Enemies-To-Lovers: My Romance With The Great Outdoors

Two rivals. An idiot with way too much main character energy. A whole lotta tension. One grand itty-bitty love story that spans decades. This is the tale of how I hated, unhated, and kinda sorta fell a little bit in love with nature. (Disclaimer: Tropes abound!)

In 2011, I went for a hike for the first and last time in my life.

It was long, physically taxing, and for an indoor cat like myself, essentially a waste. I decided, with all the naivete and petulance of youth, that the great outdoors were not for me.

And in the years since, I amassed the mental dossier of stuff to back that claim. Safe to say, that hike ensured that my friendship with nature = cancelled.

Nature was… too big. Too bold and brash. Everyone loooooved nature because nature could be so friendly and inviting and lovely. But not me. Nuh-uh. Over the course of that hike, I swore to myself (you know what they say about famous last words) that nature had found a rival in me.

And so, the next decade or so was spent muttering about nature under my breath. I, naysayer extraordinaire, would mount defence after defence to avoid interactions with nature. Nature could seek its fangirls elsewhere.

But that, dear reader, is just one part of the story. The set-up, if you will, for the romantic tale of how I had to eat my own words when I discovered that nature was not so bad after all. And maybe I could love it. A little. Sometimes.

Exposition Dump: A Little (More) Backstory

Good narrative technique impresses upon the writer that a story that begins with a flashback should not travel further back in time to set up the rest of the story.

But I’m a rebel without a cause, so that’s just what we’ll do.

Ahem. So. Much before 2010 and that character-building hike, I was an escape artist a voracious reader. In fact, voracious doesn’t begin to cover it. I spent any and all my time with a book in hand. Five more sat patiently awaiting my attention beside me, ready to transform from folios made of tree pulp and ink into portals that transported me into other worlds.

In my business, we call that foreshadowing.

Revealing The Theme: The Great Escape

See, as a consequence of the way industry and economy have evolved over the last 200 years or so, nature is no longer a key setting in the lives of an ordinary urban woman like myself.

What I mean to say is that being in the great outdoors – unless they are your source of sustenance or where you live – are a getaway from the stuff that makes up the core of our world and worldviews.

You escape to nature. In its many shapes and forms, it serves as a destination one flees to in order to set regular life aside. The career. The city. The cares. The cult of success. You leave it all behind for the haven of your choice in nature, even if it is just for a day or two.

And as a master escaper, I should have known in 2010 that where others escape to is likely to appeal to me as well.

All Up In My Feels

Depressing backstory aside, in categorising the types of conflicts a character might face, a significant one is human versus nature.

Basically, the protagonist must overcome an obstacle that is either in itself nature, or a product of it. Think tornadoes, feral animals, being lost at sea, wildfires, and the like.

The me versus nature conflict was not so overlarge or intense or dramatic. It’s way more petty, honestly. An internal conflict masquerading as a personality trait. But there was some tension.

Narrator: There was a lot of tension.

But it was not meant to last. See, the story did not end in 2010. It continued onwards, as stories do, seeking without fail its resolution. And the resolution was that I had a personal grudge that I needed to look into.

Yes, I had indeed spent a decade being childish. I had my reasons and I am mildly embarrassed in retrospect, but I can confess to my reaction being kneejerk way back when. I mean, you spend decades thinking nature was the source of friction when it was you all along. Hmph.

Bookmarking The Resolution

I will admit, as someone who still spends more time with her nose in a book, I should have seen the resolution to this conflict coming.

The books that I used to escape were not so dissimilar to the sanctuary that many others seek in nature. I just had to re-enact Pride and Prejudice for my own displeasure to finally accept that I, too, could learn to love nature a little.

So once I stopped looking at nature as the antagonist, and actually spent some time with it in a way that did not involve hiking of any sort, I could see the appeal.

Like all readers, I have preferences — genre, style, tropes, et al. Nature too offers up a vast menu of preferences — warm, cold, arid, verdant, wet, dry, and so on. I simply had the misfortune of experiencing the great outdoors in a way that did not line up with my preferences.

A logical deduction, but one that escaped (ha! See what I did there?) me nonetheless.

Writing My Own Love

A good escape artist appreciates a great escape. Since discovering the flaw in my logic behind disliking nature, I have found a variety of small and big ways to appreciate nature’s vastness, its audacity and spirit, its pleasantness and promise and beauty.

I like sand between my toes. I like how grass smells near water bodies. I like a sky full of stars without light pollution. I like collecting flowers to press between the pages of my beloved books. I like that nature is a perpetual symphony of found sounds. I like the chiaroscuro created by waning sunlight trickling through the branches of trees.

I submit to what is a truth universally acknowledged: a single woman in possession of at least two brain cells, must be in want of an occasional rejuvenating retreat in nature.

Tropes, Tropes, Tropes

Every good romance – in my now-humbled opinion – has at least one trope driving the plot. Nature and my romance has several of my favourites (wink, wink).

It has some real hurt-comfort goodness, in that sometimes the job I love very much sucks the marrow out of my bones, and as such the brittle things need a little timeout to be healed by the soothing spa of nature.

It has forced proximity, in that I had to suck it up and spend time with nature to end my war and find my peace with it.

It has opposites attract. (See above: I am an indoor cat.)

It has miscommunication. (See: Bad first impression c.2010)

But most significantly, it has enemies-to-lovers. Even if the opposition was one-sided (nature never grumbled about me, after all), it was about finding common ground, overcoming resistance, and letting the tension sweetly turn into affection.

Knowing all of this, would I change anything in the timeline to reach a quicker conclusion? Nahhhh. What is a story without conflict? Not much of a story at all. I’m glad for the set-up and the friction and the resolution and the getting my head out of my ass.

Having seen this journey progress to the present day means that I always have a story to tell. What more can a reader ask for?

Post-credits scene: If you’re still wondering whether nature is for you, may I suggest a trope that might help you feel less combative towards it?

Meet only one bed, where you find a getaway in nature that ably balances creature comforts and access to the great outdoors — all from a tiny house where you share your space and bedside manner with nature.

Fall in love with nature with Tenpy’s tiny homes, where you can take small steps towards your own grand romance. Book your stay.