Take Time To Smell The Lilacs
The lilac is one of my favourite flowers. Every spring, I wait with anticipation for the trees in my neighbourhood to bud and blossom. Once they are in full bloom, I can’t help but stop, sometimes in the middle of a conversation with my husband, to inhale their heady, sweet scent. I treasure this fleeting time of fragile blossoming.
But lately, it seems that the people around me are getting more and more insensitive to our natural surroundings.
We Need to Slow Down
My office building is located in a busy, industrial area of Toronto that at some point in the not so distant past provided a safe space for wildlife. Deer and coyotes are still sometimes spotted in the nearby ravine, and hawks have made their nest on the roof of the building across the street.
Every spring, geese land on our lawn – entire flocks of them – and make themselves at home until they migrate once again in the fall. They peck at the grass and try to intimidate us into throwing scraps as we gather for lunch at the picnic tables on sunny days. They parade defiantly back and forth across the busy, 4-lane street that exits onto the Don Valley Parkway. (I still haven’t figured out why they choose to walk when they most definitely could fly. Perhaps they are merely conserving energy.) For the most part, drivers don’t even bother to slow down, laying on their horns and yelling as the geese make their waddling way across. I have even witnessed a driver speed up and aim at the geese, laughing as they frantically scattered.
This morning a mother and six fuzzy goslings attempted a crossing. Mama goose just stepped out, trusting that the good people of Toronto would stop for her and her little family. Once again, impatient drivers honked their horns and sped past, with a total lack of concern for the mama and her frightened babies. Finally, a woman from my office ran outside and stopped the traffic so that they could cross. She was honked at.
For The Better?
Last week I sat at my window and witnessed the clear-cutting of a huge, empty lot across the street. Giant machines tore out mature maples, wrenching them from the ground and flinging them callously into a pile, like garbage. I have watched these trees for the past eleven years as they heralded the seasons – budding, greening, providing shade, turning to fiery oranges and yellows, and cradling the snow. Thanks to “progress”, I now have an unobstructed view of the glittering lines of cars on the Don Valley Parkway, and it makes me panicky to think of their idling exhaust and the decreased amount of foliage left to filter it from the air. The building that is going up in that empty lot has plans for a “beautiful, landscaped garden”. It’s too bad that their vision doesn’t include trees.
Take The Time, For A Change
This week, take a few minutes to engage with the natural world. Inhale the fragrant lilacs. Stand in the cool shade of a maple tree. Feel the sun’s warmth on your face. Admire the scarlet cardinal’s song.
If we, as a society, have become so far removed from the natural world that we don’t flinch when trees – living things – are ripped out by their roots in the name of progress; that we can’t take the time to pause and admire a line of fuzzy yellow goslings as they make their way safely across the road – this world is in serious trouble.
Author Bio: Heather Chappell is a Toronto-based singer-songwriter with a day job in (and a passion for) stewardship. You can hear some of her songs at www.myspace.com/heatherchappellmusic
This angers me and makes me, like you, wonder what this world is coming to. I live north of the city, and we often have geese crossing near our house and I am so glad to say that I’ve always seen people stop for them. I love your statement “take a few minutes to engage with the natural world.” That about sums it up. My children remind me every day that I need to do this, and thankfully it has pretty much become habit. What a breathtaking world we live in if we open our eyes to nature.
Thanks @teagran for this reminder to pause in awe of nature. The lilacs were just starting to bloom on the shore of Georgian Bay this weekend. I was playing with the macro setting on my camera and captured this image:
CLICK FOR FULL-SIZE IMAGE
Excellent article Heather! Thanks for that. I worked for a number of years in Contract Administration (read: supervising the tearing out of trees to build something) and always felt conflicted about my work. When I studied Resources Engineering I thought I would be HELPING nature, not supervising its destruction. One of my fondest memories is in a new subdivision I was working on…we were in the clearing and grubbing stage (read again: supervising the tearing out of trees to build something). A nearby resident protested the tearing down of a grove of trees as it was home to a nesting red-tailed hawk (who at this point was circling wildly and “kree, kreeing” in anguish). Conservation authorities, etc. got involved and the result was a delay in construction until the fledglings had left the nest. You can imagine the angst of my superiors and of the client, but inside I was smiling wildly. Thanks to a caring resident, the birds won, for that spring anyway. The trees did eventually come down and that was the beginning of the end of my engineering career.
I do love lilacs and their aromatic smell that fills the air it reminds me always of the grove on the farm where I grew up. Then again my absolute favorite spring time tree has to be the Sunburst Locust. The neighbours each year forget and tell me the tree is dead as it waits to show it’s color just after all the other trees are in full bloom. One morning you awaken to find the brightest yellow leaves you will ever see and they just seem to burst open all at once at that time just for your eyes and mind to capture. I now have my grandson eagerly awaiting the moment as he is checking it daily before he gets on the bus. The words in my head are “wait for it” “Wait For It” NOW
The day will soon be here