Connected to nature

This is going to be one of those times where I am going to tell a lot of different stories that may not feel cohesive. You will have to decide for yourself the level of relevance.

Twelve years ago the International Comic Arts Forum held its gathering in Portland. I was able to attend quite a bit. I wrote several posts on it at the time.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/06/international-comic-arts-forum-source.html

While there were people who traveled to be there, Portland has a wealth of local comics creators (largely because of the presence of Dark Horse). One vivid memory that wasn't really about comics was a panel of writers who lived locally but were transplants, talking about coming to the Pacific Northwest.  

I remember someone talking about how beautiful it was, but also the coldness. That was not as a matter of temperature, but that nature doesn't care about you.

I believe a big part of the reason that stuck with me was because other people were nodding along, while I was like, "What are you talking about?"

I didn't contradict anyone there. I am not sure how I would have. It didn't sound right to me, but trying to argue that nature does care about you would also be weird. I don't think I could convey verbally a logical explanation for why I feel that is wrong.

(This is where you will need to figure out relevance and meaning for yourself.)

I will tell you another, kind of similar story.

A former coworker was with her family, and they noticed a flower child type of person literally hugging a tree. 

Her brother went up and hugged the tree too. He asked "Doesn't it have the best energy?" 

The flower child was all in agreement, but it was a funny story for them. I don't believe it was mean-spirited, but the brother was nonetheless teasing the flower child.

I have hugged trees. It's not something I do often, but there have been times when I have felt connection and closeness, and like maybe with that embrace we could share strength.

Now, I would also like to point out that I have never felt I needed to hug multiple trees. With what I know now about how they connect through the ground and canopy, maybe I was onto something.

Okay, I sound hippy-dippy. Well, the more I talk about fighting this administration, the more hippy-dippy I sound; that may just be what it takes.

I don't know why I feel that connection. Sure, we camped and hiked fairly often in my childhood, and a lot of my early jobs were picking berries and weeding and things, but I am not sure that's how it works.

I am currently reading Lost Woods, a collection of lesser-known writings by Rachel Carson.

She always felt that interest in nature, and she expresses her fascination with it beautifully, 

I can say that for me there was always that desire to know what that sound was or what that plant is named, so there was looking and observing and wondering. Maybe that's how the connection was built.

I'm not saying the plants were looking back, but maybe there was just an openness on their end, and if you stepped into that you became part of it. And if we're talking animals...

Here's the other thing I remember from that panel. Back when he was new to the area, one of the members remembered talking to someone who was saying it was pretty good out here, but "every now and then, a woman goes missing."

I think the timing would have put it around the height of the Green River killings. Of course that wasn't the only serial killer to hit the area, and there are women who disappear in less notorious ways all of the time.

I suppose I remember that because there seemed to be a coldness to the way the guy said it that perhaps matched the perceived coldness of nature.

Let me close with this from Carson when she addressed the Sorority of Women Journalists in the spring of 1954: 

Mankind has gone very far into an artificial world of his own creation. He has sought to insulate himself, with steel and concrete, from the realities of earth and water. Perhaps he is intoxicated with his own power, as he goes farther and farther into experiments for the destruction of himself and his world. For this unhappy trend there is no single remedy -- no panacea. But I do believe that the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.