For some reason, I can't recall a favorite moment engaging with nature. My whole childhood, though, I was fascinated with nature. I'd wake up super early in the morning to go exploring the woodsy areas near my house. They're by no means big forests, just small areas where they hadn't decided to put houses yet. I searched for everything: plants, animals, trails, etc. I was especially fascinated with water. I'd jump in creeks and try to figure out how all the little streams in all the different woodsy patches were connected. As I became a teenager and older, most of these different patches of land were developed, except one that was a township park. It made me sad to see these places where I had spent so much time as a child playing become cookie-cutter houses. I realize now that this isn't just isolated to the Philadelphia suburbs. There's sprawl all over this country, all over the world, and there's no places that are untouched. When I was a kid, I thought I was the only one to see those deer or romp through that creek. But I wasn't. Others saw the value of that small plot of land in a completely different way than I did. They saw its economic value, and now the area I grew up in is filled with more ugly housing developments than I ever dreamed.

And of course it's important to save nature! I don't even now how to begin answering why it's important, because it just seems so obvious to me. We all need to conserve ourselves because we all live on this planet, and at this point, we are all responsible for what happens to it. And while our day-t0-day lives seem very far from nature, in reality they are not. Aside from its economic and material purposes, these little patches of nature and wilderness are the places of spiritual awakening, personal reflection, and childhood curiosity. Nature gives us far more than we give it, and it should be a priority to preserve what we can. We need to accept that humans don't need to live on every possible space on the planet.