You Are Nature
Stop kidding yourself that you are anything else
When I first began to realize that Medium wasn’t going to pay for my Ferrari or even a monthly tank of gas for my beaten-up old van, I decided to focus purely on nature writing.
My motivation was simple, I like writing about nature, and such articles are notoriously hard to sell. Magazines do occasionally take environmental pieces from me, but those sales are as rare as chicken's teeth.
With Medium as a channel to write on the subject I am most passionate about, almost at will, I then suffered my next disappointment; nobody cares. I could write about sex, writing, or a dozen ways to get rich while peeling an orange and garner more attention.
In hind sight, this should not have come as such a surprise. We humans have a gargantuan capacity to turn our eyes from the things we don’t want to see.
This is how gassing Jews, the slave trade, apartheid, and so many other injustices have been able to exist in a so-called civilized society.
With the obvious collapse of ecosystems, the climate crisis, and the massive habitat destruction that we are witnessing, one might have thought that the subject of nature was a little closer to home than the Holocausts of history.
Tipping point
Scientists tell us that as habitats are damaged, the resident creatures retreat into a smaller area, and eventually a tipping point is reached where extinctions start to occur. We are seeing that already, and it is going on at a rate that is simply breathtaking.
Current estimates suggest that we drive one hundred and fifty to two hundred species extinct per day.
Our planet is moving steadily toward a tipping point, and to assume that we will be exempt from the fallout is pure folly.
Interconnectedness
We are not, as some imagine, separate from the laws of nature. We are part of nature.
Every breath of particle polluted air we suck into our lungs, every sip of the diminishing fresh water supply we swallow, stand as a testament to this interconnectedness.
If you are merely average, you have sixty-seven types of bacteria living in your belly button.
For every human cell in your body, there is another microorganism that is a part of you. Ten trillion microbes for every person on earth.
We like to set ourselves apart; to imagine that we are not part of this one big ecosystem called Earth. That is pure self-delusion.
We are nature, and as nature is damaged, diminished, or destroyed, so are we.
We can turn from this uncomfortable fact, hide our faces, and blur our thoughts with fuzzy self-help articles and details about sex, as though it was an altogether new discovery.
The tipping point is nigh and don’t pretend this crazy old prophet of doom didn’t warn you.
Thank you for reading.
If you are a lover of the environment, nature, and wildlife, you may enjoy the following articles published in The Environment.
You can also inspire others to experience the beauty of this lovely planet. Just click the below image and be a writer for The Environment
