What do we lose when we cease to be a child and become an adult? What precious thing do we let slip away and barely notice? Watch any child in a garden or park or wilderness area as they discover the natural world. Listen to their oohs of delight at the sight of a caterpillar on a leaf, their excited squeals as a butterfly bobs past, their clap of hands and gap-toothed grins at the gambol of some young animal.
Children delight in the most common and mundane elements of the natural world with a pure and unsullied joy that many of us, somewhere in our journey to adulthood, have lost. We largely remain unaware of our loss, although I recall the exact moment I became conscious that while I saw the beauty of the natural world, I no longer felt it in the deepest parts of my soul.
As adults, we might continue to admire the natural world's beauty on an intellectual level and seek connection with it for our physical, mental, and spiritual health. It's one of the reasons I set out on a 50 day journey through Australia's southern wilderness, but how often do we ignore the sparrows at our feet in our eagerness to admire the eagles that soar above? And when so many things demand our adult attention, how do we even make time to look in the first place?
Beauty surrounds us, as it surrounds a child, but our adult gaze seeks out the extraordinary and so blinds us to the ordinary, denying us the visceral joy that such things deliver. To reclaim this joy, we must suspend our adult judgement and clear our gaze as a child does.
A journey in the company of birds allows us the time and space to do so. Birds require us to search the ground as well as the sky, to delight in the raven's harsh croak as well as the honeyeater's sweet song, to take pleasure in the sparrow's brown plumage as well as the fairywren's blue. And as we still, and look, and listen, we are ultimately rewarded with the return of all we've lost.
And so, let us begin this journey of rediscovery, in the company of birds.
