Zazie Beetz Instagram – I grew up in the city and people think of me of as a city girl, but I have actually always been a girl of the crickets. I never shied from worms and watched them wriggle in my earthen palms. After rainfall I would collect the slugs on the road and slip them back under the cover of leaves. I’ve picked through the thorns of blackberry bushes, and sucked the nectar out of purple clover blossoms. People would tell me that black people don’t hike, don’t camp, don’t revel in wilderness. This always irritated me. I’ve climbed mountains. I sip cool stream water. Why can’t I, a black woman, be a child of nature? Our home. Our first home. Before the concrete boxes. This is our mother. And I will always lay my head in her lap, my eyes peacefully closed, her gentle tides caressing my hair as the waves lull me to sleep.