Finding Nature in the City

The Nature Walk Project, Entry No. 001, Vol. 2

In some areas nature is so prevalent and that it’s practically spoon-fed to you. In other areas you have to seek it out…bend down, look up, look past, and generally ignore foot after foot of concrete. But once you start looking for it, you’ll find that it’s always there, sometimes in the smallest of ways, but it is there.

I recently went looking for nature in an area with dizzying mazes of roads, sidewalks and shopping centers as far as the eye can see. Walking around the stores, I saw that you could buy nature but I wanted to find it.

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For those of you who haven’t been to Florida, my little lizard friend above may look intriguing but once you’ve been here for a while you kind of stop noticing them. Unless, of course, they’re scurrying across the sidewalk directly in your path and you have to do a less than graceful hopping/falling down maneuver to avoid obliterating them. I saw this little guy on a concrete overpass behind a chain link barrier (below). His only interest in me seemed to be the bit of shade my shadow provided while I was trying to snap his picture.

Can you spot the lizard blending into the concrete and chain-link fence?

Here’s a few more of the nature bits that I found while walking around the city. There’s an idyllic photo followed a reality photo. While both are lovely in their own way, I’ve always been an idyllic kind of gal and prefer those photos.

When photographed from below, all you see is yellow with blue skies above.

When photographed from above, it’s a bit different.
Can you spot the lights in there? Hint: there’s two.

Found this little guy scurrying up a palm tree in a parking lot.
There wasn’t a good way to show the zoomed out version without creating a blantant advertisement for the store, so you’ll just have to imagine this one.

Pretty field of flowers?

Nope. Just some “weeds” growing along the sidewalk.

Found this little bee, being as busy as a… you see where this is going…

The sign in this picture advertises all of the available shopping but I think the bee has found what he’s looking for.

And finally, my favorite of all. Real duck perched on a fake goose.

I hope you enjoyed this nature tour of the city and that it inspired you to look for nature, no matter where you find yourself.