I have to admit that I am not really a “full” survivalist. I guess I would represent the soft side about survival. This soft side represents certain values of nature, freedom, and human kindness that I feel are reflected in the simple things of life.  

“Log cabin living” or “un-plugged living” could be some of the terms that many people use. I call these people the log cabin survivalists or the simple life survivalists. These people can have any profession; they may be anywhere from gardener to teacher to IT professional. Well, regardless of background, the log-cabin survivalist aka simple life survivalist has made a choice to live a more human and natural life.  

When given vacation days, this person would find the most pleasure in a technology retreat or connecting to nature in their own backyard. Where I live, my back-yard is full of a vast number of mountain ranges. And while taking a tech-retreat is something I regularly desire, I find that I can find nature in many places and I don’t necessarily have to “escape” the city to find them. I found nature in the strangest place this week.

Typically, connecting with nature is about looking out a window to see a mountain. The famous mountain peaks of Utah have been well documented.

However, I didn’t really have to schedule a mounting peak hike.  

When I work on my computer, I look up every once in awhile and relax my mind for a bit before continuing. On this occasion, I decided to do a quick meditation my yoga teacher Scott Moore taught me called “there is”. The goal is to still the mind for a brief moment and should be called the coffee break meditation because I was actually at Starbucks, writing a blog story. I kept my eyes open and lasted about 1 minute and it sounded something like this.

 “There is the smell of Starbuck. There is the taste of chocolate mocha. There is a customer at the counter. The customer is talking. There is a coffee barista taking the order. There is the sound of making steamed milk.”

And then the meditation neared its completion. “Wow! What is that?” I crouched down on the table and found an adorable bug walking towards me on the table. This cute thing might as well have been a giant because the thing seemed so alive despite being very small in reality.  

Despite its tiny size, this little bug was so adorable and had so much life. It was the nature break I needed and I didn’t even have to leave my computer to enjoy it.