The nature photography challenge on Instagram by SOIGNER LE MONDE reveals that nature is not limited to forests, rivers, or untouched landscapes.
I almost missed the challenge. It is not because I didn’t care, but because I cared too much.
I looked around where I live and felt disappointed. I didn’t see any wide green fields or majestic trees or clean rivers flowing freely. Just buildings, walls, concrete, dust, and the quiet chaos of everyday life. I told myself: There is nothing worth capturing here and then I stopped.
As I walked, still carrying that disappointment in my heart, my eyes landed on something I would normally ignore; a small plant growing out of a wall. Not a garden, not soil prepared for life, just a wall…worn, forgotten and yet the power of life had found its way through it.
That moment changed everything.
This plant wasn’t supposed to be there because no one actually planted it, no one watered it, no one ever cared about it. And yet it grew, quietly, stubbornly and beautifully. Beautiful how it didn’t ask for permission to exist but it simply did.
That’s when I understood:
Nature doesn’t only live where we celebrate it, it also survives where we neglect it. Thanks to the challenge that I learned to see and I noticed the fragile and persistent forms of life that continue despite our indifference. This is how much we have stepped on nature’s pathway and we hide our faces to see…to face the reality.
Caring for the world begins with attention and refusal to overlook what seems small or ordinary. Every plant, every insect to the most inconvenient carries value. Protecting nature isn’t only about saving forests or oceans, it’s also about respecting the smallest signs of life around us and maintaining nature’s beauty. We need to start acknowledging the beauty that exists even in the most random places.
That plant reminded me that life does not wait for ideal conditions and we should not wait for perfect landscapes to start caring.
Because if life matters even on a cracked wall and then it matters everywhere.
And it deserves our protection.
Act now, act for future!
