Our Place in Nature

In class on March 14th we had a speaker come and speake about our relationship with nature and why humans feel connected to the wilderness. A lot of the time, humans go into nature hoping to feel alleviated from the stress of the world, and wanting to find a greater being. In someways they try to find themselves and search for a space to think thoroughly. For some, that greater being is God and they are able to feel closer to him in the nature in which he created. There is a sense of tranquility and exhileration when on top of a mountain or witnessing a beautiful landscape that at times can make us feel inadequate or small.
I really appreciated his stories and his view on the world and how he found God working through it.  I took away that we go towards nature because living in this day and age can be extremely hard to live in and people want a place where they don't feel burdened with a long to do list. People can turn to finding a place in nature that is uninterrupted and peaceful to them. He also talked about learning to see the unseen in everything and I thought this was interesting because there is so much more depth to things and places that are often times overlooked. It made me think of what specifically goes into every ecosystem and when our actions harm even the tiniest detail it can cause a domino effect. He gave an example of the great lawn, and how we wouldn't normally think of it as nature, but really there are ecosystems there that we are unable to see with our naked eye.

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