Nature Calls

“Environment” can generally be described as our surroundings, near or far. We have our home environment, our work environment, the environment at large, and all those in between. This makes it difficult to pin down a true meaning for the word environment when in different contexts it holds different implications. The only sure thing is that total isolation from “environment” is impossible. It is the realm in which we and everything else exists and therefore cannot be severed or secluded.
Nature is an even harder term to define since we have been raised to feel separate and detached from “nature” when really we are a part of it. As children we learned to explore nature, appreciate nature, or sometimes fear nature, but always we approached it as a foreigner visiting an unknown land. Nature was a bird’s nest found on the ground, but not our wood framed house. Nature flows through the stream in our backyard, but not through the faucet in our sink. The line at which something “natural” becomes “man made” or “unnatural” is nearly impossible to pin down. It is hard to know at what point our interference and manipulation take the nature out of a product of the earth and turn it into a product of the human. Although I don’t know at what point the human race crossed over from our natural beginnings, I do know that most of our current actions, products, and lifestyles do not fit in with the harmony that is nature, and instead seem to constantly interrupt the balance.