My story is not necessarily of a past memory, but rather an experience that continues to show its spiteful face. Everyday I watch my peers walking down the halls and sitting at lunch tables with not just a lack of interaction, but rather an agitation. This opaque sense of wanting something different, something new and entirely unique, appears to cloud their motivation and exacerbate their laziness. As ironic as it sounds, we all feel stuck, as if there is no hope to experience a different part of life that is untouched by our naive fingertips and unacknowledged by our ignorant minds. However, I have tasted this pristine idea and felt its refreshing power.

I believe that nature expands the mind, evokes new emotions, and refreshes the body.

My relationship with nature began during the summer after my freshman year of high school. For years I had never seen what was right in front of me every morning as I looked out my window. I had been sucked into the unrelenting pit of life’s normalities where social media and endless assignments corrupted my focus and view of the world. To escape this monotonous rhythm, the mountains whispered to me and I responded with curiosity and excitement. As I began my journey on the trail, Mother Nature’s nurturing touch brushed my hair and blew insatiable smells of mysterious pine trees, animals following me like shadows, and dead leaves decomposing as a part of the carefully crafted cycle of life. I could not help but feel completely relaxed among a place that was utterly foreign to me. My mind felt clear, and my soul felt purged of any stress or worry that flooded my veins. This world, a world I had seen everyday as commonplace, was in fact nothing I could have ever imagined. There was an endless amount of mysteries to solve and functions to understand. I would feel as if I could hike the trail blindfolded, and then on my way back, the trail would change.

Mother Nature challenged me to look at life in different ways and taught me lessons that only she could explain. I learned how to listen instead of speak, and when to take a step back and gather my surroundings before blindly following the trail in front of me. Such a feeling of discovery and uniqueness has never left my body. I yearn for those mountains and always come back refreshed and prepared for the week ahead of me. If only my peers, the ones that have given up in school and lost their sense of being, could experience what I have experienced. If only the mountains could whisper to them as they did to me, and open their eyes to something beautifully new that can never be fully understood but reveals enough to inspire thought and curiosity. If they spent one hour in nature, then hope, desire, and emotion would revitalize their spirit. This I believe.