For 20 years of my life, I moved from one massive, crowded, noisy city to the next, whether it was back home in India or here in Toronto. During that time, I got to go camping exactly once, for a single week-long field trip back in highschool. Apart from that, I had never spent more than a couple days in a row in any sort of suburbia, let alone “wilderness.” Nor did I particularly want to. I liked being comfortable in my bed, warm under a blanket in my overly air-conditioned room away from the dirt and the bugs and the sun. It was nice. It was safe. 

The problem was that I am a plant biologist, or at least I am studying to become one. And the plants I’m supposed to be studying, well, they like to grow outside. So I realised sometime during my third year that I would have to learn to be comfortable in the outdoors. In a moment of reckless bravado I dared myself to apply for a job that would have me move from downtown Toronto to (by my incredibly low standards) the middle of nowhere. The universe took this dare seriously. I got the job, and thus made my way to my forest home for the next three months: The Koffler Scientific Reserve (KSR).

Sure, KSR was but a 15-minute car ride away from the nearest Walmart and sure I was living in a pretty little cottage but for me this was still the furthest from civilization I had ever lived. On weekends, I was all alone on the property, lying awake in the jarring silence. I missed the sounds of cars and police sirens, and people. Everytime I stepped outside the house, even for just a minute, I sprayed myself with a bottle of insect repellant, deathly scared of the tiny ticks that I was told prowled in the grass. I would run back from the lab hours before the expected sundown terrified of being outside in the dark. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was afraid of but I was always somewhat anxious and uncomfortable.

Add on the fact that I went from an intense schedule filled with 6 courses, a job, and various extracurriculars to having just 5-6 hours of work a day, I did not know what to do with myself and all the extra time I suddenly had. That sounds like a gift of a problem to have but the lack of mental stimulation is a genuine distress when you’re living in the middle of the woods with a shoddy internet connection and nothing but a family of raccoons for company.

Come July I was tired. I was done with the woods. I had tried it out and I had not enjoyed it. One particular Thursday had been incredibly exhausting. I had stepped in a puddle and my socks were wet, I had scratches from thistle spines all over my hands, and because I decided to go meet some of my fellow researchers at their cabin, I was out of my house after sunset. I almost considered not walking back to my cabin but I was hungry, sleepy, and thankfully not alone. So my cabin-mate and I decided to brave the night together.

Every tree branch looked like a hand reaching out from the dark to grab us. With every step, I felt something unseen moving beneath me. In the dark green grass lining our sad excuse for a path were flashes of bright yellow light. Believing this was the glint off the eyes of some animal preparing to pounce, I pointed my torch in its direction. However, instead of scaring the creature away, the light only seemed to have given it a brighter target. The pair of eyes started to come closer, closer, and closer, moving faster and faster towards us until…

They were fireflies.

I had never seen fireflies before. Of course I had read about them, studied their behaviour and biochemistry in various ecology courses, but I had never seen one actually fly around and glow. My friend was able to catch one and gently placed it on my hand. It was magical; this little flying bug was in my hand, alive, glowing.

It sounds so incredibly cliché but that encounter with the firefly completely changed my outlook on nature. Slowly but surely I made peace with the outdoors. While the dark was still kind of a scary place, lighting campfires and eating s’mores made it worth enduring. While the thorns in the bushes were still very sharp, I didn’t mind their pricks when I was picking fresh blackberries. I stopped thinking about the bugs for a second and sat against a tree to spend a sunny day reading. I took a closer look at the plants around me and started to observe the lessons from my ecology lectures unfolding before me. One night in late August I even ventured into the dark way past midnight to see the Perseid meteor shower.

Come end of August I had fashioned myself a staff, grown out a beard, and was fully leaning into the forest hermit aesthetic. I started my own plant-themed Instagram (@the_green_log, shameless plug) and even learned to harvest sumac and bake my own bread. I started calling up my city friends for little day trips and gave them tours of all the trails I had travelled. 

The whole experience taught me the value of slowing down. Slowing down doesn’t necessarily mean doing less but rather just taking the time to savour everything that you do. When you’re working on an essay, pour your entire mind into that essay, but when you sit down with a cup of coffee, the coffee should be all you think about. You shouldn’t have to take on 14 different activities to feel productive and engaged. It’s a lot more fun, a lot more natural to be overwhelmed not with to-do lists but with the ridiculous diversity of life around you. This “profound realisation” of mine might seem incredibly obvious to some but it was entirely new for me. I realised that the grandmas had got it right. Waking up, cooking, reading, gardening, walking, and merely sitting and observing is a lot more fun than it looks. There is real value to touching grass, lying in it, and doing absolutely nothing else. 

So, go lie down in the middle of Queen’s Park. Go sit against a tree in Philosopher’s Walk. Jump into a lake, get your hands muddy, pick up that cute little snail. The urge to quit everything and go live in the forest is human and hungry. Feed it. I dare you.