I still have dirt under my fingernails, dirt that my pink nail brush couldn’t quite reach even with furious brushing, dirt that likely lingers with bacteria that would make a hypochondriac shudder, a clean freak, well freak, but for me serves as a reminder of a day spent under a veiled sky pleading for the sun to come out while transplanting sorrel, helping five-year-olds press radish seeds into the earth, and even digging for worms.
Photo Image: psmag
It was a good day. But almost every Saturday during the growing season is a good day, because I get the absolute bliss of working in a botanical garden.
My friends don’t understand it.
How after a full week’s work, I can voluntarily sign away my Saturday’s as well.
It’s not for the money.
There’s something important, something primal about being outside, about getting dirty, that we as Americans stuck behind our screens – computer, television, telephone – lose touch of. Even environmentalists aren’t immune. As we grow intellectually more aware of the planet we’re trying to save, our direct experience, interaction, relationship with that planet dwindles to what we can see on Google Earth.
It’s an awareness of this paradoxical situation - that we’re growing more aware of the environment even as our interaction with the natural world declines – that makes my most recent read – My Green Manifesto: Down the Charles River in Pursuit of a New Environmentalism - so fabulous. Gessner narrates a recent trip down the distinctly urban Charles River as a reminder that while protecting the wilderness “out there” is important, so too is getting to know the wilderness “right here”. He’s not alone in this assessment, Paul Kingsworth over at Orion in his piece Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist hi-lights this problem as well.
When you intellectualize the environment, along with the good – a better framework for understanding natural systems – at least two problems emerge. The first is that protecting the environment becomes like eating your vegetables – something you have to do for health, because it’s good and not because well it has value in and of itself.
Here’s the thing.
I love veggies. On more than one occasion - last night for example , after a dinner of chickentikka masala spiced chicken served on a bed of mashed cauliflowers (mashed with just a hint of shredded parmesan cheese) and a side of roasted broccoli (with plenty of red pepper flakes), I’ve emerged feeling guilty because I’ve learned to associate delicious, stomach busting meals with “unhealthy.” Except, it was not only delicious, it was fantastically nutritious. A meal I’d happily eat again, and again, and again.
Like eating our veggies we have associated protecting the environment with guilt. Something we feel bad if we don’t do but ignoring how awesome the environment is.
Climbing trees, floating in watering holes, watching chipmunks, these are all things that delight. Why wouldn’t we want to keep these around?
The other problem is that it acts like we human beings aren’t part of the environment, leading us to ignore the natural systems right beneath our noses. People – even New Yorkers – are always shocked when I point out that the Bronx River is a fresh river that one can go kayaking on, or that a new species was just found in Central Park. Even in the most urban environs humans and the environment coexist.
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