The Natural World is Stubborn

The Common Snowdrop ~ photo by the author

The wonderful Sun Magazine has a section called "Reader's Write" in which readers can have a short piece published on a particular theme announced in earlier issues. I'd like to write on those themes occasionally right here. 

 by d00glas reeser, March 2022

Being Stubborn.

We bought this small house in the woods almost three years ago now. At the end of a long shared driveway that slowly descends into a small cozy holler with a quintessential babbling creek, on the edge of a State Park, we live immersed in the natural world. And while, for as long as I can remember, I've hiked, camped, mountain biked, and otherwise spent time in the woods, this place has brought my daily life into contact with nature more than ever before. And the natural world is full.

Just the other day, on an unseasonably warm late afternoon in Spring, I was sitting outside, and began hearing the geese. First a high-flying group of around 200 in multiple V-formations, then a number of smaller groups, all flying in a somewhat northerly direction, all heading for their warm-weather homes. The hour or so of goose-honking was completed by the smallest flock, a low-flying couple just above the tree tops, honking in a somewhat deeper tone as if calling out for friends, and flying west, presumably to a nearby lake where I'm guessing they would meet up with some other overnighting geese.

It was the movement of those geese that led my mind into the immensity of what occurs in nature. Those geese, flying hundreds, maybe thousands of miles to a destination seemingly known only to them. And only when the time is right. Down on the ground, across the yard, the young apple trees are showing their buds, again, when they know the time is right. Over next to the chicken pen, little white snowdrops are the first flowers to pop up into the still-cold air, and winter-hungry hawks watch from a distance, keeping an eye on the chickens, wondering if there exists a full meal in our pen. The natural world is full. 

With just a few minutes of observation, it becomes evident how much happens in the natural world. And it happens whether or not we are there to observe it. And yet, humans have created our own world, a world in which nature is largely deemed unimportant, or at best a resource to be exploited. We have built our human world at the expense of the natural world. Our activity has increased the extinction rate of species across the globe. Our activity is quickly changing the planet's climate. Our activity is deemed, by us, the most important of all activity. And it is our stubborn clinging to and perpetuating of that belief that it appears those activities will go on right until they make life on the planet no longer possible. 

However, the natural world is stubborn too. The natural world will continue on with or without us. Somehow, some way, the natural world will continue being full. It is our stubbornness that may keep us from being there with it. It is the natural world's stubbornness that will keep it full, whether or not we are there to observe it.