Amidst all of life’s constant motion, there is one guiding moral that I insist on implementing in my day to day life- taking a moment to appreciate the trees.

    In today’s world, people are constantly on the move whether it be physically or mentally; there is rarely a moment when I am completely alone with my thoughts. By taking a mere moment out of my day to unplug and observe the trees in all of their mystery and divine, natural beauty, it allows me to reconnect with myself, with nature, and gain a larger sense of gratitude.

    Throughout the years of my childhood, I always loved trees, animals, bugs, plants, and anything that had to do with  nature. I often found myself in the backyard searching for various reptiles and insects alike. If I wasn’t outdoors observing these things or attempting to plant the seeds from the apple that I had just eaten, I was drawing my observations using my worn-out box of Crayola crayons. When asked the infamous question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” by teachers and family members, my response was always the same, “A flower.” To adults, it seemed silly, however,  I was determined that that was what I was destined to be. I had a sense of connection with nature that others didn’t understand. I looked up to trees and flowers as role models, rooted deep in the ground, swaying freely in the wind, and providing me with oxygen as well as various fruits. I strongly admired how neighboring trees’ branches reached out toward each other as if they were trying to hold hands; it seemed to me as if they were connected in some way or another.

Time went on, however, and as I went through elementary school and onto middle school, my connection to nature became replaced with new, more sophisticated ideas, words, and principles. I began to become distracted from who I really was deep down; I was growing, but I was a completely different person than the carefree, nature-loving child that I had once been. Things including new electronic devices and social media were introduced to me: they were intended to be positive additions to daily life, but I was soon caught up with everybody else’s lives instead of my own. Over this period of my life I began to spend increasingly less amounts of time doing the things that I had done in the past. I didn’t even realize it, as I felt a new form of “connection” - a connection to the internet. I was connected, yet disconnected.The time that had once been spent admiring the trees and exploring nature was now being spent scrolling through my social media feed. I was reading other people’s thoughts and opinions so often that they began to influence my own ways of thinking, blocking my creative “flow”. I was no longer thinking for myself as I allowed everybody else’s thoughts to distract me from my own.

Then came the summer of 2016. My parents decided that we would go on a road trip to Colorado, but there was one catch: electronics were only going to be allowed to take photos. Initially, I was upset about this. How would I stay ‘connected’ to everyone without my phone for a whole week? I eventually got used to the idea, but still remained unhappy with it. As we began the roughly 20 hour electronic-free car drive, I realized that there would be a lot of time to do absolutely nothing. A few hours into the drive, my siblings and I grew bored with sleeping and listening to the 80’s music our parents were playing. I began to gaze out the window while my two younger brothers talked amongst themselves; I simply watched the trees pass by and let my mind wander for the first time in a long while. I began to think about who I was, deep down, without anybody else’s influence and thought back to my childhood. The now memories that were at one time just my day-to-day life started to come alive. Drawing pictures of the trees that we drove past, I lost focus of everything surrounding me and continued to simply think. 

I became aware of our proximity to our destination as the trees that we passed turned into mountains. At last I had found myself again, spending every moment of the trip embracing nature’s gorgeousness whilst hiking up mountains, splashing across streams, and waking up to mountainous sunrises. The phone that I had been so concerned about disconnecting from for a week had been long forgotten and the days spent exploring ended with nightly stargazing and falling asleep outside in the cool summer breeze. Our time spent in the pure beauty of Colorado was only temporary, but I knew that I didn’t want to return home the same person that I left as; a permanent alteration needed to be made in my life.

Reconnecting with nature as I had done as a young child was much more fulfilling than being “connected” through social media and the internet. I was able to focus on me, free from distraction, and just be one with nature, a feeling that felt better than anything in the world. I had come home after being away for far too long. The boldness and beauty that I once saw in the trees was back, I was back. And that is why I believe in making it a point to pause for a moment and look up at the trees because it is easy for life to get in the way of our roots.