Does Nature Love You Back?
Earlier this summer I read Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic. There was a passage in it where she describes two questions the botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer asks her students at the start of every semester:
1) Do you love nature?
2) Do you believe that nature loves you back?
As one would expect of any group voluntarily signing up for a botany class, every one of her students loves nature.
And as we also might expect in this world so deeply damaged by human actions, those students are much less certain that nature loves them back.
When I read this, I kept my metaphorical hand raised for both questions, but I must admit that it took me a minute on the second one, and five years ago I probably would have sheepishly pulled my hand down along with the rest of the class, feeling a bit dispirited as I reflected on all the ways we, and I , have damaged this planet on which we depend for quite literally everything.
So, what changed?
Setting aside my aversion to direct sunlight and biting insects’ affinity for me, I have always loved being outdoors. I love hiking, camping, taking in grand vistas, painting en plein air, nature journaling, and swinging gently in a hammock. Any time I have had a deck, patio, porch, or courtyard, I have prioritized getting a table for it so I can enjoy my coffee with the breeze on my face and eat dinner outside as many nights as possible.
And still, for most of my life, I would not confidently be able to say that nature loves me back.
Love is a reciprocal act. It is not until one is actively engaging with nature, not just being and taking, but seeing and acting their part in these incredibly complicated systems that sustain all life on this earth, that we begin to engage in that reciprocity.
When the spousal unit and I bought our house a few years back, it came with a yard. The best part of this yard, in my very strong opinion, was that it already had about 10 mature trees growing on the smallish suburban lot. It seemed clear to me that this particular patch of dirt wanted to be a woodland. When I looked up the natural history of this area, I learned my instinct was correct. This dirt, now in my care, was a rich woodland that supported indigenous communities, which was then converted into farmland, and then 1950's suburbia.
By the time I met this land, it was covered in "low maintenance" landscaping and a bunch of grass. It was, as suburbia often is, fairly sterile. But with a suburban woodland of mature trees, many native to this area, as well as nearby rivers and nature preserves1, there was still an abundance of birds, squirrels, skunks, and possums—and an overabundance of deer.
I started researching woodlands and forest structures when waiting to hear back on our offer for the house. When we got it, I spent the first year learning what was already here and starting my ongoing campaign to take out the invasive plants. Slowly, I am replacing most of the landscaping with plants that used to grow in this area before it succumbed to the plow.
I won't claim that this work is a "restoration" of the land to anything that it was before, but it is a series of intentional decisions meant to make this little bit of dirt more beautiful to my eyes, more functional to our human needs, and more supportive of the non-human communities that make their living here.
And this work pays dividends.
A small example: When we moved in, there were about 20 European yews in our yard. They are evergreen and will grow under just about any conditions, so they are popular for low-maintenance landscaping. They aren’t problematic as far as self-spreading goes, and they do provide cover for birds and little animals, but they aren't a food source for much of anything on the North American continent.
I’ve ripped out most of them and am replacing them with shrubs native to this area. Where one scraggly yew used to stand at the front of our house, I planted three dwarf winterberry shrubs because 1) they were on clearance at the hardware store, 2) I wanted something attractive to look at, and 3) the berries are food for birds in the dead of winter.
On the coldest day last winter, about two dozen robins spent the day stripping every last berry from those shrubs. Far from being sad that I lost my pop of color, I had that same satisfied feeling I have after a dinner party where I have taken pains to feed and care for beloved guests.
I had planted them a meal, and they were surely grateful for ready food on that well-below-freezing day.
When we take from nature without return, we may love nature, but it is the self-serving love of an infant; as a parent provides for all of an infant's needs, so to does nature provide for us.
If you breathe air, drink water, eat food, wear clothes, or live in shelter, you are entirely reliant on nature. Even the most stunning feats of technology and human ingenuity come down to raw materials taken from our earth2.
As we humans grow up and become more capable in our family and social structures, we cease to merely take and become active contributors to our household to the extent of our abilities. A small child loves their care givers because there is no other choice: those people are keeping them alive. As that child matures and begins to actively contribute, the giving of care becomes reciprocal, and they gain the ability to love (or not) on their own terms.
When we merely take from nature, we can have, at best, the entitled love of an infant for their caregivers. We assume that they will always be there and that they have nothing better to do than see to our every need.
It is a very naïve and self-centered kind of love.
When we begin to appreciate nature for what it is, when we engage with it for no reason other than to enjoy its company and appreciate its many fine traits, that love deepens and the center begins to shift outward from ourself.
When we voluntarily take on the responsibility of care and stewardship, that relationship deepens yet again. When we progress from taking to appreciating to caring for—the act, not merely the feeling—we begin to enter a truly mutual phase.
We love nature, and she loves us back.
The first shoots of green in spring become a much-anticipated visit from an old friend. Hummingbirds become your neighbors when they drink nectar and hover by a window to watch you drink coffee and hover by a window to watch them. Perfectly ripe fruit is a bounty to share with neighbors, be they humans or furred or feathered.
Nature has shared her generous gifts with us, and when we share them with our neighbors, we deepen those reciprocal bonds.
We live our lives in this modern world indoors. Most of how we work with this land is for our own benefit, either to get food or achieve some desired aesthetic. But with some little tweaks, of our perspectives and of our actions, can make this work into acts of care for our little corner of the world.
Reciprocated love is born and fed by a constant back and forth of receiving and giving. A love of nature become reciprocal when instead of merely taking our living, we contribute to the work of sustaining and feeding.
I thought it was very forward-thinking that so much land was set aside for nature, and then I looked at a flood map. Less a matter of foresight and more a matter of insurance difficulties, one presumes.
Every economy is a land economy, even if we place layer after layer of complexity and obfuscation upon that truth, it does not change that it is our shared and fundamental reality.