Why do I love nature now I'm getting older?

[ssd]

I'm over 50 and when I was young I'd no time for nature, it bored me silly. I wanted the city, pubs, clubs etc, the countryside bored me to tears.
Now I love a walk in the country, I could sit and look at the trees blowing in the wind for ages.
Am I just getting old??

I like your post, curtaintrail

I get real comfort from the wheel of the year turning.

Same here. I'm 46 and when I was in my 20's I wanted to live in London and would go there every weekend. Now the place insults my senses. I live in a rural village and want to move even further into the countryside. Like others have said, it's grounding. It really helps my anxiety. I'm a dig walker and just love walking through a field and listening to nature. There is nothing like it.

Yes to AF and curtain, both of those apply for me as well. Greater sense of mortality, and absolutely the sense that the last twenty years have gone in the blink of an eye. My life will end and in the meantime I want to live well. Circle of life. Nature absolutely is grounding, it’s a primal connection to all other life - those who have been before, and those who will come after.

dog

Love nature, it helps lift my spirits and I feel calm.
I have taken part in 30 days wild for the last 3 years, I am looking forward to it again next month. I do try and involve my DCs sometimes they join in but other times they would rather play on their iPads.
Did enjoy a glorious 6 mile circular family walk on Sunday.

Yes, it's happened to me too since turning 50. I've just ordered a couple of books on tree and insect identification to address my woeful lack of knowledge when out walking.

It's been shown that the natural world is good for your mental health.

I've always loved it, since I was a spotty nerdy teen. One reason I have dogs is to give me a daily excuse to walk in the woods.

My parents are dead too and nature and walking is a link to them. I've got no family left so see nature and the little birds as part of me.
And yes, the cycle of life. I'm getting creakier and seeing little lambs springing about the fields or birds flying in and out of nests is just glorious. Life goes on, no matter what.

I signed up Iggy!

Allotment-holder here too and although I sometimes find it a bind what with having no time (lone parent; FT stressful job), it also forever draws me back and I'm happy there

I grew up in the country and didn't think much about it.

When we lived in a new build on a new estate, it felt like a desert- no nature, fake gardens, no way of seeing the seasons turning. Depressing.

Can't wait to get back out to the lanes, where the hedges change every month.

We spend three night a week at home in our coastal town and four in a field at our caravan
Can’t gt enough of it
But then we do have stunning N Yorks as our playground

You certainly do notice the seasons more popcorn

I’ve always loved nature and was laughed at when I was younger. I think as a society, we didn’t care much for nature and laughed at those who did but now we’re being made aware of how good it is for our mental health and mindfulness etc, Get the kids out in nature to get away from screens, do the National trust 60 things and so on.

I am in a beautiful mountainous part of the country. The weather has been warm and sunny. I was standing looking at the amazing view and found myself thinking that I don't want to die and never see this wonderful scene again. I have a good few years to go yet but it's the first time I've thought that way.

At least you've seen it Princess, think of it that way. When we go it's someone else's turn.

Proffesor Brian Cox changed how I view the world and my own mortality.
He said something along the lines of how the chain of events that created our planet were so astounding and complex that most scientists realise how priviliged they are to see it.
It was a lightbulb moment for me, I now notice and appreciate nature and all the worlds breathtaking scenery.

I've not explained what he said very well but hope you get the gist.

I agree @AnyFucker, it’s facing your own mortality and the dawning realisation that actually, you haven't got much time left. I think of it as ‘only 30 more summers left.’

@Curtaintrail, I don't have children and when my parents died I felt grateful for having been born to them and glad they’d had a good life and death. I see new birth all around me and don't need to be biologically related to appreciate the circle of life. It’s just nature.

I've always loved nature, not just now I'm getting older. I grew up in the Lake District so spent a lot of time in the countryside, and I used to get taken on hikes by my grandmother who taught me all she knew about wildlife & wildflowers. She's long gone now, after happily fell walking until she was over 90, & I've moved far away from where I grew up, but I still love getting out & about in the countryside & it makes me think about her. I heard a cuckoo this evening & remembered that it was my lovely grandmother who taught me about them.

I don't know if it's age but I am quite desperate to leave London

my mum is the reason I stay, though as she loses her friends to age, she might be more persuadable to move with me, or perhaps I'll have to go anyway

the poster who said London "insults my senses" - yes, I really feel that and the thing is, even in an outer burb, every green space is being built on and it feels like you have to travel through loads of yeuch to get to a nice green space.

Growing up in the Lake District sounds wonderful!

I have always loved nature and the outdoors since I was a teen. But gardening? Fucking hate it. I find it such a chore.

Where I am now the swifts have just arrived. I love sitting and watching their swooping and squealing. Until I met my husband I didn't even know what one was. I wasn't interested in nature at all. Now all I want to do at the weekend is get out into the countryside. We love spotting birds of prey as we're driving along. And yes, the peace and calm I feel helps me get through the rest of the day. Can't wait for Springwatch to start.

I love that nature doesn't need us - it's there whether we watch it or not. Brought home to me by this Lord Tennyson poem.

Unwatch’d, the garden bough shall sway,
The tender blossom flutter down,
Unloved, that beech will gather brown,
This maple burn itself away;

Unloved, the sun-flower, shining fair,
Ray round with flames her disk of seed,
And many a rose-carnation feed
With summer spice the humming air;

Unloved, by many a sandy bar,
The brook shall babble down the plain,
At noon or when the lesser wain
Is twisting round the polar star;

Uncared for, gird the windy grove,
And flood the haunts of hern and crake;
Or into silver arrows break
The sailing moon in creek and cove;

Till from the garden and the wild
A fresh association blow,
And year by year the landscape grow
Familiar to the stranger’s child;

As year by year the labourer tills
His wonted glebe, or lops the glades;
And year by year our memory fades
From all the circle of the hills.

As we get older we realise our own transience and what stays after us.

And we also realise we’ve taken it all for granted until now, but in fact how fragile Nature is.,