I was born in a town in the south of France, surrounded by beautiful mountains. Until recently, this roughly 300 000 people town was the smallest that I had inhabited. My parents and I moved a lot, mostly in European capital cities. When I was 19, I moved to Paris, without really chosing to. I didn't really like the place, but stayed there for 7 years. Last summer, I finally escaped and moved to the smallest town I've ever lived in. Not quite a small town, if I'm objective, but the fauna and flora is more varied than in Paris. I have a garden, as you can imagine, and it's pretty wild for now. I want to learn what's in there before I go around changing up the place.
As a small child, we went to the mountains a lot with my parents, and I loved it so much, but as a teen, when we lived in Brussel, we didn't move around as much as we used to. I still loved the "natural" world, but I mostly saw the urban parts of it. Let me tell you though, I was the first one to defend the value of urban wildlife. I think it's so god damn awful how people here talk about the classic urban animals. I used to bring some to the vet when I found a wounded one, and people would say: "Even pigeons?". Yes. You may not like them but they're a sentient being in a state of pain. Jesus.
I think what kept me in touch with the other than human world was horse riding. I'm so grateful I had this experience. It really informed my ecological thinking to come to know another species so intimately. While some places I rode in were less than horse friendly, most places endeavoured to instill a sense of respect and understanding in their students. That's definitely how you become a good horseperson. One of the things I learned really early on was that it's never the horses fault. It's always the rider's responsibility. If this is true, and I think it very much is, that leaves the responsibility to the rider to understand horses in general, and the horse they are riding in particular, in intimate details. That sense of relationality was a stepping stone for me to understand that animals are individuals as well as a collective. It has given me the gift of looking at the world as if it has intention.
The world is such a scary place right now, and I cannot presume to understand the amplitude of the consequences of this. But this understanding of the plentiful nature of intent in the world has saved me from many a dark place, and I'm sure it will do so again. Not to sound too spiritual here, but the world is a conscious place. It is full of things and beings yearning and striving. Recognizing this has helped me feel less cosmically alone.