This an essay I wrote for class a few years ago. The class
was BIONB
420, The Naturalists way and the assignment was to answer the
question, "What is nautre?"
I rediscovered this essay while doing some hard drive
cleaning and thought I'd share it. Send me any thoughts.
What is nature?
Nature is a walk in the forest.
Nature is the crickets chirping outside of my bedroom window.
Nature is my bedroom window, my kitchen walls and the entire house.
Nature is a virus, the universe and everything in between.
Nature is the physical laws that make a virus a virus and a house a
house.
Nature is the conservation of mass and energy.
Nature is the systems that maintain life on earth.
Nature is a crying baby and a barking dog.
Nature is an angry storm and a pleasant summer day.
Nature is the land, the air, and the water
Nature is the computer I am typing on.
Nature is the source of everything that people make.
Nature is the evolution of physical form.
Nature is the evolution of behavior.
Nature is the evolution of thought.
Nature is a garden.
Nature is a vacant lot.
Nature is a high-rise office building.
Nature is a public park.
Nature is female mate selection.
Nature is the alternation of generations.
Nature is sexual reproduction.
Nature is the Rocky Mountains, the Himalayas and the Alps.
Nature is the Sargasso sea, the Indian ocean and the Great Salt lake.
Nature is the Hoover dam, the Panama Canal and the Great Wall of China.
Nature is three months on the Appalaichain trail.
Nature is summitting Mount Everest.
Nature is sailing from the Keys to the Caymans.
Nature is Muir, Thoreau, London and Leopold.
Nature is music and dancing.
Nature is constantly changing.
Nature is eternal.
Nature is life and death.
Nature is my mother and father.
Nature is the theory of island biogeography.
Nature is my body and my mind.
Nature is the Bible, The Koran and the Tao Te Ching.
Nature is the academic and the farmer.
Nature is what connects me with my experience.
Nature is what connects the individual
with the
experience of being alive. Nature is where a person’s reality
intersects with the realities of the physical world. I have been
struggling with this essay for two weeks now and it occurred to me what
the problem was. I was trying to define a noun, trying to describe a
thing. It is impossible to distinguish between entities that are
natural and those that are not.
Nature in fact describes a relationship. Nature is not the trees and the lakes, but how the trees and the lakes define my existence. My consciousness of this relationship does not alter it. I only have to breathe the for air to sustain me. Having knowledge that it is oxygen that sustains me is only a fact I can exploit to benefit my individual experience. I can use SCUBA gear to visit the bottom of the ocean but I am still bound to my relationship with oxygen.
It is our senses and consciousness that allow us to interpret the connection we have with the world around us. Nature study is reflecting on the information we receive from the world around us. I have read about the need to develop in students a connection with nature. This type of statement is incorrect. What needs to be developed is an understanding of how we are connected to the land, the water, and the air. We are connected whether we live deep in the city or deep in the forest. It is the substance of that connection that students and others must examine.