"Pay Attention"

"Pay attention" is the first line in Mary Oliver's "Instructions for living a life."

In order to see the signs of spring, we need to pause, maybe actually park ourselves for multiple moments. For kids, we call this a "sit spot". It is a place and time to let your senses awaken. What do you see? What can be heard? How does the earth smell? Get down low.... look under....look up.... close your eyes and look. Pay attention to the world around us. What signs of spring do you see?

I almost missed this pair of Canada geese foraging in the field with their gray-ness against the gray stonewalls on a gray day. I heard them first.

Did you know that the Canada Goose partners for life...a 10-24 year lifespan? Their 6 foot wing span carries their 14 pound bodies in V formation as they migrate north and south in spring and fall.

As a child, my parents used to take me over to Canada to Jack Miner Migratory Bird Foundation at the first hint of spring or fall. It was here that I was astonished (the second line of Mary Oliver's poem) at the blackened sky full of these amazing birds. And the sound was, at the very least, memorable. Maybe that is why I heard them first. Their sound registering with the childhood memories made decades ago. Children connecting to nature through their senses. It is what they are hard-wired to do! What memories in nature are conjured up in your mind by a particular sight, sound, or smell?