What is Your Favourite Memory in Nature?

May 3, 2017 | Posted by Janice Ho | Your Take on Nature |

What is your favourite memory in nature?

You may have many to choose from, or perhaps one experience trumps them all.

You needn’t have been immersed in the deep woods (though maybe you were) — your favourite memory could have taken place in the city or in your home.

Think about why it’s your favourite memory in nature. Was it the people you shared it with? What kind of feeling did it give you? Did you learn something important from your experience?

Share as little or as much as you’d like! I look forward to reading about your favourite memory in nature 🙂

About Janice Ho

Janice Ho is the creator of and writer for Nature Immersed. When she’s not feeding sheep or taking selfies with donkeys, Janice can be found singing to her guitar or taking a farmer’s power nap.

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Chris
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May 3, 2017 at 8:14 PM

I have had several fond memories in nature from camping trips to hiking adventures to exploring long forgotten abandoned places, but for some reason when I read this post an early memory sprang to mind. It’s nothing special – no canoeing down a raging stream in the middle of some rapids or sleeping under the stars in some remote desert across the world – yet I feel it was one of the first times in my life when I truly understood that there was something special about being out in nature. Even as a 8-year-old boy.

My grandfather and his father had built this house way outside of the city in the 1950’s – it was in Northern Ontario near the outskirts of North Bay – and that house would serve as his home with my grandmother for the next 50 years. My mother and her brothers would also grow up in this house as well. When my grandfather built this place he had also built this old large wooden shed back in the forest a little removed from where the house was. I don’t know why, but something about that old shed always stuck with me. Growing up I would go to my grandparent’s house sometimes in the summer and I always ended up spending time inside and around this shed just making up my own games as only a child could do (think hide and seek with siblings or other kiddy games). The shed itself was nothing like the ones you see in Canadian tire catalogues: no fancy plastic materials and modern swinging doors here. It was an old wooden shed built of actual tree lumber and by the time I found it the shed had sagging floorboards and a weather stained exterior – you could tell it had weathered many storms and then some. I remember it also smelled like pinewood mixed with a hint of gasoline inside, and I also recall there being all kinds of strange old tools and liquids and boxes of things stored in there that I didn’t understand at the time. I remember too the shed was always home to countless animals. There was one summer I found a family of groundhogs living underneath the floorboards and I tossed in a few snacks underneath for them. And there was another time when the shed became home to a family of birds in one corner of the roof. I remember deer and rabbits always being around outside of the place too and perhaps the shed provided them with a safe haven sometimes during the cold Northern winters.

At one point too my grandfather had said there had been an old railroad track that used to go by the area back before it the shed was even completed – you could still see some of the old tracks being slowly reclaimed by the forest – but by the time he had built the shed the railway line had long since been moved elsewhere. Eventually modernity crept in though and it was time for my grandfather to replace the shed. Maybe it was too far back in the forest; or maybe it was just the fact that the shed had seen better days. But I remember going back one time as a teenager and seeing a pile of wood in a large wooden heap where the shed had stood – my grandfather had finally decided to tear it down. I wasn’t too sad about it being gone – they had bought one of those new fancy Canadian tire sheds I mentioned earlier and had placed it closer to the house – but I remember at the time thinking that some small part of my childhood rested in that pile of rubble as well. Since that time I went back 2 years ago and the area where the shed stood has since been slowly reclaimed by nature as well. But even if the shed isn’t there anymore and the new tenants who bought my grandparent’s house never know the history of the land nearby, I’ll always keep those youthful memories at heart of the days when I first started exploring the forests and feeling connected with nature.
- Janice Ho
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  May 4, 2017 at 4:04 PM
  
  Wow! Chris, this is such a beautiful tribute to your favourite memory in nature. You painted the scene so vividly, I could imagine myself standing right in that special place. Thank you for sharing this with us! If you start your blog, this needs to be one of your blog posts!!:)
Chris
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May 5, 2017 at 1:36 AM

Hey thanks for the kind words. Yes when I start my blog I will definitely have an expanded post on this memory as well as maybe a photo or two as well!