Ahahahaha2

The Science, Art and Humor of Nearby Nature My googley-eyed friend invites us to begin our outdoor excursion. He will help us take our first steps, and lead us toward an understanding of the three gifts of creative experience that nature would offer you. These are three roads to wisdom that can arise out of every intentional walk in the woods or park near home. They will appear in different guises as we make our way along here.   These are simple words so short your youngest reader can spell them out, and yet they are concepts of ultimate worth to the richness of your natural-world experience and your childrens’. And here they are: AHA. AH. And HAHA. You’ll meet them soon enough outdoors. Let me summarize, then go deeper: The AHA! is a moment of meaningful personal discovery; AH comes from a deep and soul-satisfying appreciation; HAHA is a flash of comic revelation when two realms collide in a new and startling way. AHA arises from what we see, hear, touch, taste and smell. And if you learn to go slowly, stop often and expect a small discovery from every outing, you’ll rarely return home without at least one AHA. For me, every photograph I take holds some of this discovery, becomes an instant in time that records a unique moment in place, a one-of-a-kind experience--of light, shape, texture or form. Science begins with AHA experiences, measured, recorded, seen with the eyes. Curiosity is its motive force.

memories that fragrances outdoors can leave you will last a lifetime. The AH is more subjective and personal. You might think of it as your response to the art of nature discovered in those moments when you comprehend the rightness and goodness of the world at hand. AH is your response to beauty and truth outdoors. It is the way you digest in a deeper part of your soul the AHA facts as you comprehend the whole of them together with your own unique part in the cosmos. AH conveys something of your enjoyment of the music of nature, of its rhythm and cadence; its nuances of light and shadow, piano and forte, tragedy and comedy, tenor, bass and harmony. AH is the touching of the Other in forest or meadow, mountaintop or beach and in ourselves. It often finds its end in thankfulness and joy. Awe is a close cousin of AH. HAHA is the release that comes when you suddenly make sense of separate and seemingly unrelated facts. All at once, two frames of reference merge and you get it, like when you make the connection between the ordinary of the man who walked into the bar with the final revelation about the poodle or parrot or porcupine. We are shocked, shaken, and pleased at a new way of seeing things. The punch line comes. We laugh, tension released.

 

Outdoors, we see (or can learn once again to see) in billowing summer clouds a toad eating a giraffe! Or pick up a leaf that is shaped like the silhouette of your third grade teacher and you smile! We come home with a photograph of a wild hibiscus with some immature stinkbugs on it and for the first time realize suddenly that it is a face with two wide-staring eyes under heavy eyebrows, sporting a smirking grin and an attitude! The world is full of metaphors that bring us joy and humor. The HAHA in nature is close cousin to whimsy and delight. It thrives on imagination!

Scratch and sniff for AHA moments of the nose. Learn the smell of where you live. Teaberry plants and sweet birch twigs smell like chewing gum! Common Liverworts smell like “wax lips” and some millipedes smell like cherries. Don’t miss out on the discoveries your nose can give you. The

The Three together in the outdoors near you—the AHA, the AH and the HAHA—are the muses that would lead you to wonder. And in wonder is the beginning of wisdom.

  While seeing, don’t neglect the other senses. Discover sounds too faint for those who hurry past--insects under the bark of the tree you’re leaning against; the drip-drip of sap from tree branches on the first warm days of March. Hear the difference in the shush of wind in winter and spring in the same woods.

To The Sound of Your Own Drummer How very different these lovely paramours are as they face to opposite poles in this most intimate of moments. He, the smaller, has much the bigger eyes proportionally. I wonder if his visual world through green eyes looks different than the same world through her baby blues. Things invisible to her he might see with greatest clarity–a matter of survival, insect aesthetics or sheer male stubbornness. Ann had sent me on an urgent errand: the dog was running off down the road. I shrugged on my boots in grumbling obedience, and tromped down the front steps, leash in hand. But wait! “Hey! Check out these fancy flies!” I called back, running inside for my camera. “The dog’s headed down the road, you doof!” she scolded, not appreciating the wonder before me.

“Yeah, but look carefully how different these beauties are. It’s called dimorphism”, I explained to her. She harrumphed in disgust—a spot-on illustration of marital dimorphism, thank you. I got no further than this small discovery before I was where I was meant to be. My wife had other plans for me. She frequently loses me on our walks, where for her, getting there is the point. For me, the view each step along the way is more what it’s about. Break for spiders; or fancy flies. Take your time and be willing to drop to your knees and turn over a rock to see what’s under it; pluck a twig to scratch and sniff; or simply sit and let your ears listen to sounds smothered by the crunch of your own steps. Look at the ground under your feet. Be a fly on the wall watching yourself watching. Turn up your attention a couple of notches; it’s easy to do in the quiet and solitude. The slower you go, the more you’ll see in the outdoors. The more you see, the more you’ll wonder. And the more you wonder, the more you will learn. Conversely, the faster you go...