It’s dangerous to think of ourselves as loathsome creatures or as perversions in the natural world. We need to see ourselves as having a rightful place. We take pictures of all kinds of natural scenes and often we try to avoid having a human being in them. In our society, we force ourselves into a greater and greater distance from the natural world by creating parks and wilderness areas where our only role is to go in and look. We lavish tremendous concern and care on scenery but we ignore the ravaging of environments from which our lives are drawn.
Richard Nelson (1941-2019) author of On Arctic Ground
“That disconnection from the natural world is one of the biggest motivators in every area of my life. Because we romanticize the rest of nature and in doing so we place it on a pedestal. And, whenever we put something on a pedestal we are by default limiting it; we’re limiting our access to it. The further we are from it the more we get an image in our head of it that isn’t really accurate. By engaging with nature, and taking it down from that pedestal, and being willing to get ourselves dirty, and maybe break a few sticks along the way, like we did when we were children,
we’re able to reconnect and have a more honest and caring relationship with what we’ve learned to appreciate in the world around us.”
Lupa, author of Nature Spirituality from the Ground Up:
Connect with Totems in Your Ecosystem
