I spend a lot of time thinking about our connection to nature or even more so our disconnection from nature.  This is an important issue for predicting and demonstrating behaviors consistent with environmental protection.  Research shows that a connection to nature indicates greater likelihood for environmental behavior.

How can we promote people’s connection to nature?  This is an especially difficult question living in a culture and community where our homes are designed and intended to a very great extent to keep nature out, and we live in a way that separates us from nature. We have to take affirmative steps to be in nature.

For example, most spaces we exist in, whether for living, work, socializing or anything else, are climate controlled.  It doesn’t matter what is happening outside – we can control the temperature and humidity.  Our yards and parks are typically carefully curated lawns and gardens where we control for insects and other wildlife unless we choose to attract birds with bird feeders or pollinators and other living things with certain types of plants and practices, like leaving our leaves in the fall.  Our parks aren’t very different; they are typically comprised of open grass areas with some trees and other plants.

Of course, there are more natural places we can visit, and many of us do.  But in general, we live intentionally separated from nature, behind walls and windows that keep nature in a space apart from us.  And this makes sense to a large degree.  We’re not built to withstand the hardships of living outdoors.

Over time, as wealth and technology have allowed, we have increasingly cut ourselves off from nature.  In parallel, we have also increased our isolation by living more privately and less communally.  As wealth grew, more and more people transitioned to living in private homes.  This allowed for greater privacy and independence as people could make their own decisions about how to decorate and how to maintain their living space, no longer subject to communal rules and leaders.  With the advent of cars, people could increase their distance and isolation from one another, further diminishing community engagement.

Current thinking is that all this isolation, much like the disconnection from nature, is not good for human health and well-being.  Many countries are promoting policies for a return to some degree of communal living that often involves the use of nature and natural spaces to do that.

It’s interesting, but we’re not all going to shift to the latest trend in communal living (nor could we), but the value of connecting to nature remains, as does the question of how.

I recently visited the photography exhibit at the Nassau County Museum of Art and saw a black-and-white photograph of a cabbage leaf that struck me in terms of how it could connect people to nature.  The photograph, I believe, is a well-known image taken by Edward Weston (though I could be wrong as I didn’t write down the photographer’s name and am relying on my Google search and memory).  It is a close-up of a single cabbage leaf.  From the far side of the room I had no idea what it was and thought it might be sand dunes.  As I approached I still couldn’t quite determine what it was.  I didn’t realize the true nature of the subject of the photograph until I read the label.

It got me thinking about how an image like that could draw people in and get them to think about the miracle of a cabbage plant – its growth from a seed to a plant to something edible and in this context, a work of art that at first appears to be something very different from what it is.  Could this photograph help connect people to nature in a way that manifests in caring for nature?  I’m probably asking too much of a cabbage leaf.

That photograph has stuck with me and has influenced my awareness of natural things around me.  I am making a point to notice nature more intimately.  The limbs and branches of the bare trees sometimes conjure the veins running through our bodies, similarly transferring so much of what we need to stay alive.  Sometimes they look like bodies clustering together like a family or group of friends might as they enjoy time together.

There is so much happening in nature that is like what is happening in our bodies and our lives.  Whether it is trees and fungus communicating danger to each other or it is water flowing through a plant, transmitting nutrients, there is a lot to relate to in nature.  Like a human-to-human relationship, it makes sense that a human-to-nature relationship will produce a desire to protect.  Seek that connection, whether in a photograph or a book or a walk outside.  It’s good for you and it’s good for nature.