Response 1: Atom Bombs and Safety Pins

Welcome to my first ever blog!  Yes, I’ve always been a private one, hiding inside my spiky little shell.  But now, in the pursuit of knowledge, I am urged to reveal myself on the fascinatingly intelligent and worldly web.  For my course in nature writing, my classmates and I will be using our blogs for responding to readings on nature and the environment that intrigue us, as well as for keeping our own nature journals.  But this “nature writing” is a sticky subject, because, after all, what is nature? 

I think most people would say that nature is essentially anywhere on earth beyond human’s grasp.  It is a bird sitting on a branch, a forest without loggers.  It is a sea turtle laying eggs on a moonlit beach, a tadpole turning into a frog.  Babs, my mother, says nature is “the sky, the sun, the moon, the trees, the dirt.”  Then, more affirmatively, “The dirt.”  Wikipedia widens the definition to “the phenomena of the physical world” and also “life in general.”  With a definition like that, more than a sticky subject, I imagine “nature writing” as a whole fly-papered tree, taking hold of every thing, living or dead, that happens to stick to it during a hurricane.

In “This Nature,” Pattiann Rogers writes, “Nature is everything that is.  We are not and cannot be ‘unnatural.’”  She goes on a long and dispassionate rant how abortion and the atom bomb and language and the safety pin are all nature and natural.  Why?  Because we humans have created those things.  And what are we?  “We are thoroughly nature.  To claim otherwise is to attempt to place human beings and everything we do in some rare unimaginable realm beyond the universe, thus rendering the power of our origins lost and our obligations vague.”

This statement fascinates me.  Indeed, we do separate ourselves and what we do from nature.  But how can we?  Are we not animals?  In the same way that a bird builds a nest, do we not build houses?  Can we not see that Chimpanzees are territorial to the point that they will commit murder to another of their own species?  Isn’t that what we do in war?

It is ignorant (but at the same time, delightfully human) for us to distinguish ourselves from animals and nature, for as science continues to prove, the differences between all us critters are very very slight. 

So why, I wonder, have we identified ourselves apart from nature and the other two million identified species on Earth?  Something tells me it has to do with a pang of guilt we feel in response to those alarms blasting in our ears, signaling the destruction of the planet.  Oh, you don’t hear them?  It’s just a global crisis.  Nothing to worry about.

But back to that bird’s nest that we were talking about.  Picture this: It is early May.  A fat gangly looking bird, shiny black feathers on her back, bright red breast.  She flutters around a low brush, collecting twigs in her beak.  She grabs some grass, some paper, a feather!  Oh, what a find!  Now, for a spot.  Under the foliage of a thick bush, the perfect branch awaits.  She builds her nest.  Her home.  She lays her eggs, they hatch, they cry.  She feeds them.  They fly.  Summer fades.  The nest breaks apart.  Twigs fall away.  A feather is carried with the first autumn breeze.

Now picture this: Dad backs the Jeep out of the garage on Monday morning.  God, it stinks.  The trunk is filled with plastic trash bags.  He heads over to the dump, throws the bulging sacks onto the heap.  And that’s that.  He heads back to his nest, where he grows his family.  The cry out.  He feeds them.  They fly away.  Little does he know that eventually his trash will float out to the Pacific Ocean, to become part of a garbage patch twice the size of Texas.

So both these nests are natural, but what is the difference?  One is destructive, while the other blends back into that from which it came.  So we are naturally destructive.  And what else is nature?  Besides war and laughter and bombs and hospitals and marriage?  Nature is natural selection.  Like millions of species before us, humans have the potential to go extinct.  “We are destroying the environment,” we are warned.  But this is not true.  The “environment” will go on.  “Nature” will always endure, even if it is depleted, weak, and choking for a breath of fresh air thanks to humans’ (naturally) irresponsible behaviors.   It is us that may cease to exist, and perhaps this is to be our natural course of existence on this planet.  Am I comfortable with this somewhat tragic fate for mankind?  I think so.  But there’s one more thing.  If nature is everything, then nature is anything.  And nature is constantly changing.  Humans are the most intelligent and adaptive species ever to live.  And we do seem to care about one another, at least sometimes.  So maybe I’m too quick to subscribe to a “Life After People” mentality.  If anything could change the course of nature, it’s humans.