On overcoming our fear of nature

The other day I was working from home when another deadline flew into my mailbox. Great. I couldn’t help but feeling sooo restricted and controlled. And then I remembered something rather obvious: I don’t have to run on autopilot, I have this marvellous human thing called ‘free will’.

So I just got up & walked out the door.

I put on a sweet walking meditation (from the Creative Living app) & turned the corner towards the fields behind our house. Which already felt like a quiet act of rebellion - to literally walk away and consciously turn my back on these deadlines breathing down my neck. Nothing puts things in perspective quite like a good walk, feet on the ground and being surrounded by nature.

Halfway through, I decided to visit the donkey a few streets away. It had been a while and I was curious if he’d still be there. But jep, sure enough - there he was. In the same meadow, full with yellow buttercups, standing under a blossoming elderberry tree. Such a peaceful sight.

He saw me & started walking over immediately.

And that’s when I remembered. I’m scared of this particular donkey.

Not of donkeys in general - just this one. No idea why my brain decided to forget that little detail, but there I stood, suddely very aware that I was face to face with a whimsical, nervous, not entirely trustworthy animal.

I told myself not to be silly - it’s a donkey, behind a freaking fence - and reached out my hand for him to smell. But his breathing deepened. Warm air streaming heavily from his nose at a rapid pace, nostrils flaring, clearly very agitated by my prescence. And then he brayed. Protesting extremely loundly. Not remotely happy with my visit.

I pulled back my hand - losing a hand felt like a disproportionate outcome - stepped away and he just… turned around. Walked off. Showing me his ass. Like I wasn’t even worth acknowledging after such a feeble attempt at connection.

My first instinct was to turn around too and head home. But I stopped.

I’d been reading this amazing book Rooted by Lyanda Lynn Haupt - a book that will absolutely get its own post at some point, because it’s just filled with a gazillion pearls of wisdom - and she writes about why people have become scared of nature.

How the distance we’ve created from the natural world has made it feel foreign, unpredictable and sometimes even threatening. For no apparent reason than it being unknown.

To challenge that, she started walking alone in the pitch black dark. On one of those nightwalks, she encoutered a moose - a wild, gigantic moose - and chose to simply sit beside it for a while. The result? She stopped being afraid of the dark, and started understanding animals on a different level. (She does not suggest sitting next to random mooses, for the record.)

And here I was. Scared of a donkey behind a fence. It felt ridiculous.

My ego simply could NOT let that happen.

So I wondered why this was making me scared and uncomfortable and decided that maybe the donkey and I just needed a little more time. We’d gotten off on the wrong foot and everybody deserves a second chance. So I started talking to him. Not with boring introduction details, but about my stressful morning and why I’d ended up on his path.

He was, I kid you not, a genuinely good listener and even interested in what I had to say. (But of course what drama does a donkey experience during a day in the same meadow?).

First his ears turned towards me. Then he stood still, close by, paying attention. More than most people do, honestly. And eventually he came back over and let me stroke him a few times. Still skittish. But I like to think we both took a small leap of faith.

All it took was a little time & patience to both feel a bit more comfortable.

I left, promising I’d come back sooner.

A field of buttercups next to our land

A few ideas for getting more comfortable in nature

We're not born scared of nature — we just lose our familiarity with it.
Here are some small ways to find your way back:

• Standing in the dark. Step outside, dim the lights and just stand there for five minutes. Notice the sounds, watch the stars, feel the air. You can gradually build from there.

• Look up fun facts about animals you’re scared of. Chances are they are soooo interesting (because every animal just is), so you will remember fun things about them instead of only ‘the scary’ parts. It replaces fear with curiosity. (You can find spiders in my search history)

• Take a route you don’t know. This is a favorite of Diederik - Get off the beaten path and follow something unfamiliar. It will give you a fresh perspective and you never know what you might find along the way.

Have you ever had an unexpected encounter with an animal that stayed with you?
We'd love to hear it.