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Get Your Hands Off My Nature

Get Your Hands Off My Nature

Hello everybody,

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Each summer, my friend Alice visits a National Forest in Wisconsin. This is an amazingly beautiful and even lush forest, and it is her sanctuary for two weeks. This is where she tanks “nature” and dumps “city” so she can survive the next 11-1/2 months in Chicago. She stays at an inexpensive resort without social pressures, in a cabin that overlooks the lake. It’s a breath of fresh air for her – quite literally – to spend her two weeks each year at this place, away from bustling streets and busy people of Chicago. It’s not like a different world, it IS a different world.

At least, it was. She had a very different experience last month. She went into the cabin with her significant other, as usual, where they were confronted by a large, flat-screen television, equipped with a comprehensive satellite connection, for the first time. Don’t misunderstand me, they are TV-fans all the way. There was, however, something strange about having to look around this huge electronic device to see the beautiful lake they had come to visit.

They finally decided to ignore the TV; after all, it’s not their cabin – they don’t own it. Some vacationers might even crave 500 channels after they had had a hard day of hiking or fishing. Convinced that the TV (both the sight of it and the temptation to watch it) would change their experience, they went out to the water.

Alice later told me that, as they started out on the old, rented pontoon boat, something occured to her. She thought,

“We are no better than the CNN, MTV, MS-NBC addicts. Yes, we use our boat for the enjoyment of the outdoors; but it leaves a muddy strip of roiled up water behind it. Yes, we come to the resort to escape from the daily common things of our normal life and to bury ourselves in Nature, but we are living in a cabin – not a tent or a lean-to or just a sleeping bag under the night sky. We are cooking our breakfasts on an electric stove, we drink coffee made with an electric coffeemaker, and we turn on the (gas) heater if it gets too cold in the cabin. We aren’t roughing it; we we’re just making believe we are.”

Since this realization, she has been troubled. It’s puzzling for her because she doesn’t understand where her appreciation for nature has gone. She doesn’t understand how misguided travelers – herself included – consider themselves to be “living” nature, when really all she and the others are doing is taking a quick look at it in between the commercials. Yes, everyone experiences nature differently. For some, just sneaking a peek at it through the window or a car window – or even on a TV screen – might be sufficient.

River Panorama

She became concerned, though, that by admitting that this is an acceptable, legitimate way to experience nature, she is missing something. Or, maybe, she is missing everything. On the most elemental level, there is something truely satisfying about feeling a different kind of air on her skin. And about feeling the crunch of leaves and natural dirt, not graded gravel or sand on concrete, beneath her feet. Where there are no city lights to blind her eyes to the wonders of the night sky, seeing the stars in a new way, and experiencing the intense level of darkness as strange and exciting.

There is more to this simple human/nature combination than deep satisfaction, though. There is a true and present danger involved in the ways we humans currently explore nature. It is typical for visitors to nature to jump onto boats, jetskis, waverunners, snowmobiles, or ATVs to travel through lakes and forests and prairies. In these cases, vacationers are experiencing nature their way – and leaving a trail of pollution and destruction behind.

And what about the cabin Alice stayed in? It’s built right in the middle of the forest; trees and small animal habitat had to be removed in order for the cabins to exist, and to permit access to them. There is an inherent failed connection here: this place was designed to give bed and breakfast to nature-loving visitors who want to see the forest’s natural beauty, and yet in order for the system to exist, some of the forest had to be destroyed. Instead of seeing and touching nature in the raw, the visitors are being exposed to a forest damaged by human interference.

Does this have to be the way we “work”? Intentionally or accidentally, we humans just cannot seem to do anything without tinkering (or worse) with nature in its natural form. Even when we attempt to experience it without changes, we are also hindering it. So, we must consider some simple pieces of advice if we wish some small part of nature to continue to exist with a minimum of human damage.

There is a part of quantum physics that shows the relationship between the observation of tiny subatomic particles, and their quality or location. Basically, what is meant is very simple: the closer you observe, the greater the certainty is that you are disturbing the results. The same is true with nature: the closer we get to nature, the more we change it.

How do we stop this? It’s not an easy thing. My knee-jerk reaction is to say, “Get Your Hands Off My Nature!” What do you think? Write a comment and let the other readers know where YOU stand. Thanks in advance!

Lush Green Forest

All the best, and ciao for now,

Craig
for
Sue & Craig Websites

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Get Your Hands Off My Nature

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