The Awesome Solace of Nature

In today’s post, Ken Sattler shares the solace he feels at Fenner, but also how “literally awesome” a trip to Fenner can be for people of all ages! 

I walk the trails here at Fenner as often as I can find time to, which is not nearly as often as I would like. There is solace here when I do. Everything seems as it should be – functioning exactly as intended. It is not quiet, but it is peaceful. It is not still, but it is calm. There is always a flurry of activity, if one cares to look carefully enough, as life and natural processes unfold. Something interesting is always waiting to be discovered.

The prevailing atmosphere, though, is one of quiescence. The natural world is intentional and teeming and productive and vibrant and sustainable here, while also remaining graceful and exquisite. There is a lesson to be learned in this, I think, though what it is exactly eludes me for now. Perhaps there are many lessons to be learned in this, each dependent on one’s own experience of life.

As in nature, however, Fenner also has its occasional outbursts of complete pandemonium. If pandemonium can be productive, though, then this is. My halcyon reverie is periodically – and refreshingly – checked by the calamitous riot of children and adults discovering that there is life outside of X-Box and iPhone, and that it is life worth experiencing. It is the welcome din of child-like discovery. Around every turn is something to behold – something which can make a kid exclaim, in a way that only a seven-year-old can, “Come over here you guys! You have to see this! This is, literally, awesome!”

Literally awesome. It is not virtually awesome, or hypothetically awesome, or abstractly awesome in a philosophical kind of way. Nor is it simply “awesome.” It is literally awesome – awesome in a way that cannot afford to be overlooked – awesome in the most definitive sense possible. The kid isn’t wrong. It is. That is nature, and that is Fenner. Often subtle. Sometimes in your face. But always, literally, awesome.