I’ve always loved nature and her critters (well, most of them anyway). A developing interest of mine over the past few years is natural style aquariums. I came across the Walstad method and started a planted vase, which quickly turned into a 10 gallon tank.
My little glass box utterly fascinates me.
I have lots of plants, a mystery snail, and some shrimp. I keep it in my bedroom and found a silent HOB filter, so the sound doesn’t bother me. Though having next to my next to my desk is not the most productive thing; I can easily sit and stare at it for an hour.
Something is always moving. My snail leaping from the highest point he can find, the shrimp, well, shrimping. The plants sway in the gentle flow and green fluffy algae ripples with the current. If you look closer there are microorganisms, bundles of bladder snail eggs, and detritus worms keeping things clean.
It’s something that is truly alive where I can sit and watch nature doing its thing. Unfortunately, that also means watching Steve (the mystery snail) eat his smaller cousins. Ah, the circle of life. It scratches an itch I can’t explain (not the cannibalism, the other stuff).
It reminds me of a passage from the book Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World That Wasn’t Designed for You by Jenara Nerenberg.
In it, she interviews author Ingrid Fetell Lee, who says: “If you think about nature as the baseline for what our senses are good at processing, nature isn’t silent, quiet or still – nature is always moving – and yet it’s the most calming setting we have access to.”[i]
She also says: “I think we mistake something that’s calming for something that’s less stimulating, when in fact I think a lot of our environments are understimulating”.
My think my autistic brain especially appreciates the visual stimulation, combined with the art of designing a tank, and pouring my love into the critters I take care of. I think one day I’m definitely going to become one of those people with a shelf of shrimp tanks sorted by colour.
[i] Jenara Nerenberg, Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World That Wasn’t Designed for You, First Harpercollins paperback edition (HarperOne, 2021).
My Neurospicy Soup 