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Step Out and Look Wider

Exploring “Nature” ?

I live in a place which ideally won’t fit into the description of living “close to nature”. With the lack of freedom to explore due to current circumstances, I was a bit frustrated since I couldn’t step out and ‘explore’ nature for this action. It became increasingly difficult to reflect broadly upon the topic of ‘looking wider’ when the field of observation is limited to the 3km radius of just concrete structures.

Jalandhar City

But why is it that we have become accustomed to referring that which is made by human, as something outside nature? Was I not already exploring nature? To explore further upon the idea I decided to look into habitats of different organisms.

Beaver Dam (Natural)
Weaver Bird Nest (Natural)

An observation here was that as you move down the images showing various habitats, the structures seem to conform to the ideal definition of “natural”, with a sudden diversion as we start observing those constructed by humans. But I feel all of the examples shown follow seemingly complex methods of using natural resources to create the desired habitat. Then why is one considered more natural than the other?. One would perceive a mud house more natural than a brick house but the later is a mere consequence of shaping the mud and heating it to recreate the building component. There is nothing unnatural about that, rather, its a consequence of an organism playing with its environment to create ideal conditions. In that sense, what we refer to as unnatural is actually obtained from primarily natural sources. So what exactly is the root of reason why the ‘man-made’ is proving to be rather destructive?

The negative impact doesn’t necessarily emerge from the man-made object but from the inability to foresee its impact and what is it that we are potentially replacing in the process of creating. I would like to be optimistic about the future of how we live in collaboration with nature around us since we are beginning to take responsibility for the outcomes we have on the ecosystems. An insight that would have never emerged if our primary survival strategy didn’t understand the importance of existing in sync with what we define as “nature”.

What this action primarily added to my knowledge was how I needed to redefine and explore the idea of what is “NATURAL”.

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