The Summer I Fell in Love with Nature

The woods taught me to pause. (Credit: Gabriella Mascarenhas /Nature Trust of New Brunswick)  

The evening felt quiet in a way I had never noticed before. Light pooled low over the pond beside the trees, and the water held the last shape of the day. My breath matched the stillness without effort. For a moment, everything around me moved at one pace—slow, steady, unhurried—as if the woods were breathing with me. The air smelled of spruce and river water. Something in that quiet softened the noise in my mind, though I didn’t understand it then.

I hadn’t come to this place searching for anything. A few days earlier, my thoughts had been tangled and restless, heavy in a way I couldn’t explain. When I stepped onto this path, I expected nothing from the woods. I didn’t know this quiet would stay with me—or that somewhere between water and fading light, I would learn how to pay attention.

But that evening wasn’t where the story began. It was the moment the change became visible—after weeks of walking into the woods without knowing why they mattered.

When the summer started, I already lived in Fredericton, New Brunswick, as a student. I applied to the Nature Trust of New Brunswick for a general internship—curious, more than confident. I study journalism and communications, and I thought the role would look familiar: writing stories, talking to people, learning how to communicate mission and meaning. What I found was something I hadn’t been looking for and didn’t know I needed.

I come from Hyderabad, a busy, bustling city of around ten million in southern India, where days move fast, and streets hold more sound than silence. Nature was part of everyday life, just not something I walked into with intention. Trees grew past balcony lines, my mother’s garden filled our yard with colour, and summer rain arrived all at once, washing the dust from everything. The city sits beside the Musi River and is dotted with ancient artificial lakes, but my connection to water was often from a distance—a glimpse through a car window. Nature wasn’t foreign to me; I just didn’t yet understand the difference between seeing it and paying attention to it.

On my first morning in the office of Nature Trust in New Brunswick, two dogs walked around the meeting table while we looked at maps for fieldwork. Shane, a tall white dog with calm eyes and thick fur, leaned his weight against people’s legs as if he had always belonged in meetings. Tater Tot, small and cheerful with a pink-dyed tail, climbed into empty chairs like a regular staff member. I wasn’t used to dogs being part of a workday, and my stiff posture probably made that obvious. I had arrived expecting a notebook and a desk. Instead, the job was already pulling me outdoors.

The Nature Trust of New Brunswick protects the places that hold the province together—valleys where rivers slow, islands shaped by tides, and quiet stretches of Acadian Forest that have grown here for centuries. Today, the organization stewards 83 nature preserves across the province, caring for them through research, restoration, stewardship work and long-term protection. Some preserves feel wild and far from any road; others sit just beyond a city edge, close enough that anyone can step off pavement and into trees.

Somewhere between mud and trees, it started to feel familiar. (Credit: Gabriella Mascarenhas /Nature Trust of New Brunswick) 

Ferris Street was the first one I walked into.

Ferris Street Nature Preserve sits on the north side of Fredericton, a little farther from student apartments than you expect. The drive is long enough to understand the scale of the province—forest unfolding past the edge of the city. We went out for stewardship work: removing invasive species, checking trail markers, and learning what “protecting land” looks like when you’re standing inside the trees.

My rubber boots sank into the mud before I took a second step. The air smelled like wet soil and leaves breaking down into the ground. Branches closed around the group as we moved forward, everyone calling out tree species and erosion patterns like a language I hadn’t learned yet. I stayed behind, walking slowly, trying not to show how uneasy I felt with a dog moving confidently ahead of us. Everything was beautiful, but I couldn’t feel beauty yet. My mind was still full of warnings and discomfort.

When we reached the pond, the forest opened into a calm patch of light. The water was flat except for a trail of ripples behind a line of geese. On the far bank sat a beaver lodge—crooked and deliberate, built from what the land offered. I lifted my phone and took a picture without thinking. I just wanted to keep something from the day.

Alina, the conservation coordinator, walked beside me.

“You’re doing alright back here?” she asked.

I nodded, though I wasn’t sure.

“It grows on you,” she said. “Give it time.”

At the time, it sounded like reassurance. Later, I would understand it as the truth.

A few weeks later, we went out for boundary training at a preserve near the Nashwaak River Dam. The heat surprised me. In Hyderabad, summer temperatures climb past forty-three degrees, but the heat rarely reaches me directly. Life moved between shade, cars, short walks, and rooms. Heat happened around me—not to me.

Here, we walked into it.

We moved slowly through the brush, marking the boundary of the preserve. The air felt thick enough to hold its own weight. Branches pulled at our sleeves, and every few meters, someone confirmed a marker. My rubber boots sank into uneven ground. Sweat gathered at my collar. The sun set high and sharp, making the sky look pale.

Alina stayed close to the group, answering questions and watching how we moved through the trees. At one point, while we paused for water, she looked over and repeated her quiet advice:

“Give it time. This kind of work grows on you.”

It stayed with me.

Even in discomfort, something small was forming—a kind of attention I hadn’t practiced before. I already knew the beauty of these places now, little by little. I was learning to meet it honestly, not just through the frame of my camera.

By afternoon, the heat was too much. The team sent me back to the office early. But before I left, we sat at the edge of the dam, where cold water rushed over pebbles. I pulled off my boots and lowered my feet into the river. The shock of cold cleared every thought at once. Pebbles shifted beneath my toes. The current pressed steadily as breath. It wasn’t dramatic. It was just real.

When I look back on that summer now, I don’t remember it in order. I remember the feeling—quiet, steady, like a thread running through the days. Memories return as small details: the curve of the riverbank, geese crossing still water, light resting in spruce branches as if it had nowhere else to be.

Value lived in tiny things—the simple imagination of the natural world. Nature gave me room to slow down, to step away from the thousand thoughts that filled my mind. It taught me to pay attention differently: to the way a branch leans into the wind, to the shape of shade on the ground, to the air moving in and out of my lungs. That attention helped me notice myself—how I was thinking, changing, opening. It made space to reflect, to understand the love of the people in my life, and to see how many moments I had been rushing past.

In paying attention to trees, I found attention for myself. (Credit: Veronique McGrath/Nature Trust of New Brunswick)  

Every time I walk now—every step on a trail, every leaf lifting in a breeze—I try to give it my attention. That kind of attention builds quietly. It feels like a steady conversation with the world, a way of listening without asking for answers. In that calm, I could feel the beauty of a world shaped by our Creator—not through grand moments, but through subtle ones most people walk past without seeing.

I didn’t leave the summer with conclusions or certainty. I left with a kind of love—steady, gentle, and without demand. A love that exists simply because it exists. The kind that doesn’t hurry. I found that feeling through falling in love with small, quiet things—and in learning to see them clearly, I learned something about seeing myself.

What stays with me now isn’t urgency. It is the stillness of attention—a patient kind of love, steady as wind moving through trees.