Debbie and I try to get into the woods every day. We’re lucky to live near a wooded park, and we’re lucky to have an athletic dog who reminds us when it’s time to get outside.

So we walk pretty much the same paths, through the same woods, day after day. You might think that would get repetitive. Instead, we are continually amazed by how different those woods are from the day before. Mushrooms have appeared where yesterday there were none. A shower of pine needles has dropped. The blackberries are in bloom; then they’re ready to pick; then they’ve gone by. The stream is full. The stream is dry. Different birds are singing different songs. The more often we walk there, the more there seems to be to notice.

Margaret Renkl understands this. She’s a Nashville writer who spent nine years writing about nature, culture, and the American South for The New York Times. Her book The Comfort of Crows grew from much the same practice: returning to the same familiar place and paying attention.

For fifty-two weeks, Renkl watches the plants and animals in her own backyard. Crows, bluebirds, squirrels, foxes, insects, flowers, trees, and changing weather all become part of the story. Her brother, the artist Billy Renkl, created a collage for each week.

Nothing about the project sounds particularly ambitious. That’s part of its charm. Renkl isn’t trekking through the Amazon or studying wolves in Yellowstone. She’s looking out the window, sitting on her back steps, walking through her neighborhood, watching what arrives and what disappears, what dies and what returns.

And slowly, an ordinary suburban yard becomes anything but ordinary. The practice at the center of the book is something almost anyone can try: pay attention.

Renkl has described herself as a backyard naturalist, not because she claims any special expertise, but because she has learned to notice. Fifteen minutes is enough. Sit somewhere for a while. Stop doing something else and see who shows up.

We don’t have to travel somewhere called “nature” to find the living world. We’re already in it.

BOOK: The Comfort of Crows