Nature's Teachings Archives

Bloom Where You Are Planted

By Simone Lipscomb | June 27, 2014

A tiny sunflower is blooming in a large container where a gardenia calls home. It found its way there via a bird or squirrel who either mistakenly dropped it or has a love for gardening and flowers.

As I sit on the back porch, in my hammock swing, I look at the struggling sunflower and can’t help but think of the saying, ‘Bloom where you are planted.’

My friend has chosen to work in Iraq and I chose to move back to the Gulf Coast. Both of us felt a call to our chosen destination without knowing how our talents would be used or how we would make a difference; yet, each of us is finding ways to bring positive energy to where we are planted.

Like the little sunflower, all of us might be lucky enough to escape the equivalent of a trip through the digestive system of a bird or squirrel (with any luck at all) and find fertile soil in which to live, move and have our being. In reality, the world is our garden. Anywhere we find ourselves gives the opportunity to serve and shine a little light.

With proper nourishment and support we all might grow into our potential…and bless the world.

Loving the Earth

By Simone Lipscomb | June 25, 2014

Loving the Earth: Creating a Conscious Relationship with Our Planet

A slight breezed carried my SUP board downriver as I stopped paddling to watch a pair of bald eagles drag their talons along the surface of the water. Nearby great egrets crowned cypress trees, their white plumage dazzling against the background of blue sky. A mullet splashed in the mud-tinted water of the Magnolia River and brought my attention back from sky to earth. As my gaze turned downward a brown pelican folded her wings, as if in prayer, and dropped from the sky close to my board. All around life expressed in a beautiful ballet of balance with this lone patron admiring the dance. Bliss seemed shared by all but perhaps it might be better named communion.

One never knows what will be the call that brings us to our heart’s work. While I loved nature since childhood, I never felt the commitment…the calling…to dedicate my life’s work to it until the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. It felt as if everything in life stopped so I could focus entirely on the Gulf Coast and the amazing life in our coastal ecosystems. During the first days of oil washing ashore I remember thinking the end of the world had arrived. How could this happen?

It’s easier to believe everything is okay than to pay attention to what’s really happening. I shared my book containing oil spill images with a cousin the other day that lives in Pensacola and she was shocked to see the reality I documented. There are people who live in Gulf Shores who still believe it wasn’t bad…that there wasn’t oil mixed with dispersant and it wasn’t fizzing in tidal pools of tiny fish gasping to their last breath. I know because I saw it first hand and stood on the beach weeping for every life I saw pass.

The most difficult thing I have ever experienced was witnessing the spill and its effects on innocent life which included small children playing in oily waters…so polluted that the benzene burned my eyes and throat. Video and photographs in my library document everything I saw but they can never share the true experience of grief beyond anything I’ve known.

A friend and mentor reminded me, during the first year of the spill, that there was a reason I was being called to witness the horror even though I might not understand why. Over four years have passed and I am more convinced that the only way to heal our broken planet is to heal our relationship with It and to heal our relationship with each other. That means healing our own lives.

The only solution I have found is to practice love…love as compassion…love as respect…love in the purest form of opening to surrender, to service.

Love for the planet requires opening the self. When we risk the deep opening of human heart to planetary heart we know the elation of unspeakable joy, of the heart’s expanding in answer to beauty. We also know the experience of grief and heartbreak when places, wildlife and humans we love are destroyed or profoundly injured.

Celebrating the beauty of the Magnolia River and other places of natural beauty relieves the grief that comes from being aware of the trials our planet is experiencing. There is resilience in nature and my hope is we will practice better stewardship before a non-reversible tipping point is reached.

As I remain engaged with nature’s rhythms through simple, daily observation and intention, I am drawn more deeply into partnership with the Earth. If we collectively open our hearts to loving this sacred planet, we can create a bond with each other that will transform darkness and create positive, lasting change.

Keep It Real

By Simone Lipscomb | June 20, 2014

I woke up early my first morning back from two weeks of desert and ocean and heard myself say out loud, “Keep it real.” I was referring to breaking out of that habit of turning on an electronic device as soon as I was conscious. There, among fish, cactus and iguanas, I was either scuba diving at dawn, photographing the sunrise or writing beside the Ocean…all contemplative and solitary experiences. I didn’t want to return to old habits.

With pen and pad in hand, I went to my hammock chair on the back screened porch. It seemed to be inviting me to sit and contemplate. The cat kids joined me as we welcomed the day under the massive arching branches of my friend, the grandmother live oak tree. I sat quietly observing the sounds, listening to the dawn.

I’ve pondered the reason I feel so alive in Bonaire. Is it diving? Ocean? Desert? Latitude? What if it’s simply spending so many hours outdoors each day. What if it’s that simple.

There are many distractions at home…stacks of mail to sort and recycle, Netflix series paused mid-season, Facebook, emails, telephone messages. It’s an endless list created just to navigate each day. Everything on my to-do list seems to take me further away from the reality of nature and more specifically, the connection that nature and I share. When I unplug from nature, I am unplugging from my self. These castles of distractions I build seem to carry me further from home, further from who I am in my most physical self and spiritual core.

Rainbow cotton threads supported my body and I swayed gently. Birdsong filled the air. A barred owl hooted nearby. Cardinals, chickadees, titmice, wrens, warblers and even a random sea gull voice created a welcome song to the day. Flashes of wings flitted among the courtyard greenery as my cats and I sat watching, welcoming life.

Stanley K, my orange tabby friend, jumped on the ledge at the screen and threaded his head in and out of the hammock support strings. I don’t know why he did it but he appeared to be having fun. So I wondered….what do I do just because it is fun and playful? Do I miss out on life because I’m too serious….there are those piles of correspondence in paper and electronic form. Do I allow myself the freedom of play while in the land of saltwater and desert, fish and iguanas and not so much when I return? Do I censor my relationship with nature?

The day before I wandered through my yard and noticed someone had trimmed the shrubs in my yard while I was away…without my request or permission. I felt anger arise. I don’t like them cut into perfect spheres and prefer a more natural shape so the new shape really irritated me as it was generated from some random person that maintains the development’s plants (not invited into my yard). I sat with my strong emotions as an observer and realized that in Bonaire it’s easy to be fully who I am, open with my wild-woman self…the part of me that is fiercely connected to nature, gently connected…deeply aware of her connection with all life. When I return to my home it feels like a constant inner battle to stay real with my self, like I’m fighting an established norm to fit into a box or in the case of my shrub friends, a ‘perfect’ sphere. It’s draining and exhausting at times.

I don’t like boxes or conforming for the sake of conforming; yet I know, on some deep level, the constant attention to the edge is what motivates me to create. Dancing with the edge builds courage. It cultivates determination. It deepens passion to pursue the dreams. Just realizing this truth gives me understanding and thus fuels my efforts even more to keep it real…to stay connected with trees, earth, animals, sky, ocean….to dance with nature as She calls me.

Am I willing to drink the Koolaid and conform to the machine that keeps me asleep to my strong, wild and outrageously beautiful connection with nature or am I willing to continue to work for my freedom? If you’ve read this far and you know anything about me you already know the answer to that question. Koolaid be damned.

Tarpon Buzz and Turtle Love

By Simone Lipscomb | June 10, 2014

The sun set over the mountains far from our entry point. Golden sky glowed with lingering day as night descended.

Twilight found me slipping beneath the surface….again. Into the turquoise water that appeared gray as light faded until my bright light illuminated it.

Small silver flashes zoomed past as I slowly kicked into the deep. Nighttime on the reef…a time of rest for some and action for others.

Not long into the dive a large hawksbill sea turtle was spotted foraging for food. We directed our lights away from it so it wouldn’t be blinded but another diver started shining his light directly on the turtle and began chasing it. Of course this lead to me kicking into high gear–quite literally–out of my relaxed blissful, happy place and I begin flashing his face. He didn’t stop until I intercepted and was about to grab his arm and direct the light away from the turtle. I felt molten lava stir within as this endangered species was harassed by a careless diver.

Once the turtle was safely moving on without the spotlight, my dive buddy and I moved away from the group and found in front of us another hawksbill, a bit smaller, and so we hid our lights so as not to reveal her presence. We floated in the dark, gray ocean, barely able to see the outline of the turtle as we stayed between it and the other diver who was still searching for the original turtle. With loving hearts we fiercely protected our sea turtle friend.

After turning around and going into the shallower sand flat, tarpon began hunting with our lights. We came into contact with several other divers who were photographing and videoing the frenzy of these large, silver fish indulging in some easy dinners. We broke away from the crowd and swam on but had gotten just past the mosh pit of people when I felt a rush by my right side as a huge tarpon buzzed past me, using my bright cave light as a feeding beam.

The rush of such an animal, over five feet in length with shiny, silver plate-like scales and large eyes, zooming past me barely missing my side was wild. I knew he was going to come back yet each time he buzzed me I squealed into my regulator. We played a game of hunt the fish with Simone’s light. I loved every minute of it. It’s quite possible my face hurt from smiling so much while trying to hold the regulator in my mouth.

I sit propped up in bed now, yet still underwater moving and flowing with gentle surge. Nearly four hours were spent beneath the surface, communing with the Ocean and many creatures that live within Her. It was a dive of strong emotions….feeling protective, feeling ecstatically playful and mostly feeling immense love for all life. Oh…and grateful. Very grateful.

Floating in a Kaleidoscope

By Simone Lipscomb | June 2, 2014

The second dive today I found myself alone with no other divers around me. That’s not a bad thing…I enjoy solo diving. It wasn’t intentional but the two folks that went in at the same time wandered on while I floated weightless in a kaleidoscope of color. I couldn’t move, so mesmerized was I by stripes and dots and shades of the rainbow.

The Salt Pier is an operational salt production pier where ships are loaded with sea salt that is produced on Bonaire in evaporation ponds. When workers are not present, divers are allowed to visit and enjoy the amazing sea life that claims the pilings as home. It was here–amid hundreds of French grunts, a yellow-striped fish–where I experienced weightlessness as geometries and wild colors danced within inches of my mask.

If divers are still and don’t flail through the water, fish can be surprisingly accepting of our presence. I know of nothing else in this world I’d rather be doing than floating relaxed and at ease with a large school of fish. Today they moved as one so once I settled in, I became part of their school and we swayed in the gentle surge together. Around we went, slowly…ever-so-slowly…winding our way through massive pilings filled with sponges, soft and hard corals and colors as brilliant as the fish. Christmas tree worms decorated sponges in brilliant colors. Blennys less than half the size of my little finger popped in and out of their tiny holes in the coral and sponges, their eyes smaller than a pin head. The variety of life expressed in the Ocean, in one small area, is simply mind-blowing to me.

Slow and steady breathing through my regulator, motionless except for small pushes the Ocean gave me and my fish friends, I was truly at home. At peace. At home within myself.

A turquoise, pink and yellow rainbow parrotfish would occasionally dash through our school creating a cooperative parting of the mass. A jack would dart in and out and we simply moved out of the way, creating space…floating…existing in harmony.

Right now green parrots are screeching outside the screen porch as I sit and reflect on the day. Palm fronds sway and rustle in the wind. The Ocean is 50 yards from me and one would never guess the amazing life that lives just below the surface. Such beauty, amazingly, profoundly present just 30 feet under the surface. It makes me wonder what beauty lies just beneath the surface of each of us. If we only realized this….