Enchanting Engagement with the Natural World

Wow, that's a tough one. Coming from the Midwest, I've been lucky enough to be surrounded by nature pretty much my whole life. My family has two lake cabins (pretty typical if you're a MN or WI resident) and I've spent many a summer lounging around the lake, swimming, canoeing, water skiing, etc. I love those times.

I suppose, though, that I would have to classify two different experiences as my most mystical/magical experiences with nature. I went to Australia last May, a trip that involved visiting the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree Rainforest. I had been snorkeling before in various locales, but the Great Barrier Reef was truly something else. I not only say brightly colored fish and intricately formed coral, but I also saw translucent cuttle fish, giant sea slugs and clams, and pulsating jelly fish (that fortunately didn't sting me). We spent hours swimming around, trying to absorb it all - it's an indescribable, absolutely breathtaking experience.

During that same trip, we hiked through the Daintree Rainforest on two separate occasions, once during the day and once at night. The Daintree is the oldest living rainforest on earth, and flanks the Great Barrier Reef, which is an amazing arrangement to contemplate in and of itself. During the day, we went with a guide, trekking up the narrow path, listening to the babbling brooks, picking our way over the boulders and trying to avoid the leeches. The guide identified dozens of plant and insect species, as well as some cassowary excrement along the way (we were thrilled to be so close to one of those famed birds, and we got a chance to see it from the car later). We were the only ones around, and the serene environment was all too perfect. A few nights later, we took a night walk through a different part of the forest. We had flashlights, which allowed us to see the spiders that blended in with the tree trunks, the sleeping birds on tree branches, the geckos that regrew their own tales and the tiny tree frogs. The coolest part of the whole thing, though, was when the guide told us all to turn off our flashlights. That was the blackest black I could ever imagine! The tree cover was so intense and we were so isolated that it literally seemed as if we were submerged in black ink or something. I couldn't see even an inch in front of my face. It wasn't scary at all, though - it was incredibly humbling and wonderful. This was how nature intended the night to be.

To answer the second part of the question, OF COURSE we should be concerned with saving nature! Nature allows us to live yet we continually screw it up, in almost every way possible. If nature goes, humans will go right along with it. It is incredibly arrogant and disgusting for anyone to think that he/she is above the laws of nature and his/her agenda is more important that practicing good environmental stewardship. This is why the environment is one of my biggest campaign issues - if we don't have the environment, nothing else really matters: economic relations would cease to exist (how would any information be transmitted/resources transported?), human contact would be limited (how would we travel so easily between continents?), and disease would be far more rampant than it is now. Who would want that kind of life?

It bothers me that, during my encounters with nature, I am disturbing natural ecological processes to a certain extent. I always try my best to limit my "meddling," but at the same time these experiences have made me love and appreciate the environment even more. I think that if everyone could have similar experiences, we would not face the environmental crisis that we do today.