Mortal Meddling

When you live close to Nature, you encounter both the sacred side of creation, as well as its disturbing side. The sacred side is the beautiful side—which causes me to pause whatever task I'm into and stand in awe of what I'm experiencing. The disturbing side is the obverse face of nature's beauty—when you encounter something repugnant, such as a predator in the act of ruthlessly killing and devouring its prey or encountering a dead and decaying body in the woods that beetles and maggots are consuming.

Then there are those times when you are not just the observer of Nature's unfolding, but an actor in the scene. I prefer to be a participant in the sacred side, but sometimes I play a role in the distressing side. Both sides are part of the complete experience. I rejoice when I can assist Nature's beautiful aspects—such as when I can assist a modest flowering tree into becoming a gorgeous, audacious, and blossoming exhibitionist or clear the saplings and competition around an oak tree and watch it proudly grow into a noble giant.

But there are those obverse troublesome occasions when I seem to interfere with Nature and transform a sacred event into one that almost becomes profane. I can excuse myself when in the past I was ignorant of Nature's plan, but it is harder to accept in recent times, when I should know better and am simply not mindful enough. I can blunder into a situation where I disturb the natural process. It is a precarious balance—wherein I am often not sure how to proceed; will I help things along or will I harmfully intrude?

Before my wife and I moved out to this corner of Nature's heaven, the local ecosystem had been rolling along naturally on its own—without the interference of humans. Nature had achieved its own balance out here, with various flora and fauna playing out their roles. It's not that our forest homestead had never experienced the meddling of man... it had been partially farmed nearly a century ago, but after the departure of humans, the ecosystem had settled into a new kind of order. It was directing its own enterprise. The wisdom of Nature was once again in charge.

Then we appeared on the scene about four decades ago. We tried to be gentle and fit into the ecosystem as best we could; causing as little disturbance as we could, but our mere presence altered the natural order. We cleared trees, dug some holes for a home, and planted a garden. But disturb Nature we did—although we attempted to keep our intrusions to a minimum. Our objective was to benefit the local ecosystem as much as possible, but that was often unattainable.

Next time: an example of an unfortunate interference...