The quiet joy of nature writing

To write of the natural world is to look, listen, touch, smell, taste...... without hurry

There is a still, quiet pleasure when we write about nature. The scattering of daisies on summer lawns, morning birdsong, reflections in water. In the act of writing, a page becomes a place where we can put the ordinary, the everyday. Where a raindrop, a blade of grass, a crow's ragged call can sit.

To write of the natural world is to look and listen without hurry. The curve of the river, the moss gathering on a stone wall, the bee nosing into late-summer lavender. Each observation is a mark we notice in the greater whole of nature.

Words are never enough. They cannot describe the entire breadth of a cloud-filled sky or the trembling silence of falling snow. Yet this is not failure. It is an invitation.

In reaching for words, we write not to capture but to commune. The act of describing what we see is a way of being present.

Strands of waterless clouds hang over fields of summer-droughted grassland

Writing about nature often happens in quiet solitude. But shared, it reaches out beyond the page. Our words of noticing invite not only ourselves but our readers to see more closely, breathe more deeply and find companionship in that shared wonder.

A shared line written in the quiet of morning might prompt another to recall the taste of salt air, the fragrance of wild garlic in April, or the warmth of summer earth under bare feet. Our solitary observation can become shared remembering and shared noticing.

To write about nature is to state that these things matter: the fox stepping softly into dusk, the field at rest in winter, the mewing kitten-like cry of a buzzard circling.

The quiet joy of writing about nature is to remember that we are not separate but we are part of a living system - the natural world around us.