How Would A Worm Be?
Greetings Reader!
As we heads towards Winter Solstice this Sunday (in the northern hemisphere), the shortest day of the year, you might also feel like time is slipping away from you due to the busyness of the holiday season.
This week our reflection and our practice will offer an opening for slowing down. For pausing. For taking a few moments to opt out of holiday bustle and rush.
And, I’d love to hear directly from readers about how Ground Notes can support your nature explorations, and what you’d like to see in 2026! Complete this 5-10 minute survey to enter the raffle to win a complimentary set of nature-based pigment paint from Beam Paints! 🎨
Cheers,
Jennifer
Founder, Ordinary Nature
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Weekly Reflection 🌿
- Weekly Practice ☀️
- Book Gift Recommendations
- Little Tender Things 🥀
WEEKLY REFLECTION
What Would A Worm Do?
Jennifer Ruth Keller
Cooler temps keep my pace brisk on the sidewalk. I’m headed home from school drop-off. Overnight rain has brought out the worms, many now stranded on concrete, inert.
The walk to and from school has been a stroll through a mass-death event of sorts. Curled pink shapes on damp grey walkways present a mix of soft and hard, decaying and enduring surfaces.
My eye catches movement — one is alive! And big! I stoop down, try not to interrupt, observe how it noses its way little by little from the sidewalk into, possibly, the grass at the edge. Maybe they’re feeling out Is this crossing safe? Can I trust this other, plant surface? Can I cross into this other terrain?
I watch for a couple minutes, try to open into the spatial sense a worm would have to inhabit. What would be ‘big’? What would be “rough”? “Risky”? “Fast”? “Slow?” I know of course that worms don’t think in language, or names. But the creature is sensing into something, moving their body within some form of knowledge, and assessment, and in-built processes. What might that be like, moving through a human-interrupted world?
Standing back up, I resume my normal pace the last thirty yards to our house. There are lots of good reasons for shifting right back into my human modes of movement, and thinking, and speed.
And there’s also this: when the blur of a day starts to creep in, I pause, remember my worm acquaintance back on the sidewalk (or maybe in the grass by now!), and I loosen my fantasy reins upon time, and slow down. I let my senses dilate, and soften. Let my knowing draw upon a wider range of embodied input, and awareness.
I can’t sustain worm-mode for a whole day, but for even a few minutes it can de-center my presumptions about how things are, and open my capacity for being with the season, rather than running through it.
WEEKLY PRACTICE
Sometime this weekend, set aside 15-20 minutes to be with the sunset, the winding down of the daylight as the shortest day of the year is upon us. Or, if your schedule aligns better with this: To be with the sunrise, or the beginning light of the day. Any kind of shift in light works.
Lightly check in with each of your senses across the experience of the shift in light. How does the onset of darkness, or, the end of darkness, have a particular rhythm? A pace? A motion(s)?
What do you notice in your body, your felt experience and awareness with the change in light? Do the sensations align with names/words? Or not? With a memory? A hope? A dream?
No “right” or “wrong” responses, or outcomes. We notice, and allow, and attend with gentle curiosity and reception to whatever arises.
Nature-Related Book Recs!
Need a holiday gift or start-the-year-nature-rich read? Check out my book of recommended nature reads at Bookshop.org.
Nature Book Reading Recs!
LITTLE TENDER THINGS
I see you, stamen cluster, and
last blush petal, and closed bud
in the cold rain.
Pink thorns may protect,
water droplets may nourish.
Are you chilly too, like us?
