Visitors slow down to examine nature

Last week, it rained again at the Fields Pond Audubon Center in Holden. Even so, visitors found some beautiful sights to admire. The key was to slow down and think small.

Droplets hung on the end of a leaf, with the world around – including the observer – reflected in miniature and upside down.

When leaves fall, some land upside down on the ground. That side of a leaf, protected from sun and rain all summer, holds its waxy surface. Droplets that land on an upside-down fallen leaf bead up, as they do on a recently waxed car.

The nearly spherical droplets glisten like diamonds. They can act as a magnifier. If one can pick up the leaf and keep the droplet from falling off, one can see the leaf’s surface, with its veins magnified.

On a dry day, the colors of lichens are an uninspiring grayish green. But on a rainy day, lichens turn a beautiful luminous greenish gray.

The Maine woods have a wonderful smell. Usually it’s the smell of balsam fir. Smells are more noticeable when the air is moist. One can smell the odor of the soil, of balsam fir, of wintergreen, of a rotten log, or of mushrooms on a moist day.

We’ve had frosts, too, in these unpredictable November days. They can prove vexing first thing in the morning before they melt. They can frost up car windows and make outdoor steps and other surfaces slippery and hazardous.

But, if one starts earlier, slows down, is careful, looks carefully at the frost and thinks small, one finds beautiful crystals. These glisten like diamonds, too. A magnifying glass helps to see them.

Slowing down and looking closely at nature can be good practice for the upcoming winter and throughout the year. According to Richard Louv, author of the book “Last Child in the Woods,” our fast-paced lives bring on “nature-deficit disorder.”

Nature-deficit disorder, he says, is not a medical condition; it is a description of the human costs of alienation from nature, which are evident everywhere in our fast-paced society, and especially in the lives of children.

For information on Fields Pond Audubon Center, call 989-2591.