She held my hand at first, but without fear. Today was her third time to visit Sheri Capehart Nature Preserve and I’m sure it’s becoming familiar, with its ponds (where she always asks about turtles), oak woods and sandstone boulders. Lily likes to climb onto boulders and stand taller. Her third birthday is a little over two months away, and there is so much of the world to discover.

We made our way along the trail through the woodland, Lily in the lead, seeing everything. A cicada began its long, raspy call, and she stopped and listened. When we reached the pond I pointed out the dragonflies and the cricket frogs. She blew seeds off of flower heads and experimented with how it feels as dried leaves come off in your hand when you grab the dead brown stalk of a plant.

There is hardly any pleasure greater than watching a granddaughter getting to know the way seeds float in the air and how crispy leaves feel on your fingers, climbing on rocks and watching dragonflies. At one point she found a very small caterpillar like an inchworm on the trail, and watched its movement for a while. When I pointed out a grasshopper on the sidewalk, she crouched and observed it, and at my suggestion she gently but fearlessly touched it and watched it jump. She asked about “honeybees,” remembering how on our last visit we watched bumblebees and honeybees visiting flowers.

Along with love, watching Winnie the Pooh, and sitting together eating honeydew melon, this is what I can give her. This connection and love for the natural world that sustains us is among the most meaningful gifts I can give. What she does with that is, of course, up to her. But I hope it takes root, so to speak, and grows. I hope when she is fifteen she makes some time between hanging out with friends to take a walk in the woods, and when she is twenty-five I hope she spends some time birdwatching or fishing, or climbing the Lost Mine Trail in the Chisos Mountains. (Note to Lily: by the time you’re ten, I’m sure I will have offered to take you to the Big Bend to walk in those mountains, if I can still climb the trail.)

Where has “Lives in Nature” been? I tried moving to Substack and found it didn’t give the flexibility that I wanted. Creating documents with photos or graphics that I can put together myself (like the Letters to Nature Kids) is important to me. A return to this website lets me do that.

Some of you have followed Lives in Nature and then switched so that you followed what I wrote on Substack. A few of you contributed financially as well. I appreciate all of that a great deal, and I don’t want to keep changing platforms and make it more trouble than it’s worth.

So I plan to stick here and write here. There will be new issues of Letters to Nature Kids, new blog posts, and new information in the “Activities in Nature” page. Thanks for reading!