A red winged blackbird sways on his cattail perch and trills an alarm at our passing. The dirt trail through the pasture is uneven, rutted by the footfalls of traversing sheep passing this way, season after season, for more than two decades. Flanked by tall summer grasses the trail is barely visible in this stretch passing the wetland. The dogs trot along in the tunnel created by feathery seed heads bending over the path. The grass is holding morning dew and dampens their coats and my jeans. The phrase start where you are, use what you have and do what you can is running on repeat while I walk. We travel on, leaving the low spot and cresting a hill and here the grass is short and sparse and paler green, a diluted version of the thick abundance in the low spots. The dogs fan out, the young pup zig zagging in excited exploration, the elder dogs scenting and peeing on important tufts of grass. No dwelling is visible from this hilltop, only endless yellow ochre prairie, distant yellow canola fields and cattle. We have been walking a straight path for half an hour and still haven’t left our property.

My morning walk is such a steadfast routine I am often in automatic mode and if it were not for tittering birds, screeching insects, or dead pan silences grabbing my attention I may not even realize what I have walked in or through. That is not to say I have taken this place for granted, far from it. One of the reasons for walking every day is to count blessings and spread thanks. But what I am guilty of is forgetting there is anything extraordinary in the everyday lived experience, and thereby dismissing that living outside of hustle and bustle culture, with an abundance of prairie outside my front door, is worthy of sharing.

There are a number of essays showing up on substack written by women who are leaving corporate jobs in exchange for a slower paced, authentic life. A life with different freedoms than corporate money and prestige bought them; a calmer pace that allows for some measure of return to nature. It piques my interest that leaving corporate dictums behind isn’t the only commonality, every one of them writes about welcoming more nature into their lives. It has dawned on me that I live the sort of plain jane life surrounded by nature many of these women are seeking. Not so much in matching detail for detail of curated homes, two point two kids and salon nails, but certainly matching in desire for nature, peace of mind and regular doses of control over one’s time. To recall that I am right where I love to be and have been there all along is a miracle of sorts; a veiled miracle, in the same category as grasses growing. Critical, necessary, forgiving and freely given if we only open our eyes. I see anew that the everyday experience of living quietly and un-corporately is my area of expertise. Nature is profitable to our soul. The birds, the sheep, the dogs, the prairie – they are tangible surroundings bearing the intangible reasons. Harmonizing our lives with the nature that is around us, even in tidbits, shapes our authenticity, and thus shapes who we become, at whatever juncture in life we may be at. A return to nature is a return to ourselves.