Beauty

Nature. Can’t live with it, can’t live without it. Well…sort of. The truth is we really can’t live without nature. Nature essentially is what keeps us alive. If it weren’t for the trees and plants absorbing our carbon dioxide and producing oxygen for us to breathe, well, we would have died years and years ago. However, it is possible for us to learn to live with nature. Sometimes I think we just choose not to do it. And this may not be because we are just bad people and don’t give a darn about the rest of the world. Most of us want to be one with nature, but this world we have come to create for ourselves makes it extremely difficult.

It is so easy to just say that we want the best for nature, but realistically it is so incredibly hard to keep nature’s best interest at heart all of the time. We have created a world in which we rely on cars and airplanes and machinery, and construction equipment and etc., and etc., and etc. The list goes on forever. Technology has become so advanced and we have become completely dependent on fossil fuels and all sorts of things that are polluting the environment. If we really wanted to start putting nature’s best interest above our own all of the time we would really have to go back to the way we were living over a hundred years ago. I seriously doubt if there are many people that could do this. I know I couldn’t do this. So the truth of the matter is that sometimes we just have to put ourselves first if we want to continue living like this. Having said this, though, I completely agree that maybe nature’s best interest should come first sometimes, but exactly where this fine line between us and nature is drawn, I’m not so sure.

I grew up in a small town. Actually you can’t even really call it a town; it is more of a village. My house is way out in the country. We don’t really have next door neighbors, we have next door trees. So, I have always been around nature and have learned to respect it and see its beauty. In fact I feel that my biggest reason for protecting nature is simply to preserve its beauty. I couldn’t imagine living in a big city without the fresh air to breathe or the green grass under my feet. I come from a family that also respects nature. They don’t litter. They don’t hunt. They recycle. My mom even gets trees in the mail from the Arbor Day Foundation to plant around our house. However, being that we live far from everything, it is necessary for us to drive just about anywhere we need to go. So, it seems that there has to be a trade off. We want to respect nature, but in order for us to live our lives we sometimes have to put our own interests first.

I think most of my feelings towards nature stem from its beauty. My family and I recently took a trip out West. I got to witness firsthand the natural beauty of the Rocky Mountains and the Grand Tetons. I got to see the trees and animals in Yellowstone. I visited the Arbor Day Farm in Nebraska and saw so much beautiful scenery that it was almost hard to digest it all. I experienced all of this and it gave me an appreciation for nature far beyond what I had had before taking the trip. It almost gave me a sense of peace just looking at all of it.

Now just because I appreciate and respect nature, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I believe it is all up to us to stop global warming and take full responsibility for what is happening all around us. I believe that the Earth goes through natural cycles. Cycles that it has been going through long before we were around. It has experienced Ice Ages and obviously it warmed up on its own or we wouldn’t be here right now. I do admit that it is possible that we have maybe caused this process to speed up slightly by releasing toxins into the air. At the same time though I also believe that the Earth is heating up on its own anyway. It might not be all our fault. I don’t know, maybe I’m just telling myself this so I can sleep at night…who knows…