September 15, 2017

Nature Is My True Business




Like Henry David Thoreau turning his “face more exclusively to the woods”, I am better known amongst the trees around my home than among the folk of our nearest town.

To me, the woods are a locale of self-salvation. Here, surrounded by Nature, I find respite from the brutality of the human world. The woods are full of beauty and interest and mystery, and draw me in to the comforting embrace of friendly boughs and limbs.

Within the mystery of the woods, I am never afraid. I am where I belong, and I can feel it in every cell of my body.

Here, I am carrying out my true business - living without the silly self-imposed separations inherent in the human world. Buckminster Fuller called it “categoryitis”, and it is the great separator that prevents collective action toward our common challenges.

Fuller warned that our illogical obsession with questions like “What is your race”, or ”nationality”, or “religion”, or anything else that artificially separates us, will be our doom. “By the twenty-first century,” he said, “it either will have become evident to humanity that these questions are absurd and anti-evolutionary, or humans will no longer be living on Earth.”

No such separations exist in nature. Naturalist Hal Borland described perfectly when he said, “You can't be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion, or challenge the ideology of a violet.”

I love the simplicity of that state of being. In Nature, things just ARE. Why can't we be that way?

One day we will join together as One with, and in support of, Nature. When that happens, we will see Earth for what it was meant to be - our collective peaceful paradise.




7 comments:

  1. I feel a kinship to living things when I'm in the woods and other natural settings. The more the grass is manicured or the earth is covered with concrete, the less kinship I feel. I too belong in the woods. It is the only place where I feel at home.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Terri,

      On a sustainable, loving planet we could feel at home everywhere. I would like that.

      Delete
  2. I wrote a two part blog post about my Italian heritage after being asked, "What are you?" which was followed by "You're not white." It made me wonder why people feel such a strong need to label each other and put them in categories. This is no lie, someone actually posted a comment on my FB page recently that said, "You have a huge heart, and to think, you're a Yankee." I threw my arms up toward the ceiling and hollered at the top of my lungs, "What is WRONG with people????" It made me realize that people don't see me for the person I am inside. They see me as the label they have placed on me. Ever since you posted the photo of that cabin in the woods, I have not stopped thinking about it. I run away to it in my mind almost every day. My solace lately is painting rocks and I have one that I made that looks a lot like the photo in this post. I would love to send it to you. I would just need your address. You can email me on my blogger contact form.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Lorraine,

      We love your rock art, and would love to see the one you are talking about. Your crow rock was my favourite, until I saw your cows. Painting is an awesome outlet, and one which Linda and I have both enjoyed. I will contact you with our address, and thank you.

      Delete
  3. Naturalist Hal Borland described perfectly when he said, “You can't be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion, or challenge the ideology of a violet.”

    How true and beautifully stated!

    Lovely post Gregg & Linda.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous9/17/2017

    It is possibly a logical obsession, as humans are social animals and fitting in and identifying with a group makes survival more likely. People think about these things a lot due to our hard wired social conventions. Racism is correlated with low intelligence and conservatism with average to low in intelligence. It's nice to believe in conspiracy theories if you can't grasp economic and social policies that would help gain a deeper view. Also on one level our immune functioning may be tired in by seeing someone different as a threat to our system, but this appears to be modulated by beliefs.
    Peace,
    Alex

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Alex,

      Identifying with my own "group" could be deadly. I do hope our big brains can overcome any vestiges of tribalism from our evolutionary history. It might be better for my survival to not identify with any particular group, except as a Person of Earth. I think that is our social destiny. How can we do this thing otherwise?

      Delete

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