Outdoor Retailer - January 2021 - 74

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Little Nature Love Notes
With so much bad news around us, short glimpses of hope, in the
form of video snippets sent to friends, can bring us back to the light.
by Latria Graham

FOR AS LONG AS I'VE BEEN A WRITER, I'VE
also been a photographer, documenting what
I know to be true, even if it is just for an audience of one: me. My camera roll is a second
reporter's notebook, and I try to capture everything, to the tune of 25,000 photos and
videos a year. So I started sending short clips of
nature scenes as little love notes to my friends.
The messages I send are meant to convey
many things: I love you. Drink some water. An
adventure is coming, even if you don't see it
yet. The world is waiting for you. Here's something to make you smile. Let me give you light.
I send to a friend: We cannot get away, but
the birds can and still they stay to sing to us
when they could be anywhere but here. How
lucky are we?
So many times making and posting the videos gives me permission to get outside. On the
worst days, it gives me a purpose.

74 OUTDOOR RETAILER

/ January 2021

THIS YEAR, WHEN IT WAS SO MUCH HARDER
for anybody to get anywhere, I gave into my
impulse to share, hoping the sounds I put out
could cut through the anxiety, despair, seasonal depression, economic angst, pandemic
misgivings, and climate grief. We are forgetting the luminescent moments, and it is no
wonder given all that has happened. I post
those videos to remind each of us that we are
capable of flight.
I have not figured out how to capture those
small moments in the darkness in a way that
social media understands, but I can give you
this: Winter in Denver's Botanic Gardens,
where a recent thaw allows the water in the
fountain to flow freely; walking past someone's cabbage roses in the suburbs just outside
of Paris, sniffing one of the integral ingredients of Chanel No. 5; the sound of the aqua
waves licking the pink sands on the south-

ern shores of Bermuda; the impermanence
of flame azalea blooms and the incessant
unceasing clicks of insects in the woods that
surround me; two ants wiggling around on a
blush-colored camellia; an oxblood leaf swaying gracefully in the wind as if being held up by
magic, but actually by a spider web thread. It is
enchanting anyway.
What adventures I've had. What luck, this
life. What a time to be alive. Usually people say
those phrases with a bit of a smirk, but I mean
them. I come from a line of women who were
not taught to drive.
As I write this, we are rapidly approaching the coldest, darkest days of the year, and
by the time you have read this, it will be over,
and we should be on the other side. Because I
know what it is like to try to mend the heartbreak every morning by adding roses and
cardamom to my coffee to stave off anguish.
Sometimes it works. Some days it doesn't. So
I will tell you what I know of light because it
is the thing my camera tracks when I am not
sure on what to focus.
On the hard days, the light returns when you
least expect it to. In this endless stretch of winter, I am besieged by fatigue and spend most
of the day trapped in my own mind instead of
navigating gardens and trails. Stranded on an
island of my own making, there are days when
my memory is made up of waking in the dark
and lying down at the end of the day in it, literally and metaphorically. Some days I watch
time slide off the clock and puddle on the floor,
but it's okay because I'm still breathing and that
is the one thing I need to do right now: exist.
My friends start to send their own short
clips: A sunset in the Sierras. Ice climbing in
Glacier National Park. They come to me from
as far away as New Zealand and Tahiti, reminding me that there is so much more beyond
my door that is worth living for. There's video of
a friend traversing a ridgeline as she attempts
a Fastest Known Time in Nevada. I am rooting
for her. I am rooting for all of us. On the worst
days, the truly dark ones, when I don't have it
in me to be brave, these multisecond snippets
are carrying me. In those moments of grounding, the 10- to 30-second snippets, I hear my
friends saying, I love you. Please stay. O.R

Photo and video courtesy Latria Graham

Field Notes: Making It Through

Outdoor Retailer - January 2021

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