ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:
It's been five years since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. For many, the earliest days of the pandemic were full of fear and uncertainty. But people also found small, unexpected moments of joy. And we've been sharing some of those moments over the past few days. In Seattle, Washington, Eileen Wurst found comfort in an overgrown strip of land behind her house, called a greenbelt.
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EILEEN WURST: I'm Eileen Wurst, and I live in Seattle, Washington. Working and living in the house, I was feeling like - just needing a place to go that wasn't here. That's what brought me outside into my backyard, and right behind my fence in my backyard is a greenbelt.
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WURST: So the city of Seattle, like, 50, 60 years ago - I believe their intention had been to build a small two-lane road between houses. But for whatever reason, they decided not to. And so nature had taken over the whole area.
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WURST: After work, I would go out into the greenbelt, and I would find a little clear patch - usually between some ferns. And I'd bring a little garden mat - like one of those foamy mats - and just sit there and breathe. So I'm looking right now, and I'm seeing two sparrows and a robin. And maybe you can hear them.
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WURST: And then I would notice that there were invasive plants. And I would get my clippers and start clipping away a little bit. There's English ivy. It's just growing up all over this beautiful vine maple.
I was an undergraduate in biology and botany, and I fell in love with the science of nature and ecology and how everything connected.
Oh, there's a beautiful flowering currant, pink-and-rose little blossom, and Oregon grape. It's fascinating how plants adapt and their structures and their interactions and their symbiosis with each other.
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WURST: The mycorrhizal network is a symbiotic relationship between the fine filaments of a fungal system and the plant roots themselves. And what it ends up doing - that whole network just underneath the surface of the soil - you can, like, go in your backyard; you can dig it up, and you'll see it - it helps the soil integrity.
Even though this virus had descended and wrecked havoc on so many people and so many societies that we were still able, maybe, to come together just in the same way that that network exists under the soil. Like, there was hope for humans in what nature was able to reveal.
I could just stand here all day.
SCHMITZ: That was Eileen Wurst of Seattle, Washington.
(SOUNDBITE OF BLUE DOT SESSIONS' "LITTLE WE KNOW") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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