What Nature Taught Me About Writing — 6 Invaluable Lessons

Learn stillness, patience, and growth from the quiet teachers rooted all around us

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It was a pine tree that taught me my first real lesson about writing.

I was eleven, sitting under a tall white pine in my backyard with a notebook in my lap, trying to write a story.

The words weren’t coming, and I remember looking up, frustrated, watching the breeze move through the high branches.

The tree didn’t seem to be trying at all — it just was. Steady. Rooted.

Reaching up and out. I didn’t have the language for it at the time, but I knew: there was something the tree understood about presence, about being, that I needed to learn.

Years later, I find myself returning to nature again and again — not just for inspiration, but for guidance.

When the writing feels forced, when I’ve edited a sentence 37 times and it still sounds wrong, when I’m caught in the loop of self-doubt and perfectionism — I go outside.

I walk. I watch. I listen. Nature becomes not only a refuge, but a teacher.