"Walk Slowly, Look Closely"

A teeny grasshopper nymph spotted
last July.

Walk slowly. Look closely.

Much of our life is spent moving briskly from one activity to the next, swaddled in inattention as a series of screens insert themselves between us and the world around us. When MJ Hatfield uttered the
words "walk slow, look close" during her talk at the Day of Insects last month, it resonated as, if not the answer to all the world's ills, at least a small way of coping with the fast-moving, anxiety-plagued civilization we have built for ourselves.

Walking slowly in itself can be a form of meditation. Just walking, not to get anywhere or for exercise. Breathing, looking, feeling, moving. It is a simple communion of our bodies with our environment.

Eurasian Tree Sparrow
("not a House Sparrow")

When you add in looking closely, you engage with the other beings that share our world. You see things you don't see if you are riding a bicycle, running, or even walking quickly and inattentively. So many little brown and black slugs crossing the trail! Moths and grasshopper nymphs popping up in the grass alongside the trail, some so tiny you have to get down on your hands and knees to make out their features. The sparrow that you assumed to be a House Sparrow but wasn't, or that one funny-looking coneflower with the odd florets. The assorted well-camouflaged bugs, from ambush bugs to camouflaged loopers.

Each of these encounters is a new delight, simple and there for the taking. It doesn't cost anything except time, and the benefits to well-being are, for me at least, immeasurable.