By Lynn Capuano
In 1962, Rachel Carson described a “silent spring,” the consequence of chemical application to plants and soil in misguided and misunderstood attempts to control so-called pests.
Today, I wonder if people would notice if the birds stopped singing because they were all dead or if the bees and crickets stopped buzzing because they were all dead. It seems most people are enclosed in their houses, offices, apartments or whatever structure they have chosen to isolate themselves in from nature and its bugs and dirt and heat.
In those structures, the climate is controlled so the people inside don’t have to experience the heat and humidity or the blustery cold. The windows are closed tight all year round, holding in the heat in the winter or as soon as the temperature outside drops below 70 degrees and holding in the cool as soon as the temperature outside creeps over 70 degrees.
Few people open the windows those first warm days of spring and even fewer leave them open through the summer and the blisteringly hot days. People are speechless when I say I haven’t turned on the air conditioning despite its being well into the 90s for a stretch of several days. I manage with fans, the breeze through the window and, if it becomes unbearable, I go to the library to work and then to the pool or beach to cool off at the end of the day.
People who avoid the outdoors, except in highly curated and controlled environments, miss a great deal. They overlook large swaths of the community around them like a family unconcerned about their lack of swim gear, splashing and playing at the beach on a seriously hot day. When was the last time you ran into someone and said “hot enough for you?” I can’t recall the last time I commiserated with someone over the heat since so many people escape to climate-controlled boxes for most of the year.
There was a time when we experienced the weather and didn’t hide from it. And some people still do. Typically, they are the poor and people of color who work jobs outdoors and don’t have the luxury of working in a cool, temperature-regulated setting. And those who do can often still be found waiting outside for public transportation to get to and from work.
This hiding from weather is just one example of how we have isolated ourselves from the natural world and created a way of life that relies on the fallacy that we are and can be separate from nature. Do people really believe that by living in built structures we have somehow vanquished nature and are no longer subject to its whims and powers?
Perhaps we have forgotten that without nature there is no life. Through photosynthesis, the process of plants converting sun, air and water to food so they can grow, all other living things receive oxygen, a basic requirement for life. We then rely on the plants for food, as do other living things that human beings eat.
Why do we cut ourselves off from this source of life and, even worse, abuse it to the point of destruction? We pave it over for roads or cut it down and clear it for development. The little we leave we persecute into submission with all kinds of chemicals to control what grows and what lives there and in the end, we’re left with nothing that is life-sustaining but is instead life-threatening.
There is a reason nature is called Mother Earth. Without the natural world, there would be no human world. We are completely dependent on her. It is time to get reacquainted with this giver and sustainer of life. Take a moment to go outside or even open your window and ponder how the tree breathes, because it does just like us. Consider how the plant distributes food throughout its structure just like our internal organs and biological systems do for us.
We are not separate from nature but are very much a part of it. We have cut ourselves off for too long and have gone too far to segregate ourselves. It is time to course correct, open the windows, hear the birds and the insects, feel the heat and the breeze and embrace your kinship with nature.