Are humans still part of nature? We are still part of nature even if we destroy the rest of nature to benefit ourselves. We still fit into the old saying survival of the fittest. We are the highest on the food chain so we are the fittest. I grew up in the little town of Ojai California where conservationists try every crooked angle they can find to stop humans from entering and destroying nature. I remember hearing them claim to have found endangered tree frogs to steel head trout that were planted to look like natives to endangered tortoises. The point of their existence was to close off the wild from humans. Why? Why would a person want to separate us from the very nature that God gave us? What is the point of saving it if no one is allowed to enjoy it?
I grew up hearing the cry of save nature before it’s gone. What about getting back to nature? What do we do when we can’t get to the lands that we long to see? What if I wanted to live off the land as my ancestors did? I’m just as much a part of nature as the deer and the coyote. When I die I become the same dirt as all the rest of the living things on this planet. So how is it that you can’t consider me part of nature? Don’t i compete for the land with the rest of the animals? If a bird plants a seed it’s nature but if I do it you call it farming. Why is it any less natural that I had a thought behind the planting of a seed and the bird merely dropped it? Would the same plant still not grow?
Do I not compete with the birds and the bears for the salmon? Do I not eat from the ocean just as the fish do? Do I not breathe the same air as the animals? Do I not die as randomly as the animals? Am I not born of a power greater than myself, and grow and age and wither just like the animals? I build a nest like a bird, I have a den like a fox, I fly through the skies like a bird. I swim like a fish. I mate for life like a penguin. If an animal does things I do, are they still part of nature? I am a nomad always searching for food like the polar bear. I am nature in it’s forgotten form.
