Go for a walk in nature in the early days of summer. You’ll notice that there is just so much going on. The forest floor is covered with new growth. All kinds of grasses, vines, and flowers are popping up. It’s amazing.
I think that we tend to forget how abundant life really is when we live in cities. During the long months of winter, I certainly forget the sheer abundance of life. But in early summer, it is undeniable: the world is bursting with life.
Think for a moment about food. Usually, we think that food is rare and expensive. You need to go to the grocery store and get it. Food pricing are always going up, and so food seems scarce. But not so! In early summer, nature is just overflowing with food.
Today, on a walk, I ate a few raspberries from every bush that I came across. And there were dozens of bushes, each with hundreds of berries. It was wild. There were raspberries everywhere. I couldn’t possibly eat all of them, even if I tried.
The same thing is true of mulberries. There is a mulberry tree near our home, and we often pass by it. I’ll eat a few handfuls every time that I visit it, and there always seem to be more. If all my neighbours, including the animals, ate from it constantly, we wouldn’t exhaust it.
And, the examples that I’m considering are just the most obvious human-facing foods. People who are interested in foraging see a wide range of possible foods in nature. But there are all kinds of other things which other creatures eat.
The wild world is just overflowing with food. It is a sort of zany barely-believable superabundance. If we pause and notice it, the sheer variety of life will astound us.
Published: Jul 3, 2024
Last Modified: Jul 11, 2024
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