To escape the woes of the world, a child runs to the embrace of his mother to seek shelter and hide. Man, when confronted with hardships, also tends to run as far as he can and find solace in the wide embrace of Mother Earth.

Similarly, when the burden of life becomes too heavy to endure, it is easy for me to put it down by getting close to nature so that I can catch a breath of fresh air. After all, expert hikers also need a short break before continuing their hike.

Last week, I encountered one such moment and went on a picnic with my family to a lake and also to reduce my despondence. The day was beautiful, but we only feel the beauty of nature when we are ready for it, and that day I was also ready to face and feel nature so deeply that I had never thought of it that way before. The sun was playing hide and seek with the clouds, while a cold breeze brushed against my face and gave me goose bumps.

The vastness of the lake mesmerised me. The imperfection of the grassy land made me question the artistic perfection behind it. The chirping of the birds made me wonder about the loud language of such small creatures. The scenic beauty made me ponder over how vast the universe is and how deep the oceans are. But still, they are nowhere near in comparison to melancholic thoughts and unidentified emotions of man.

Humans possess every emotion, deep and shallow. These emotions have the depth of oceans and the vastness of the universe, that is still unknown and enigmatic. The wild and complicated nature of human beings fascinated me, yet intimidated me. While lost in my own world, I realised that though reality is like water, still and silent, it doesn’t take much time for it to become a tsunami.

I lay down on the picnic cloth and felt the numerous pulses from beneath the grass while also enjoying my sluggishness in such cold weather. Mum gave me a cup of hot coffee, from which clouds of steam rose up and vanished into nothingness after a second. While relishing every sip of my coffee, I sketched every scene that can provide any person with salvation into my sketchbook, thus engraving it forever in my memory.

Published in Dawn, Young World, April 13th, 2023