Dear Earth,
You are a very nice place and I like you very much. Also you smell nice. Right now you smell like rain. You smell soft and quiet and sweetly herbaceous and the smell makes me want to breathe deeply and think a lot.
One time I went for a walk with my mom around a nearby cross country course and I thought it smelled so amazing. There were all these fabulous and unidentifiable plant smells mingling in the air and it made me feel like summer and happiness. My mom thought it smelled like dog poop. Obviously we had very different olfactory experiences. (Side note: the fascinatingly unique scent profiles that individual noses are able to detect is yet another testament to the awesomeness of this planet and all the life on it!)
I also love the way you feel. I love to stand on your spongy beds of moss and soft sand and cool grass. I love when my toes go rogue and pick a flower without my brain telling them to and then hold onto it stubbornly. It’s like when people adorn their hair with flowers, only my toes are adorning themselves. And I must say they do look very lovely with the addition of a tiny blossom.
I love how you sound. I love the wacky rubber band noises of bullfrogs on summer nights and the crackle of dry leaves and the sound that falling snowflakes make when I lie very quietly on the ground on a snowy night.
You remind me of all the hours I spent as a child hanging out with the flower fairies out in the woods and the garden. Remember the rock hotel with the tiny crater that I used to fill with water for a fairy swimming pool? And all the fairy dresses I made out of fallen flowers?
Sometimes when I am out in nature I get this feeling like it is just so beautiful and so perfect and so full of life that I don’t know what to do with myself. And yet I feel inspired to do something… It’s like the Earth is infusing me with creative energy and saying, “GO DO SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL TODAY, MARIA!” Today when I felt that, I decided to write a love letter to our dear Earth, to thank her for sharing that energy.
I thank you, Earth, from the bottom of my heart. I hope you never stop emitting those beautiful and mysterious smells.
Love,
Maria
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