I like bugs, taking close up pictures of them, and gently relocating them outside when they show up in my apartment. The last few years, my family has taken up beekeeping in Montgomery County, MD.

Garden are sanctuaries for me. I grew up in a home with a garden that overflowed with plants, fruits, vegetables, flowers, and trees. It looked a bit out of place next to the manicured lawns of our suburban neighbors in Kansas but it was so abundant and beautiful. The jungle, as we called it, was a refuge. I could always find my father working off the stress of his job in the garden, tending to and planting something new. My sister and I ran around the garden together, searching for the rabbits eating our plants, climbing trees, and helping dig holes, move rocks, and plant flowers. This landscape was fundamental to understanding my relationship with nature. I understood that the outdoors were not meant to be curated like the insides of our houses. They were meant to flourish and be wild. The garden supported us as much as we supported it and this symbiotic relationship is beautiful.

I am often enthralled by the living and non human world — being in proximity to and closely relating to nature and plants is very grounding for me. I think I’m simultaneously very naive and intrigued by the wider living world — I often feel like I lack specific knowledge but have a lot of curiosity about and respect and deference for nature, and every time I find myself in a garden or other green space or greater landscape I want to know more about the organisms I’m surrounded by.

I was born in South Africa, lived for two years in Juneau, Alaska, and grew up on the Big Island starting at age 8. My life, outlook, spirituality, and value system have been profoundly shaped by the living worlds I've grown up in, and my earliest memories unsurprisingly are of sensuous exchanges with these natural environments. There are so many landscapes and stories I can remember, but one that's returned to me often in the past few months is of the fields and cow pastures behind my father's house in Waimea on the Big Island. What used to be empty lots are now filled with houses and yards and driveways, blocking easy access to the streams and ponds and hills beyond, but as a child I could walk across the cul-de-sac, cross a field of unkempt grass, and enter entire worlds of my imagining set against a backdrop of thrumming, fecund verdancy (not technically a word, but should be). I spent hours running, crawling, climbing, rolling, sitting, listening, tasting, smelling, touching with my sister and friends, often with our two dogs, or just alone. It was a time I cherish, and a habit of mind and orientation to the world that I strive to maintain even in my much more urban life here in DC.

I grew up surrounded by hills

My favorite place as a kid was in Dragalevci, a then-little rural town outside of Sofia, Bulgaria (now a rich suburb!) where my grandparents had a cottage with a lot of land around it. The best part of it was a cherry tree which was dually good for climbing and snacking.

There’s a pond next to my family’s house in Virginia but it’s full of goose poop and snapping turtles, so you can’t swim in it. When I was little, I made up a game called “muck fishing”, because my family didn’t have fishing gear, but people would come and fish in the pond, so I knew what it looked like. Muck fishing was just finding a long stick and then digging around in the mucky water and inspecting what I found. Still trying to get back to that state of curiosity and gentle play with nature :)

I spend most of my time indoors but usually when I'm outside I like to stop and take photos of plants and mushrooms that catch my eye and sometimes I pet them

being connected and grounded in the expansiveness and resilience of the wider living world is one of the most powerful reminders of my humanity. i grew up playing with my sister in our invasiveness australian pine forest behind our house in florida. once the forest was determined to be invasive, a private company used roundup to kill the forest and build an exclusive golf course in its place. this small story represents the fight to preserve connection with landscape and against privitization and ecological destruction that further separates humans from the wilder living world.

my childhood involved camping and hiking in the outdoors. I remember the very first time I saw glacier national park, I cried so hard because I was so overwhelmed by the calmness it brought me, the complex ecosystem that fostered numerous living beings, and the novelty of such beauty.

I call on the wider living world when the hustle and bustle of life engulfs me and I need to breathe again. I encounter gentleness, order, beauty and generosity when I retreat to reconnect with myself in this way. And I always find it amazing how beauty restores me with a sense of calm and peace. I also love the ocean.

I enjoy the living world as a place that inspires awe and a sense of inner peace to counter the constant whir of the technology-driven world. I am fascinated by how living organisms function, and thinking about the many intricate processes taking place around me constantly always makes me pause to step outside of my head and my comparatively minor worries.

Cultivating awe and having more reverence for the natural world is a central part of my spiritual practice. I think this course could be really supportive of hard wiring that approach into my being.

I grew up for part of my childhood on a few acres of mixed land out in the country (field, shrub, and forest) and have fond memories of it. A few key memories: picking blueberries and wild blackberries from our bushes in the summer to make into pies, my brothers and I throwing gumballs from the sweetgum trees at each other in the fall, and the huge flocks of birds that would rest in the trees around our house as they migrated up and down each spring and fall. Since moving away from there I feel like I have lost some of that connection, and feel like living around so much nature is a luxury that we can't all have, but want to continue to cultivate that awe wherever I am.

i like leaf

I grew up in a rural part of western Kentucky, right on the edge of a "hollow" where my brother and I spent nearly all of my free time as a child. Steep rock cliffs to rock climb, a stream with minnows in the summer and ice skating in the winter, blackberries to pick, and a forest to explore. To this day, I feel a deep connection to and draw peace from this beautiful natural place that's the background to all of my happiest childhood memories.

I am besties with the oak tree outside my window, who I meditate with often. I am good friends with the neighborhood foliage and like to show my friends which weeds are edible as we walk down the street. In the school garden I work at, I usually let these weeds run wild as long as they’re not interrupting my tomatoes. The place I find the most comfort is in the Rock Creek Park forest. I learned how to be alone there, except I feel surrounded by friends - the fungi telling me stories of growth and the wineberries poking out to say hello. Nothing makes me happier than finding a mulberry tree, which reminds me of childhood: staining my fingers with my Mom, our suburban secret, too delicate for grocery stores.

Here's a quote that describes my relationship to the wider living world:

"I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which god speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in."

–George Washington Carver

appreciation and wonder. seeing how the sky can be so many different colors within one day or how something as simple as a squirrel dropping an acorn somewhere random and a forest can grow make me swell with amazement.

My childhood is defined by my family's cabin along the shore of Lake Superior. For two weeks every year, we'd escape the summer heat to search for agates, pick blueberries and raspberries (and gooseberries, serviceberries, and thimbleberries as I grew more adventurous), wade through beaver and frog filled wetlands, paddle pristine lakes, and scan the reeds and bushes in the mostly vain hope of spotting a moose, bear, or wolf. Now every year my body and my mind crave to return and turn off my electronics to basking in the morning cries of the gulls, the chirping of warblers, and the crash of waves against the shore. There is no other place or activity I've found that can so clearly detach me from the quotidian concerns of my life in DC or my general unease about the direction of the world, there I feel at "home" more than in my actual apartment (or even my family's home).

I feel detached from "nature" but have always been trying to get closer. I've been vegan and environmentally oriented out of concern for other living beings for all of my adult life, with some vague idea that I'd learn more about plants eventually. I'm aiming to gain knowledge about and connection to the wider living world over the coming years, and am so excited to take part in this series!

Joyful, curious, attentive

I am drawn to light and shadows, to small details, and anything that allows me to pause. I enjoy being outside so much more than being inside, especially in the summer. Endless summer, please! I connect with water - being in the water, on the water or just near water makes me feel more grounded. I was even born on international water day! I have a daily meditation practice that shifts with what I need each day. I keep feeling patterns of wanting less yet needing more space to be free.

I was always the child that appreciated the ordinary- the way a fresh mango felt in my mouth, Sunday morning old classical Hindustani songs that my parents listened to, the gift of rain after scorching heat. Wonder has been my most favorite thing about my myself. And it’s continued into adulthood. It’s hard for me to mope in my loneliness because I step out of my house and the squirrels come out to play for me, the trees remain the same, and there’s the suspense of a sunflower in someone’s backyard. It gives me so many opportunities for synchronicity and an everending connection to the universe. My experiences with talking shrooms have only exacerbated my appreciation and surrender to everything around me

I'm a painter who uses sketchbook journaling to spend time more deeply with both the wider landscape and look more closely at individual plant specimens. It helps me reverse my default way of looking, which is a quick (scrolling) glance, into something more sustained and curious.

i try to be constantly mindful of the fact that we are all made of carbon, living on a big living call of carbon. All creatures and vegetation are these little pieces of carbon hanging onto the earth. We all want the same things and exist for the same reasons. Like most humans, I am most at peace when I’m surrounded by green vegetation and creatures that love biodiversity as much as I do. A story of a landscape from my childhood - I was born in Florida and my earliest memories are of the “jungle” in my back yard (really about a half of an undeveloped neighborhood block). I thought I could really get lost in there and who knows what’s living in there. My dad would take me on walks through it sometimes. It felt like we were discovering land no human had ever before set foot on. It was so exciting to me. I still feel that way sometimes when I’m tromping through dense wildlife. It’s my favorite feeling.

I’ve always looked to the living world as a grounding experience. It’s a way to get me out of my own head, to see myself as a pet of something larger, and just see good in the world. I’ve interpreted that differently and different points in my life, but I always feel most content when I have a connection to the living world.

When i was a child I spent time in nature reflexively, without really appreciating it. We'd do hikes, but we did them to *do* the hike, not be present. Now I'm working on slowing down to *be* hiking :)