Arrogance

I was in Phoenix recently. What an incredibly different natural environment from home. Around here we have rocks and water and wind and trees. At this time of year things are lush and green. But not in Phoenix. At least not out in the un-landscaped terrain. Out there there are rocks and wind and heat. No water. The plants are far from lush, but they are hardy.

Not being much of a traveler I don't adjust to timezone changes very easily. The change from standard to daylight savings is more than enough for me. Three timezones... let's just say I was up early. I went out for a walk on the trails by my hotel on my first morning. It was cool, if you call 70F cool, pre-dawn. The light was slicing across the terrain as the sun rose. The colors there are so very different. More orange, red, brown. Not much green. You can see the trails off in the distance - no trees blocking line of sight. I wanted to walk forever. Not so much to get anywhere in particular, more to just walk out into the raw and alien landscape. To explore it. To experience it.

I followed a trail up a small hill and it allowed me long views in most directions. I stood, staring at the distant mountains. The picture above has Phoenix in the foreground. The peaks at the left edge are contained in the Phoenix South Mountain Park. The highest peaks in that range are around 2000 ft. The low peaks in the center are a separate, closer, unnamed range, topping out around 1350 ft. The vast range rising in the background is the Sierra Estrella Wilderness. The highest peaks are 4300+ ft. (I didn't know any of this until I got home played around with Google maps and so on.)

I stood in awe of the Earth. Vistas like this are rare in New England. Only from the highest peaks, and only if the weather cooperates can you see tens of miles. And there simply aren't ranges of this magnitude. I was flooded with expansive, marvelous feelings. And then I laughed.

I thought of all the people - over 4 million in the Phoenix metro area, never mind those all over the Earth - living among the structural marvels of engineering. We build houses with running water in the desert. We protect ourselves from the heat and wind with wall and windows. We walk among our buildings feeling proud of human ingenuity, dwarfed by our constructs, victorious over nature. And I laughed.

Look. The city is reduced to a thin strip of light yellowy-tan before the massive mountains rising solidly in the distance. The arrogance of mankind! We worry that we are destroying nature. How could we? Our mightiest achievements are dwarfed by those of the Earth. The eternal Earth.

However, we are destroying the kind of nature we need to survive. The Earth gives us all we need to survive so long as we live in harmony. Our lack of respect, our arrogance has led us into dangerous territory. The Earth provides, nurtures us even, so long as we take care of it. Every traditional culture knew, knows this.

Our culture is dangerously separated from nature, from an understanding of our place on Earth. It is in moments like the one I experienced staring out over this scene that we reconnect. And we can reconnect in far less majestic scenes. We can understand life in our backyards simply by stopping to observe, to notice all that there is. All the enormous beauty and resilience. We can cultivate our respect for nature in a simple moment of awareness.

To take care of ourselves we must take care of the Earth.
To nurture ourselves we must nurture others.