The Present is the Time of Nature

The Present is the time of nature.

Most, if not all of the time, we live in industrial time.

Alarms, meetings, deadlines, commutes. Screens telling us exactly what minute it is in a dozen time zones. That kind of time is precise and valuable. It keeps planes in the air and factories running.

But it doesn’t do a great job of answering a more straightforward question:

Where am I in the life I’m living?

That’s what I mean by the time of nature.

The time of nature is the time that keeps going whether we check our phones or not:

the way light moves across the sky each day,
the way the moon appears and disappears,
the way a year unfolds through the seasons.

It’s not a metaphor.

It’s the literal background rhythm of your life.

You’re already in it:

your mood changes with daylight.
certain weeks of the year feel charged, without you looking at a calendar.
some places feel “out of time” because they reconnect you to a bigger rhythm.

The time of industry gives you clock time.

The time of nature gives you context.

What is “industrial time”?

The time of industry is the only one we learn:

school bells,
meetings,
shift changes,
“Be here at 9:00”,
productivity, efficiency, output.

It’s our "factory-setting" of time from youth to old age; an authority we never question.

It divides the world into:

work time (when you’re helpful in the system),
everything else (which often gets treated as a leftover).

There’s nothing conspiratorial about it. It just isn’t the whole story.

Though it parades as if it is, because it's the only story we learn about.

You can be entirely on time at work and still lost in your life.

The Present isn’t against the time of industry. I'm not advocating for people to throw away their clocks; I'm only refusing to pretend that it’s the only kind of time that matters.

Why do we keep escaping into nature?

If the time of industry really was enough for us, weekends in the mountains, long walks by water, and trips into the woods would be optional extras.

They’re not. For many people, it's survival.

We go outside to:

– feel small in a good way,

– see something vast that doesn’t care about our deadlines,

– remember that the world is older and wiser than our to-do list.

Psychologist Dacher Keltner, at the University of California, Berkeley, calls this feeling awe; the sense of being in the presence of something vast that challenges how we usually see the world. He’s spent decades studying it with colleagues at Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center.

In 2023, he published "Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life", about how everyday moments of awe in nature, music, art, and connection can reshape our lives.

Awe does something interesting to time.

Studies led by Melanie Rudd, Kathleen Vohs, and Jennifer Aaker have found that when people feel awe, they often report feeling they have more time available and less rushed or impatient, even though the clock hasn’t changed.

Other reviews of the science of awe suggest similar things: when we experience awe—especially in nature—we tend to feel more connected, less trapped in ourselves, and more able to step back from constant urgency.

We don’t usually talk about it that way when we book a cabin or walk in the park. We say:

“I need to get out of here for a bit.”

Very often, what we’re really saying is:

“I need to get back into the time of nature for a bit.”

What does awe have to do with time?

Awe stretches our sense of scale.

It reminds us that:

we’re a part of something vast,
our problems are real but not absolute,
we’re standing in one tiny part of a much larger story.

Studies have found that awe can expand our sense of available time, reduce the feeling of being “time-starved,” and gently push us toward experiences over things.

In other words, awe doesn’t give you more hours. It gives you a different relationship to the hours you already have.

That’s very close to what I’m trying to do with The Present; not by sending you into the wilderness, but by placing a small portal into that perspective on your wall.

How does The Present sit between work time and life time?

The Present is a family of time instruments that follow natural cycles instead of shift changes:

one hand moving through a year,
one through a day,
one through a lunar month.

The Present isn't anti-industrial-era-clock, they are timepieces tuned to the rhythms that refuse to rush.

You can install The Present where you work:

in a studio full of deadlines,
in an office where days blur,
in a home where work and life share the same table.

The laptop, phone, and calendar still keep you on industrial time.

The Present quietly, consistently sits in the background, reminding you that you're on nature’s time as well.

One part of the wall tells you what has to happen by 4:30.

Another part tells you where this day sits in the season, where this season sits in the year, and how life itself is unfolding in the gentle here and now.

That’s the difference between work time and life time:

Work time asks, “What do you owe today?”
Life time doesn't ask for anything, it only exists to be noticed, to be savored.

The Present is both a resource for answers and a source of questions that are typically difficult to surface when relying solely on industrial time. A lot of thought went into creating it, and the result is a thought-provoking conversation piece that offers time a whole new perspective.

Why bring the time of nature indoors at all?

You could say: “If I want the time of nature, I’ll just go outside.”

And you should.

But most of your life still happens inside rooms, looking at rectangles of light. Between those trips into the woods or to the ocean, days and weeks can collapse into a single feeling: “What just happened to this year?”

Bringing the time of nature indoors:

gives the year a shape you can actually see,
lets you feel some of the spaciousness and awe of being part of a cycle,
and reminds you that even the busiest day is still just one point on a much larger circle.

The Present is closer to a compass—a way to hold space for the reassuring continuity of nature when you’re racing against the clock.

How do you live with the time of nature?

There’s no method.

You don’t have to meditate in front of it or check it at set times. You just:

install it,
glance at it now and then,
and allow yourself to quietly register where you are on another dimension of time than the one you've used you're entire life.

Over time, you may notice that:

anniversaries and seasons don’t blindside you as often,
a stressful week doesn’t feel like the end of the universe,
and you have a clearer sense of the forgiving quality of life time even while you’re in the middle of the unforgiving nature of work time.

The time of industry keeps you moving.

The time of nature keeps you grounded.

The Present exists in the space where those two meet.

If you’d like to go further from here, you can read:

a simple explanation of what The Present is and how it works
or a deeper look at how cyclical time shapes our experience.

For the curious

If you want to wander further into the science of awe and time, here are a few starting points:

– How Awe Stops Your Clock – a short piece in Scientific American by Sarah Estes and Jesse Graham on how experiences of vastness can change our sense of time.

– Why Awe Promotes Prosocial Behaviors? – a 2019 paper in Frontiers in Psychology by Jing-Jing Li and colleagues, showing how awe can expand people’s future time perspective and nudge them toward more generous, prosocial choices.

– How Awe Brings People Together – an accessible overview from UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center on how awe can shrink the ego in a healthy way and increase feelings of connection.

– A closer look at the time course of bodily responses to awe experiences – a 2023 study in Scientific Reports by Ryota Takano and Michio Nomura, mapping how awe unfolds in the body over time through changes in physiology.

In time,

Scott Thrift