Recreating Nature

Once upon a time, man lived in nature. He slept on the grass. He lived under the trees. He hunted the animals. Man was from nature. The man decided that he should tame nature. That he should grow plants the way, he thought best. Instead of hunting the animals, he would put them in cages and eat them whenever he liked. He would take the rest of the animals and make pets of them. He would then take those animals and some other plants into his home, to remind of what it was like when he used to live nature.

The irony of how humans live will never cease to amaze me. We want to eat meat, but many of us don't want to do the killing. If we say we don't eat meat, we probably still tote around a leather purse or cruise around on our plush leather seats. We fear insects and spiders as if our life depended on it. We sweep the dirt out of our homes and scrub it from underneath our fingernails.

Humans need nature. We do not need to recreate nature. As I look around my office right now, there is a deer skull, some bird feathers, pictures of cows, a statue of a bison, a stuffed fox and an assortment of other falsified accounts of what we call nature.

Next time you look at your house plant, your house cat or that bologna sandwich, think about how funny it is that you pay money to live in a space for your entire life and then try to get it to mimic everything that for the most part FREE right outside your door.

I'm not saying we all need to sell our houses and create nomadic communes of naturalists, but maybe we would all be better off with a bit more 'real nature' in our everyday life.

After all, I love my dog, but he's not a wolf.