Greetings from My Mountain Cabin,
An organism will generally thrive in the environment it was designed to function. Do you have a special place that you like to go to, perhaps only in your mind, where you feel nurtured, comforted, and at peace? Might it be a favorite location from your childhood—the home of a loving aunt and uncle in the country or on the lake? Or maybe your special place is a park that brings back thoughts of hand in hand strolls with your mom or dad. Is there a place in your heart that welcomes you, just the way you are, and speaks in a voice almost imperceptible, but very real, that says, Come in and stay awhile. Here is where you belong?
Your affinity for just such a physical location may indeed be the result of a deeper connection than you realize. Humans have a psychic need for wilderness.
If we were to take a rattlesnake from the vast open desert of Arizona and plop it onto an ice floe in Antarctica, the animal would not live for very long. Since the body temperature of a reptile is wholly dependent upon the temperature of its surrounding environs, we would have a cold, stiff, inert snake in a relatively short period of time.
Fish cannot live out of water for very long. A moose would have a rough time of it trying to live in downtown New York. If we were to take a great white shark and place it in a chlorinated swimming pool, we would have a large, belly-up fish in a matter of hours. We probably wouldn’t have very many recreational swimmers in the pool, either. In short, the life forms on our planet have evolved to accommodate, and indeed thrive in, environments that are supportive of the viability of each species.
Since human beings are integral parts of the natural environment and not merely detached observers, we are subject to the same immutable laws of creation. The human of the species functions best in the environment in which it was intended to live.
What is that environment? It is one having an abundance of clean air to breathe, water untainted by contaminants to drink, nutritious food to sustain the body, meaningful relationships to enrich the soul, a moderate amount of challenge/stress, all amidst the envelopment of green growing things. The extent to which we compromise on any of these elements is the extent to which we change the environment upon which we are dependent for survival.
Inhaling substances that contain carbon particulates and harmful gasses will negatively impact the functioning of our lungs. Ingesting impure water and food laced with chemicals, hormones, antibiotics and microorganisms is destructive of life, not supportive. When high stress becomes a defining pattern in daily existence, all bodily systems suffer. And lastly, when we choose to dwell in concrete canyons, spending most of our days in artificial environments illuminated by incandescent light, we are physically removing ourselves from the source of all life—the natural environment.
Henry David Thoreau so eloquently explained to us that life was different at Walden Pond. Of course it was! Returning to the freshness, the vitality, the total aliveness of that small body of water on the outskirts of Boston was a marked departure from life in the city.
The natural environment is the biological cradle of humankind. You have hydrogen atoms sparkling throughout your body—hydrogen atoms that were actually birthed fourteen billion years ago! Since matter can be neither created nor destroyed, the stuff of which you are made has been around since the origin of the universe.
Yet, our reliance on technology has insulated us from the natural world. We live in cities and urban tracts with few, if any, native green areas. Our food is processed and the water we drink is chemically treated. Many of us spend the majority of our time each week indoors—working at a job that keeps us grounded to a specific site, bathed in artificial light, rarely providing us with the opportunity to return to Nature. Even the air we breathe in our places of work and our homes is filtered and climate-controlled.
On this coming Earth Day, I invite you to take a moment or two to bask in the sunshine, sit in the park, relax beside a creek, help a turtle across the road, kiss a toad (just seeing if you are paying attention), plant a tomato, take a dip in the ocean, hike a mountain trail, smell honeysuckle, play with an animal companion . . . and reclaim your heritage. In fact, don't do this only on Earth Day, for you see . . . you CAN go home again!
Happy Earth Day,
Ed
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