What the Natural World Means to Me

My awareness of the natural world began early on. I remember the seasons and in particular my first experience with snow. It was a winter when I was 5 or 6. I recall seeing snow and going out and playing in it in the yard with my family. We made snowmen and snowballs and went sled riding. I developed a love of nature and the way it could change and send you something wonderful out of nowhere. However, that same season, I remember the roads being terrible because of all the snow, and it was my first experience of being really afraid. It was strange to me how the same natural world that gave us such delight with the snow could also produce so many fears with the same gift. I could not comprehend it at the time—how, on the one hand snow in the yard was good for one experience, but snow on the roads while you are driving is the recipe for a bad experience. I just remember it confusing me and making me feel perplexed at the natural world.

So nature for me was at once beautiful and fun and on the other hand somewhat frightening in certain occasions. Yet as I grew from a girl into a young woman, I began to see nature in different ways. My attitudes about the natural world shift from being childlike and simplistic to being more adult. I began to understand the natural world a bit more thanks to school and science class. Some things remained a mystery—like how it all got here in the first place; how there were so-called laws of nature (how did the laws get there?), and so on. But I accepted it all, just as one would accept a dollar bill if it wafted through the air and landed in one’s hand. You could look around and ask questions and wonder where it came from, but it will in all likelihood remain a mystery. I could, in other words, learn about the laws of nature and observe nature out in the world, seeing the animals, the sky, the seasons changing, the fields, the stars, etc. I could comprehend the changes and understand the physics or certain things. However, at some point, I just had to accept nature as it was and is, without questioning it and without becoming too upset by it.

One later memory I have is of being at the beach and watching the waves crash on the shore. I remember seeing my friends run and play in the waves, but I did not want to go in. I could see that they were rough and I could feel their awesome power just standing on the shore and letting the water run up over my knees. The tide seemed to want to pull me in out to sea. It was a very scary feeling and I did not want to go any further into the water or try to brave the crashing of the waves. I appreciated the beauty of nature and the great fun that it was to just be on the beach and hear the sounds of the ocean and see the shells in the sand, and walk in the water on the shore—but I did not want to do anything risky. I knew by then that nature was a power that was beyond me in many ways and that I should always approach nature with a great sense of respect and with a great degree of responsibility. In a way, it connected me to that one winter of bad snow years back, when I learned to love snow from playing in it yet also learned to fear snow from riding in a car on a snowy road. Being on the beach and feeling the great power of the ocean, so inviting yet so dangerous at the so time, I realized that the natural world truly is a stunning and marvelous thing to behold—but that one should not be careless towards it, because the natural world is not something one should disrespect. Nature is a great force, and it can be understood to a degree—but in another way we are all still like children on the beach looking out to sea, wondering at the great mystery that lies before us.