An awakening started with a potted plant. It sat tall bedside in front of a window to capture what little light it could from an otherwise dim room. I wrote a while back on this blog about a much needed green thing during the winter. It popped from the mother plant, a small thing that pushed its head through the compact soil, then soon after opened its thick slender leaves as if to say, “I’m here and I have found my place.” It was the anticipation of the budding and the unexpected offshoot that connected me to the flora. I thought about how simple it was and how it took little for my attention to be captured by the ease of the new birth and regeneration.

But my reflection ran deeper. Consider Isaac Newton, perhaps complication in and of himself as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, when he said,

“Nature is pleased with simplicity. And nature is no dummy.”

No, nature is no dummy. It is intricate, has ways to survive, and teaches wisdom, especially trees, through their heartbeats. The natural world is steps away, where we can go sit a while, leave a complicated world, and fold into the arms of Mother Nature who always seems to make things right. We can empty our minds, unplug a well of swirling, overloaded thoughts, and make room for the inspiring, the emotional, prompting us to breathe deep and to smile.

I didn’t get to this point of writing about the simple and the natural world without the reflection of twenty years it took me to write my memoir, Under the Birch Tree. The discovery of bunnies tucked in a recess under the boughs of a birch tree sparked its unconventional approach to writing my story. The tree, my birch buddy, would later become synonymous with home. Through girlhood, coming of age, and finding my place as an adult, I relied on the natural world for comfort, guidance, and healing. It would become a north star in a cosmos that had neither a beginning nor an end, undefined as the simple.

At this time, I think of my late mother. Her downfall started on Memorial Day weekend almost three years ago. During those summer months, we’d escape to the outside and just . . . sit a while. Though her eyesight and hearing were weak, she could follow a squirrel scampering to her, watch sparrows and wrens flutter and flock to a birdfeeder, and hear their chirping. Despite the shutting down of her physical being, her mind revved with reconciling her imminent death. Being in the simple’s presence gave her words to express when she smiled and said with a head nod, “Being out here makes everything right with the world.”

There are masters at the practice of finding simplicity—artists. Consider Chopin’s words:

“Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes, and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.”

I wouldn’t consider the reading of sheet music to be simple. On the contrary. It’s complex to the non-musical artist. And yet, to the artist, like Chopin, a concept of melody comes to being. The artist brings from individual pieces a simple, cohesive whole.

As I age, and have more years of accumulated experiences behind me, I reflect on the generations and the times that will follow. I think how presently lives have been made to be more efficient and easier to navigate our world, spinning like a web of concentric circles, all in the name of its center called simplicity. Yet, sometimes it’s quite the contrary. I chuckle in response, “Well, years ago when I was your age . .” I recall a landline phone connection that never dropped, retail stores where you could touch and feel and see and try on a new pair of pants, and bookstores to read front and back covers, and fan the pages in between. Sometimes one can’t help but to think of trying to make simple, when it has only been made complicated.

When stepping away from the complication of the day, or even from the thoughts of the world to retreat to meander through the woods, I don’t have a particular sit spot to be still, observe and connect. I don’t need a particular place, but the full space of stillness to find my place.

I will always be reminded when seeing the sprouting of the new, whether growing in a small pot on my desk, or outside among the flora, it will continue to find its place in the cycle of complication.

There will always be simplicity in a complicated world. You just have to look for it.