Obsessing About Nature

gaining a deeper understanding of our place in ecology

I've been struggling with a way to see nature as an antidote to violence, specifically the gun violence that is confronting us in America, and elsewhere, these days.  I know for sure that hands-on experiences in nature are good for us.  I know that nature helps to quiet an unquiet mind.  But I'm also not groovy enough to believe that nature cures people who are sick.  I'll grant that the pharmaceuticals we discover courtesy of rain forest botany can actually fix some diseases, or mitigate pain, but I'm pretty sure that nature cannot fix somebody who is suffering from mental illness.  Nature with a capital "N" might be therapeutic, but I don't think it's a prescription for psychosis.

I do think, however, that a deeper understanding of our place in the ecology of the world can help those who seek to help the afflicted or those who work to mitigate the ills of our society.

I do believe that understanding natural relationships, processes, evolution and life cycles really helps us make informed decisions.  A close, careful, or even casual, study of physical processes in nature helps us to think hypothetically, to anticipate the future and plan for it.  When we think of ourselves as part of the life of the planet, not apart from it, we can't help but see ourselves in relation to the rest of the population.  It is my opinion that understanding yourself as an animal, subject to the same principles that rule animal and plant life the world over, helps you to see yourself as a human in relation to other humans.  You begin to see your own connection not only to folks on the other side of the world, but to the folks who live next door, those who might live very differently than you do, and yet you share this big common thing of trying to exist on the planet.


Check this out:

"The Amazon basin is one of the world's wondrous ecosystems, supporting massive amounts of life, both in kind and quantity. You might have thought about poison frogs or monkeys, but you've probably never stopped to wonder, "Where are all the nutrients that power this biotic explosion coming from?"

The answer is actually astonishing and delightful in that one-planet-one-love kind of way. As laid out in a 2006 paper that science writer Colin Schultz dug up, nearly half of the nutrients that power the Amazon come from a valley in the Sahara called the Bodélé depression."

--The Atlantic

Those America-sized dust storms in the Sahara then push the nutrients half way round the world to grow that "biotic explosion" (all those plants and animals) in the rain forest.  And you know what?  The plant and animal life in turn eventually become the silt that the Amazon itself washes out into the ocean and that silt gets pushed around the world again, fostering new life in the oceans.  And that life works up the food chain and out of the sea, eventually to us and our open mouths (fish meal is a main food source, or fertilizer for the food source, for a lot of the stuff we eat).  And then, eventually, we, let's face it, end as dust (or food).  Dust to dust.  We get all that great pharma from the rain forest and we get fed to boot, because we are an inextricable link in a chain of events that does not necessarily begin or end with us.  Humbling, isn't it?

So here we are, connected.  America holds China's hand economically.  The latest reports from Kenya suggest that at least one of the terrorists may be a Minnesotan.  I'm sure I buy clothes that are made in Bangladesh.  Every day, we send our kids off to schools that look a lot like Sandy Hook, but we pray that they have one important difference.  And what, pray tell, does any of this have to do with nature education and young children?  Well, to my mind, if people grow-up understanding their relationship to the rest of the world, and each other, if that is always at the forefronts of our minds, if that is a foregone conclusion, something we don't have to struggle to teach anymore, then we are that much more capable of getting along and solving problems together.

Farmer Jenna shows off Dodge bees at work

Right now, at Dodge, children are learning about bees.  This is the perfect season to talk about bees, as we are in the midst of the bees' big push to cache honey for winter.  Metro area kids are visiting Dodge to learn about bees.  Preschoolers are visiting the apiary and eating honey.  I'm even dragging a bunch of bee stuff out to my satellite classes for homeschoolers.  What are kids learning?  A lot of interesting stuff, but here are some big bullets:  

• bees need plants
• plants need bees
• animals need plants
• people need animals and plants

bees in the frame:  preschoolers consider the comb

Plants give us the air we breath after all, and so oxygen is in part courtesy of the bees.  When you swat or step on a bee, you are depriving yourself of a little bit of air.  Sounds dramatic?  Well, not really.  What comes around, goes around.  A good bee steward is planning on a future that includes plants and animals and air, essentially life.  One can be a good bee steward; one can be a good human steward too.  Take care of your fellow humans (you pick your stewardship:  education, health care, gun control etc), and you take care of yourself.  Obama says that the gun violence issue should "obsess us."  Whatever you think of that, also consider that the nature of our relationship to the planet and to each other should obsess us.  Teaching each other about the wonderful, complicated, inextricably inter-woven tapestry that is life on earth might just make the future possible.

preschoolers eat apples and watch wasps eat apples

The natural world can be a violent place, of course.  Humans, being natural, have the potential to be violent as well.  That potential is likely with us forever.  Some humans are of course victims of circumstances that incline them toward violence for a wide variety of reasons.  I cannot debate that, but I can suggest that our collective response to violence and the potential for it can be informed by a better understanding of who we are, what we are up to on this planet and how we share it.  Stewardship and care begin in "the garden," and once again, I am suggesting that, as the song says, we got to get ourselves back to it.

bee stewardship

worker bees and their liquid gold

P.S.
My colleague, Joey, suggests that bees may also offer outfits like JP Morgan some instructive lessons about sharing...JP Morgan may already know a thing or two about bees though.  Did you know that bees will swarm a single wasp, or those they see as interlopers by suffocating them with their body heat alone?  Socialism?  Or "All the Kings Men?"  You decide!