The Environmentalist who is afraid of Nature

These past few days, I have been pulling ivy out of my backyard. My lovely wife started this project weeks ago, and while she was making headway, it was not going fast enough for her. To expedite things, she suggested we hire some of my students to come do it for a nominal fee. Being Mr. Cheap, I said, "Why don't I just start helping you? It will go twice as fast with two people." It has, and, frankly, I don't know why I wasn't helping before.

I like working in the yard, I have found. I often lose sight of that. But as I have been ripping and pulling the obnoxious, noxious weed from the ground, I have realized that I am scared of that which I hold as holy. I am afraid of Nature. Or, at least, I was.

I enjoy the feel the dirt on my hands and the sun on my back. The smell of freshly turned soil soothes me. The birds singing and wind rustling in the trees as I work is better than the sweetest music. I wonder at the sights as around me. However, as my senses thrill, I find my mind drawing them away from reverie and toward self-defense. I fear dropping ticks. I fear striking snakes. I fear the deadly bite of an unseen brown recluse. I fear the stealthy attack of a hungry mountain lion. These fears rush through me and drive away the enjoyment and serenity that being outdoors holds for most. Why?

1) Perhaps this is natural. Maybe my brain is reverting back to the survival mode of my ancestors. I mean, it isn't completely unhealthy to fear the beasts that lurk in the depths of the primordial woods. This fear is what brought our ancestors to a place where they could create the next generation. A dead man cannot reproduce. Indeed, nature and fear have a long documented history. Dante refers to the fear he feels in the woods in the beginning of the Divine Comedy. Before that, to the ancient Greeks, Nature was personified by the horned god Pan, whose name gives us the word "panic." There must be something to it.

2) Or perhaps this fear is the epitome of unnatural. Maybe I am just the product of the modern world in which humanity has cloistered itself indoors where it is safe, warm, and sterile. It is hard for Nature to kill someone who inhabits a world populated by TVs, DVD players and computers rather than spiders, snakes, and pumas. And I am not the worst case of the modernized man. I was raised in a rural area where I played and worked in the great outdoors. I romped in woods. I chopped wood in dense forests. I am not an urban boy who has never seen a tree. I have lived among them all of my life.

Why then am I afraid that nature will kill me at every step?

Perhaps it is what I have been exposed to. The media relates story of deadly puma attacks around the Bay Area and killer bees imported from Africa that will soon ravage the West Coast. They tell us of every danger that could possibly whisper fear into our ears. They build an Everest where only a hillock belongs, and I plant my flag in each and every peak in their fabricated range.

The point, I have learned, is that I need even more exposure to the real deal, not the image on the screen or the story on the page. The sensational, I need to remember, is what sells advertisements and increases circulation. Just by being out in the ivy, where spiders abound, I have come to be more at ease.

More than anything, I need to become comfortable with the fear that Nature instills, as it is, well, natural. The problem, exsacerbated by the media, is that Western society is so risk adverse. Everyone needs to hold someone accountable, but the fact is that no one can be held accountable for the acts of a dangerous world. I read an article recently about a girl who died on an Outward Bound trip in the wilds of Colorado or some other wild state. Her parents are now trying to sue the organization. I understand their rage and pain, but they (and the poor girl) must have known the risks involved with doing a trek through the middle of a wild desert in the summer. They can't hold Nature accountable, but should Outward Bound take the fall for the acts of the earth and the failings of a human body? I don't know.

I don't know, even, if I will ever stop fearing the world because, I guess, that is just who I am. However, the more I see that there is no way to stop the inevitable and that the more I go to the very heart of Nature--even if that nature is only my small plot of land, the more I will find my ease there. A relationship with anything needs to be cultivated and renewed.