Nature
Calls
Thou art
worthy, O Lord,
to receive
glory and honour and power:
for thou
hast created all things,
and for
thy pleasure they are and were created.
--
Revelation 4:11
Maddy and two little friends spent the afternoon at
Fontenelle Forest, a thousand-acre nature preserve on the Missouri River south
of Omaha. They had the day off school. Rather than rot their brains on TV or
drive their moms into catatonic states, an excursion into Nature seemed to be
in order.
So we walked around the boardwalk in the woods on a
snappy fall afternoon. We got long looks at deep ravines that Lewis and Clark
saw back in 1804, and a glimpse of the mighty Missouri curving around in a
shimmering oxbow. Burnt orange, blazing yellow, and Go Big Red scarlet leaves
carpeted the forest floor. There was a tree marked as being almost 300 years
old. "Wow!" Maddy exclaimed. "That's older than my GRANDPA!"
We saw a shallow crater where an earth lodge had sheltered
a family lifetimes ago. We peered into hollows inside old downed limbs, perfect
homes for guinea pigs, the children decided. Next to the trail was a tree with mysterious
gashes up and down its trunk, where deer had peeled off tree bark like Fruit By
the Foot. Aha! Another puzzle piece in the kids' picture of how it all works.
That's Maddy in the
middle, in mock horror
There were spectacular wooden sculptures of insects along
the trails, with fascinating facts that made the girls' eyes grow wide:
Grasshoppers can jump TWENTY times their body length!
Ants herd aphids like cattle!
The praying mantis can see movement SIXTY feet away!
The assassin bug has these, like, spikes on his legs to
grab a bug, and he's got this poison, only it's really his own digestive fluid,
and he pokes a hole in the bug and sticks a straw down into it, only it's not a
straw, it's his mouth, and he shoots down his poison and makes the bug's
insides melt, and then sucks it back up, only it TASTES like bug juice . . . because
it IS!!!!!!!
EEEEEEEEWWWWWWWW!!!!!!! Ponytails whirled as the three girls
ran away, screaming, holding hands for dear life.
I had forgotten how wonderful it is to focus on the marvels
of life that you so often ignore. I had forgotten the spicy scent of the forest
in autumn. I had forgotten how bumpy bark feels, and plush moss, and how the
wind above can stir the leaves and make them clatter, but underneath the
canopy, all is peaceful and quiet.
Quiet except for the girls' exclamations over seeing a
"fox." They were SURE they saw one whisk down a hill. Yeah, they're nocturnal,
and yeah, the only other animals we saw all afternoon were squirrels with the
same color fur. And yeah, we had just passed a sign about foxes.
But even though we didn't see any wild, exotic animals, on
the long drive home through the city's concrete jungle, I thanked our Creator
God for all that He made with such incredible beauty and function. And I
thanked Him for giving me this tail-ender child, another chance to see what He
made - and through it, Him -- through the eyes of a child.
Then what did we see in the median between six lanes of
rush-hour traffic? A beautiful, tall, lost doe. Two state roads workers were
trying to capture her. How we wished she were safe in the forest.
And then, two blocks from home, what did we encounter but
a flock of wild turkeys? They must have flown up from the creek to peck at
grain in a nearby farm field. They loudly refused to yield the right of way in
our suburban street.
Maddy was hanging out of the car window, beaming and
screaming. "Oooh! They have red, wobbly chins!" she exclaimed. "They go, 'Bawk!
Bawk! Bawwwwwwwk!'"
So much for the peace and quiet of Nature.
But that's the thing. Like God, Nature's closer than you
think. It has so much to teach you. The closer you look, the more beautiful it
is. Try as you might, you can't make it come when you call.
But when God and His Nature call you . . . it's only
natural to hear. †
