By Amber, Supplements Buyer + Strolling Enthusiast
I am, as an adult, quite contentedly a city person. But I wasn't always. I grew up in a distinctly more rural area, where deer regularly came into the yard and foxes watched me from the hills. I had always possessed a love for nature, but when I moved to Boston for work, I at first felt disconnected. Where was the natural world amidst all this pavement? As it turns out, it's still there: you just have to look a bit closer.
I walk nearly three miles to work each way, which gives me a lot of time to observe nature. I find it a meditative experience: I set aside a little extra time to examine interesting plants and animals I see, sometimes taking pictures or making sketches of them to help me identify them later. Being mindful of my surroundings serves as both a grounding exercise and an intellectual one, as I pause to focus on the natural world around me. Here are some ways I've found to connect with nature when you live in the city.
Get to know your local wildlife. The neighborhood I live in is colloquially known as Rat City, but there's far more than just rats. Cities play host to a diverse collection of fauna, and I've greatly enjoyed getting to know them. Some of them are nuisances, like the wild turkeys who stop traffic along Mass Ave in Cambridge, or the starlings who reduced my vegetable seedlings to bare earth in a matter of days, or the coyotes who lope along the Charles in the early morning hours. Others are thoroughly charming, like the flock of semi-tame pigeons that eat peanuts out of my hands and the fat cottontail rabbits nibbling clover behind my local library. My attention to the local wildlife has acquainted me with species like the common grackle (a heavy-beaked blackbird), the slate junco (a chubby, almost spherical sparrow that I'm particularly fond of), and the cedar waxwing (a fruit-loving bird with some truly impressive feathers). Paying attention to the animals you see every day is a great way to connect yourself back to nature in the city.
...and your local plants. Despite the often harsh New England climate, a variety of plant life thrives here. Some species I've found on my wanderings include the Cornelian cherry, with its olive-like red fruits; the fragrant linden whose blossoms make such calming tea; and the Ailanthus tree, an invasive species whose scent is as foul as the linden's is pleasant.
Change your viewpoint. I mean this in a literal sense, not a metaphorical one. Spend some time looking at the ground, at the undergrowth. Are there mushrooms poking up from the roots of that oak tree? Does that fur-lined tunnel in the ground look like the nest of an Eastern Cottontail? Examine last season's fallen leaves and plant detritus, slowly decomposing into dark, nourishing humus. The ground is so much more alive than you might think. Look up into the trees. Fall and winter is a great time to spot old bird nests in the crowns of trees. Is that a beehive? Crabapples withering on the branches, the tiny cones of Eastern Hemlock. Starlings nesting in the eaves of the apartment buildings. Crows perched on television antenna, ivy winding around telephone poles. Both the sky and ground host tiny wonders.
Find the untamed spaces... Even amidst the cultivated lawns and pruned trees of what sometimes seems like endless college campuses, wild spaces exist. In disused construction sites, on the fringes of winter playgrounds, beside railways and drainage ditches, wildlife emerges. Some plants, like great mullein and broadleaf plantain even prefer disturbed landscapes and poor soil -- I'll never forget the time I found a mullein plant growing on the roof of Cambridge Naturals' Brighton location!
...and appreciate the cultivated ones. I live not far from Aeronaut's beer garden in Allston, and upon walking past it one summer day was tickled to see they'd planted grapevines and hops along one wall. On the campus of the Harvard Business School, spiky-flowered witch hazel blooms in midwinter, its pompoms often dusted with snow. These landscaping choices may be deliberate, but getting to know them has a magic all its own.
It took me a number of years to understand and appreciate the wildlife of the city I live in, but I feel genuinely grateful for having taken the time to learn about it. Even the most urban spaces hold tiny pockets of nature -- if only you're patient enough to find them.