Although I don’t have time to write much lately, I wanted to share a few recent photos and just celebrate the fact that I made it through the holidays. As I mentioned in my last post, I’d been feeling homesick for Michigan, missing some friends, and hadn’t been spending enough time in nature. Happily, I finally decided to stop feeling sorry for myself and be proactive about doing the things that make me happy.

During our holiday break from work I managed to go visit a friend in Michigan, and that was incredibly soul-healing. We walked in the woods and had time to get caught up on each others’ lives. Just what I needed.

And I’ve been making more of an effort to get outside, even when the weather is bad. Just after Christmas we had a couple days of heavy rain that raised the level of the river near my house and turned it into raging white-water for over a week. Here’s a short video I took while standing on the bridge:

The river is normally very shallow and slow-moving at this spot, so this was quite the change. The wind on that bridge was bone-chillingly cold that day, but I couldn’t resist standing there for a couple minutes to watch the power of the water rushing below my feet.

This past weekend I went for a walk at Blue Heron Reserve (one of my new favorite places) and had a wonderful experience with Bald Eagles. There wasn’t much bird activity at ground level that day other than a large, twittering flock of American Tree Sparrows feeding in the meadow grasses. But I was thrilled to look up in the sky and see FIVE Bald Eagles soaring in wide circles. They were mostly up high and off in the distance, but I watched them for a good 45 minutes as they moved around over the nearby fields and marshes.

At one point I watched as one of the eagles appeared to be chasing another one, getting closer and closer. I wondered if this might be a male and female and if I might get a chance to see them do the spectacular courtship ritual where they lock talons in mid-air and fall toward the ground, releasing (hopefully) before they hit the ground. I took these shots as one bird reached out and attempted to grab the other one, but they didn’t make contact this time. There was a lot of vocalization happening though, which added another level of drama to the whole experience. I’m grateful that these beautiful birds are so easy to see in my new home area of northwestern Ohio.

I’m feeling better about everything now than I was a few weeks ago, and I’m learning to be grateful — really grateful — for my wonderful friends who let me lean on them when I need to, and who remind me of the healing power of being out in nature. You may wonder how I could forget that, considering the name of my blog is “Nature is my Therapy.” But we all lose our way from time to time, and I guess that’s what happened to me in recent months. I’m finding my way back, though, slowly but surely.