2023-05-13 10:00:00
I’m lying in a non-daily position on a beach near Mavrovouni in the Peloponnese, and that’s another piece of Greece that will make your spell checker cry softly. Albuquerque, New Mexico, is one of them.
I roll through a yoga session with my dearest and two friends. The beach, both sand and tiny pebbles, is a bit slanted here, and there are poses in our series that make it a bit easier. There are of course also postures that my body – 59, almost forty years of marathon runner – dismisses as completely impossible.
Keep breathing
But I persevere, and I breathe on, and I feel that the happy babyof downward facing dog and the deer pose do me good. Especially by keeping them on for a long time, letting gravity do its work, and, I emphasize again, continuing to breathe.
The sea is less than ten meters away, so I can hear the surf. Lying down – moaning softly and breathing deeply – I realize that at any moment you hear the nearest (boldest) wave, as well as several others. Those that are further away, or that still have to get up seriously, or that are clattering over an already existing wave.
I realize how this sea and all those other seas scattered around this beautiful (blue) marble in an infinite universe, did and does and always will do, waves, currents, be wild or calm, one time ebb, the other flood again.
Dry rivers, and it’s only mid-May
And because of that thought, so close to a very small piece of the sea, I also realize how much nature is around me: the rough grass inland, the olive trees, sometimes ancient, a little further on, the thousand species of plants and flowers that I see on the hills along my training routes, and the riverbeds that wind through the land, rivers that (here too) are already dry, and it’s only mid-May.
All those places, all that nature that is there without being busy with all those busy people, and also all the threats that nature has to deal with. The seas and oceans that are warming up, the rivers that no longer flow because temperatures are rising too much, and also all those beautiful bits and pieces of nature in our country that falter under climate change, drought, nitrogen, manure.
The woman with the three B’s
My head and body work like this, halfway through forty minutes of yoga I can worry about what we – generally quite friendly people – are doing to nature, biodiversity, the planet. Just as I regularly have whole discussions in my head during a longer run with the woman with the three Bs who sometimes seems to think she is the boss of our country, or the minister of agriculture who lacks any courage to take steps that are necessary. whether it concerns nitrogen or imminent zoonoses.
In terms of attitudes, I still pass the washed-up bather, the flattened frog and the half swastika, and in the end I can really relax completely flat on my back with a wave soundtrack. But always know that nature needs us, as we need her.
Dolf Jansen is a comedian and writes a weekly column for Trouw. Read his columns here.
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