Camping with her family, six-year-old Jenny and her brothers had collected a variety of berries - red raspberries, black-caps, blackberries and others. She helped her mom craft a “campfire” pie. “What kind of pie should we say we’re making?” her mom asked. Jenny considered her surroundings and the variety of ingredients. “Nature Pie!” Jenny cried.
No doubt like most of us, Jenny felt she was in “nature” while camping in their tent. They’d filled the pie with goodies found there, so Nature Pie was an entirely appropriate name for the goodness they were about to enjoy.
We each have our own concept of when we’re in “nature.” But where does “nature” begin? Is it when we step out the door of our home or when we walk into a park? Is it when we leave the city limits or enter a designated “natural area”?
Or could we be in nature as we sit at the breakfast table eating our cereal and drinking our juice? That food came from somewhere – from “nature”?? And our bodies at the breakfast table each include 100 trillion microbiota that we each carry on and in us. Microorganisms actually comprise 57% of that creature sitting at the table. Seems like that variety of ingredients chomping on corn flakes may be a sort of “nature pie” too.
Our egos tell us we are completely separate, independent beings. As such, we feel entitled to as much “stuff” as we can accumulate and have “earned.” Unfortunately, that frame of mind has created problems. The Anthropocene epoch is upon us. We’re in the period during which human activity has become the dominant influence on climate and the environment. The results include the advent of the sixth extinction in which species loss is 1,000 to 10,000 times the background rate. Also, humans now consume 1.7 Earth’s-worth of resources. Clearly, not a pathway to long-term success.
What to do? Perhaps we need to remind ourselves that “nature” isn’t somewhere out there in the park or beyond. Each of us is part of nature; we ARE nature as much as the wild berries in Jenny’s pie. Understanding that we are OF nature may dampen our inclination to mistreat that from which we are inseparable.
So enjoy being an ingredient of this bountiful Nature Pie. At the same time, respect all life that shares our collective home where we’re all forever… Earthbound.
No doubt like most of us, Jenny felt she was in “nature” while camping in their tent. They’d filled the pie with goodies found there, so Nature Pie was an entirely appropriate name for the goodness they were about to enjoy.
We each have our own concept of when we’re in “nature.” But where does “nature” begin? Is it when we step out the door of our home or when we walk into a park? Is it when we leave the city limits or enter a designated “natural area”?
Or could we be in nature as we sit at the breakfast table eating our cereal and drinking our juice? That food came from somewhere – from “nature”?? And our bodies at the breakfast table each include 100 trillion microbiota that we each carry on and in us. Microorganisms actually comprise 57% of that creature sitting at the table. Seems like that variety of ingredients chomping on corn flakes may be a sort of “nature pie” too.
Our egos tell us we are completely separate, independent beings. As such, we feel entitled to as much “stuff” as we can accumulate and have “earned.” Unfortunately, that frame of mind has created problems. The Anthropocene epoch is upon us. We’re in the period during which human activity has become the dominant influence on climate and the environment. The results include the advent of the sixth extinction in which species loss is 1,000 to 10,000 times the background rate. Also, humans now consume 1.7 Earth’s-worth of resources. Clearly, not a pathway to long-term success.
What to do? Perhaps we need to remind ourselves that “nature” isn’t somewhere out there in the park or beyond. Each of us is part of nature; we ARE nature as much as the wild berries in Jenny’s pie. Understanding that we are OF nature may dampen our inclination to mistreat that from which we are inseparable.
So enjoy being an ingredient of this bountiful Nature Pie. At the same time, respect all life that shares our collective home where we’re all forever… Earthbound.
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