In the months leading up to the launch of this new feature for RBC, I’ve been pondering just what I wanted to say first about the wonder of God’s creation that has captivated me since I first learned to walk [which would be 1943!]. A week or so ago, to help me think on it, I took a ride in the country–which in West Michigan is mostly farmland.  [The covered bridge here is 10 miles from my home.]

It wasn’t long before I had to stop the car to observe a mass motion that had totally arrested my attention: butterflies–as far as I could see–dancing in the air above alfalfa fields on both sides of the road. It seemed they were virtually attacking the newly emerged violet blossoms of this common crop. It was a good thing there was no traffic on the narrow gravel road, because I was mesmerized by the sulfur and monarch butterflies whose colors had been “neonized” by the late afternoon sun. In my alley between those two feeding frenzies I said a few wow’s to myself–and to my Creator. And I thought again how much I love where I live. This was just the latest reason.

But our family has also lived in three other regions of the United States, and we loved living there too. Memories of outdoor South Carolina are still fresh after 33 years: discovering wild scuppernong grapes twining over the fallen boards of an old farm shed, watching our boys feed persimmons to cows over the back fence, and cracking fresh pecans from the grove in front of the little house that served as our home while I was in graduate school.

Our Northern California sojourn provided memories as fond, but very different: watching the fog drape like frosting over the peaks of the Marin Headlands in the evening, turning giant bull-kelp bulbs into trumpets with my Swiss Army knife on a Point Reyes beach, clamming and fishing on the shore of Tamales Bay, and watching the aerobatics of a white-tailed kite seeking dinner for her fledglings over the ever-picturesque hills of the coast range with their bright golden grass and deep green live oaks.

In Southern California it was our family’s favorite pocket beach at Moss Point where with your back to the shoreline, you could feel virtually isolated on a lonely island. There too was weird and wild Joshua Tree National Park providing the most exotic rock scrambling in country, and snorkeling over swaying kelp beds where bright orange, but timid, garibaldi fish zipped down and away from you and not-timid harbor seals zipped up and at you. As our sons will tell you, being nose to nose with seals in surf-tumbled waters is a thrill one can never forget.

So my encouragement in this first post is pretty simple: just love where you’re at! There’s virtually no place in on earth where you cannot gain joy from God’s creation, and it is as close as the outdoors just beyond your back door. Spider webs gleaming with pearls of dew on your patio chairs in the morning, “horsetail” cirrus clouds forming and reforming overhead, sandhill cranes “crawking” and reeling in the sky above your apartment, or katydids scritch-scritch-scritching in the tree outside your bedroom window. Attune yourself to the sounds, scents, and motions of the natural world that every day can teach you more and more about the One who created you, loves you, and wants to fill you with wonder beyond measure.

See you outdoors!

Dean