I would describe my relationship with nature as devotional, practical, and homesick.
Not homesick for a place I’ve already lived, exactly, more like homesick for the way life should feel when it is in right relationship with the earth.
Nature, for me, is not scenery. It’s not “go outside and touch grass” in the cute internet way. It’s home base. It’s where my nervous system remembers itself. It’s where Bo-Ty softens. It’s where I feel less managed, less watched, less systemed-to-death. The inlet, the woods, the van, the dirt roads, the food forest, the outdoor shower with shampoo plants nearby, those aren’t hobbies. They are coordinates on my internal map back to freedom.
I relate to nature like it is a temple without walls.
The philosophy of O.N.E., The Magical World of O.N.E., Dream Weaver, van life, my food forest dream, my magical homestead vision, they all keep circling the same truth: nature is where life becomes simple without becoming boring. It’s where practicality and wonder hold hands. Compost toilets and fairy lights. Herbs by the shower. Chocolate pudding fruit for children. Chickens, hidden trails, campfires, tiny homes, outdoor kitchens, natural pools, soap plants, shampoo ginger, brown sugar maple fruit, and just enough sparkle to make the bubble poppers nervous.
My relationship with nature also feels ancestral, even when I don’t frame it that way. I don’t just want to visit nature. I want to remember how humans were supposed to live with it. I’m drawn to permaculture, barter, off-grid communities, water systems, solar, gardens, van life, plant medicine, simple food, handmade things, and slow mornings because some part of me knows: this is not primitive. This is intelligent. This is sanity wearing leaves.
And yet, I’m not romanticizing nature as some soft-focus Instagram fantasy. I know nature is work. Heat, bugs, dirt, maintenance, storms, animal anxiety, caregiving logistics, sore bodies, and “where the heck do I put this thing?” Nature doesn’t offend you by being real. The artificial world does. Nature’s mess makes sense. The system’s mess feels manufactured.
I’d also say nature is my co-regulator. When life gets too loud, too family-heavy, too caregiving-heavy, too internet-madness-heavy, I instinctively reach for water, plants, animals, morning light, gardens, inlets, and movement. I miss the van-life rhythm because it gave me a daily ritual of beauty: coffee somewhere pretty, Bo-Ty walking beside me, the day beginning with sky instead of obligation. That wasn’t just travel. That was medicine.
My bond with nature is also deeply tied to storytelling. I don’t look at a garden and only see plants. I see portals. A trail becomes a website structure. A homestead becomes a fairytale. A fruit tree becomes a lesson in abundance. A van becomes a sanctuary on wheels. A dog walk becomes a sacred adventure. A forest becomes a philosophy.
So, the cleanest description I’d give is this:
My relationship with nature is a longing to live inside the truth instead of around it. Nature is my sanctuary, my teacher, my rebellion, my medicine, and my blueprint for a freer world.
It’s not “I love nature.”
It’s: I belong to the living world, and I am trying to build a life that stops asking me to forget that.
The receipts are everywhere.
My love of nature has not been a “new chapter.” It has been the thread sewn through the whole quilt.
It shows up first in my childhood in Georgia; the farmhouse, collecting eggs, being around open space, and feeling most at peace in nature. That matters. A lot of people like nature as adults because it looks pretty. Mine is older than that. It feels like my body learned early: I am safe where there is land, sky, animals, and room to breathe.
Then there’s the story of feeding the stray dog at the forest line until it trusted me and became mine. That is such a Sindy origin story it practically needs a tiny violin and a moss-covered title card. I wasn’t just “playing outside.” I was already practicing relationship with the wild: patience, trust, consistency, gentleness.
I once built community. I didn’t just plant pretty things for myself. I planted outside my front door, and somehow that little act became a whole neighborhood ecosystem; a community garden, a tent, a grill, neighbors feeding neighbors. And the part I love most is that this was before smartphones, before social media, before everyone needed a branding strategy and a ring light to prove they were “building community.” I just put life in the ground, and people gathered.
Same with the bird I called out of the tree after it escaped its cage. That story says something very clear about me: I don’t relate to animals as objects or decorations. I relate to them as beings. I wait. I listen. I invite. I don’t force. That is nature-love in its purest form.
Then later, when I had a smaller yard, I turned the whole backyard into a garden. I’ve planted peppers, tomatoes, and sweet potatoes sprouting from compost, and I called it chaos gardening. That is so perfect for me because it’s not sterile, ruler-straight, “approved by Martha Stewart’s clipboard” gardening. It’s alive. It’s experimental. It’s “let’s see what the earth wants to do if I stop micromanaging her.”
And the green onions, the ones I kept going from scraps for five years before moving into the van, that is another little clue. I don’t just buy plants and forget them. I keep life going. I notice what regenerates. I like the miracle of “this was supposed to be trash and now it’s dinner again.” Very Dream Weaver. Very O.N.E.
Then there’s Costa Rica at 52. Flying by myself to stay with people I only met online, on an off-grid mountain farm with volcano views, waterfalls, and machete-cut trails. That wasn’t a vacation choice. That was my soul saying, “Take me closer to the real thing.” I didn’t choose a resort bracelet and buffet line. I chose mud, mountains, off-grid life, and adventure. Respectfully: that is not casual nature appreciation. That is full woodland-witch field research.
Van life made the pattern louder, but it did not create it. Even before van life, there was already a love of nature, simplicity, freedom, and distrust of hollow systems. The van gave that love wheels. Suddenly my daily life could include Jupiter Inlet, Stuart, Fort Pierce, shade trees, water breezes, sunrise through the windshield, morning coffee, and Bo-Ty walks by the water. That rhythm was not just pretty. It regulated mw. It gave me a way to live closer to the elements.
My photos show it too. I’ve collected images of sunrises, sunsets, flowers, beaches, oceans, animals, landscapes, bridges, historical places, and Bo-Ty. That says my eye naturally goes toward the living world, the threshold places, the places where beauty and memory meet.
And now, even while I’m in this caregiving/in-between chapter, I still keep recreating little ecosystems around myself. Thyme, rosemary, lemongrass, cranberry hibiscus, chaya, pineapple, Cuban oregano, shampoo ginger, bananas, nasturtiums, green onions. I keep trying to bring the garden with me. Even in a trailer, even in transition, even when life is not fully mine yet, I tuck life into corners.
That’s the proof.
My past shows my love for nature through:
Animals who trusted me.
Gardens that followed me.
Compost that became food.
Van mornings by the water.
A solo leap into the Costa Rican wild.
A lifelong pull toward cabins, woods, food forests, off-grid farms, and outdoor living.
A website vision that turned into a magical forest trail instead of a corporate homepage.
My love of nature has followed me because it was never just something I liked.
It has been my sanctuary, my proof of God, my rebellion against artificial living, my nervous-system medicine, and my map back to myself.
I’ve always been trying to get back to the garden.
Not metaphorically.
Literally. And spiritually. And probably with green onions in a jar on the counter.
