Our Relationship with Nature

In my junior high school English class I remember debating with the class and teacher our views concerning man’s relationship with nature. At the time I made the contrarian point that it was equally easy to meditate in a windowless office room as it was under a tree in the Rocky Mountains during the summer. Even back then I didn’t totally agree with the point that I was making and I remember the teacher being pretty explicit in his assertion that there’s something about nature that resonates with people.

You mentioned in your letter that walking along the ocean is so relaxing and so peaceful that it evinces a link between modern humans and our algae ancestors. An interesting comment, but as you said, probably not directly traceable. There’s a lot separating Ian circa 2008 and Grandpa Fish, circa 2 million BC.

In your letters describing various outdoor excursions, you unfailingly use words like “quiet”, “silent”, “peaceful” and “refreshing”. I find that I, too, use those words, as do many other writers more famous than ourselves (I’m thinking, of course, of my literary hero Hemingway). When we go on hikes or on canoe trips we find that we can’t properly describe the look of the place without describing how it makes us feel. Even photos can’t show people how we felt when we were alone in the forest.

So our attitudes toward nature aren’t entirely decided by how things look and our proximity to “natural” stuff. After all, we can go to a garden show or a zoo and be surrounded by various plants and animals but still not get that feeling we do in a canoe on the Delaware River. Even in England, where there are big fields and wild-looking parks, you don’t get the feeling that you’re in a totally natural environment. I’m closer to that feeling in those parks than sitting here in my cubicle, for sure, but I’m not quite there.

In your letter you suggested that our history as wild animals living in a wild world has something to do with it. I totally agree with you. For 2 million years we evolved to be perfectly adapted to a wild world where it was dark when the sun went down, and where it was always quiet except when you spoke to your tiny tribe. The loudest noise was thunder, the brightest light was the sun. Imagine how in tune with the natural world we must have been! For millions of years! No wonder it seems familiar in a very basic, biological way.

We’ve spent the past 10,000 years or so trying to distance ourselves as much as possible from that “barbaric” life. Of course we’ve eliminated a lot of the crappy things about living in caves. Modern medicine is nice, we live longer and healthier than we used to and I guess there’s something to be said about self awareness and intellectual life. We’re becoming increasingly unfamiliar with the physical world we live in. So unfamiliar, really, that we’re gradually killing it.

We’re creating a new world and lifestyle that is not totally suited to our evolutionary heritage. For example, when you turn off the lights in your house at night you’re blind for 10 minutes until your eyes gradually adjust. You might wonder, “Well why don’t our eyes adjust instantaneously?” As Ben suggested the other day, I think it’s because evolutionary our eyes didn’t need to. In the ancient world the lights never went on or off immediately. The sun sets gradually, and it rises gradually, giving our eyes time to gradually adjust. There’s still something fundamental about ourselves that’s used to going to sleep at dusk and rising with the dawn.

So when we walk along the ocean or go on a canoe trip and explain to everyone how quiet and peaceful it was, I think we’re trying to express that part of us that still hasn’t totally left the forest. At the same time that we build concrete cities, our fondest wish is to spend a day alone in the woods.

I guess it all just goes back to the fundamental question that all humans, post and pre-civilization, must have asked themselves at one point or another: what on earth am I doing here?