant from the natural world that you couldn’t help but become disconnected somehow. Such a distance from nature breeds distance from our younger selves. After all, was nature not our playground, over which we ran and biked and swam to our heart’s content? And was it not storybook animals we learned our morals from? The childlike wonder we once had for nature, from the butterflies fluttering through the air to the rustling of the wind through the leaves, never left us. We filed this knowledge elsewhere.
As society grows ever distant from the natural world, blocking out the inhabitants of forests from our communities and locking ourselves indoors, we lose our intuitive connection to Mother Earth a little more. Yet, this connection will never break. Nature will always be part of us, just as we are always a part of it. We must allow ourselves to remember what it was to be a child, experiencing the world for the first time. Moreover, we must help our inner child not be afraid: we have explored this world, we have seen countless rocks like that one that has not killed us before. Once we conquer our enemies, whether anxiety or a supposed distance from the environment, we can fully allow ourselves to heal and get back in touch with our inner child. Just as you never forget how to ride a bike, you can never forget how to be one with nature.
-EP
