Seeking out and engaging with nature in the urban environment helps me reset my perspective on a daily basis and reminds me that there’s beauty worth exploring and protecting right here.
NATURE SEEKERS’ FAVORITE DESTINATIONS are usually awe-inspiring, pristine, and remote. These are the places we yearn to explore and strive to protect. The city, on the other hand, is often seen as a place to escape from, the place you leave behind when you want to “get away from it all.” But nature exists here, too. We are nature—my family, my neighbors, and the millions of other people of color who, like me, call this place home. This—my city, my street, my weed-covered front stoop—is nature, too. Seeking out and engaging with nature in the urban environment helps me reset my perspective on a daily basis and reminds me that there’s beauty worth exploring and protecting right here.
Finding nature in the city isn’t as hard as you might think. It’s not always grand. Sometimes it’s small, gritty, spiky, unkempt. Sometimes it’s the stubborn bits of clover that push up through cracks in the sidewalk or the patches of prairie that take advantage of every sunny empty lot. Sometimes it’s a gorgeous forest preserve a mile from home or the overgrown tomato plants in the community garden down the street. When I started looking for nature in the city, I found it everywhere. And I found it all beautiful.
I’ve been a gardener my whole life. My mother filled our home with giant, lush indoor plants, was always picking up abandoned bits of greenery, and checking the local nursery for sales. I absorbed my love of plants (and by extension, nature) from her. Plants were my first connection to the earth and remain my strongest link. They are so powerful and so unassuming. Most people don’t even think about them, except as backdrop or window dressing. Without plants, though, we wouldn’t and couldn’t be here. They make so much possible for us and ask for so little in return.
I’m always learning from plants, finding parallels that show me how to connect more deeply to the world around me, and to myself. The plant cuttings in various stages of growth in my house got me thinking. Taking a cutting is the first step in turning one plant into two. The cutting will start small, but with the right care and attention, it’ll become its own plant. To relate this to our lives, any small action or idea can grow into something much bigger, something that, with a little encouragement, can flourish. It’s up to us to make sure we take healthy cuttings, and harvest the bits of our lives and experiences that can grow their own roots to become something wild, untamed, and uniquely beautiful.
SIMONE MARTIN-NEWBERRY
Hitting the trail by yourself exposes you to many of the same inherent risks you take on when you travel with a partner or group, including injury, dehydration, hypothermia, wildlife, strangers, and getting lost. But there are also built-in benefits: a clear head, undisturbed time to be yourself, and the pride you’ll take in finding your own way.
The decision to hike alone is very personal. Some may never venture to hike by themselves: for them, the risks outweigh the benefits. But for those looking to stretch their legs solo, here are some reminders to tuck in your pocket before you head out:
