MISUSING NATURE

#6 (From the series “MISUSE”)

There were always fresh crops brought to the table by my grandmother. She would always squeeze for me fresh orange juice, right from our orange tree in the front garden. She would add a lot of sugar to make the juice sweeter, essentially destroying the notion of a healthy drink, but that is what life was like. Knowing what you eat. Growing up on an island, this was common phenomena for the locals. Eating locally as much as you could. And the blessings are endless when you’re that close to nature. Our family was especially blessed being from an island, as we originate from another, smaller, isolated island, that we would escape to every summer when I was younger. There we would be surrounded by wild olive tress, with branches so tall and long like veins, reaching out to each other, intertwining, creating a vast canopy cover of trees in endless fields. At night, this made excellent fuel for scary stories my father would tell me, to make sure I don’t go wandering off alone. I took endless walks in these wild olive trees, following paths my ancestors paved, playing pretend for hours on end that I am the “Queen of the Land”. My grandmother’s traditional house, built by hand of stone and clay. Her chickens running loose, while she chases them with eggs in her apron. Cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchini, grapes, strawberries, plums, peaches, beans… All in one big basket, that she carried on her head. And here I am, thinking I’ve got a green thumb cause I made sure that no plant of mine died this week in my little Athens apartment.

Grandma was so effortlessly happy and only cared for her garden mostly. And us, of course. Grandmother’s daily gifts were the crops she proudly brought to the table. Or, in a small plate, upstairs to our house, knocking faintly on the door. Each knock meant another “goodie” from her. I miss that knock, and I miss what she represented. She was the embodiment of living for herself, and to make sure others lived through her. Simply, by enjoying her fresh fruit and vegetables. As one phrase puts it, “We are what we eat”. And, besides her crops, her daily rituals meant being in nature. That’s where she was calm. That’s where she was happy. And I can still see her face clearly, with her big googly-like eyes behind the big-frame eye-glasses, with her beautiful smile, saying “Look what I brought” and showing off a cucumber as long as a foot.

Now, I visit the farmer’s market every Wednesday, making sure to get everything I need to cook at home. I look at the unending piles of fruit and vegetables the farmers bring in. They yell “HERE, HERE, GET THE BEST LEMONS, 1 EURO A KILO-O-O-O-O!” , and you see old ladies rushing over to the stands to see what the fuss about these lemons is. I always stare and wonder, “How much of these are actually fresh, and aren’t overdosed on hormonal growth chemicals”. But I buy them anyway, because they are at a fraction of the price from the super market. Going to the market does also feel like a ritual. And you do eventually come across great fruit to eat. Fruit and vegetables that actually have a taste. By becoming vegetarian my diet changed drastically. Meaning that fruit and vegetables became much more dominant in my every day meals, and that really pushed me to get closer to nature. To understand what I eat, and why I eat it. Then, if this basic human need became much more ritualistic, it only led me to another basic human need. This basic human need we ignore; To be in nature.

While I am social, I do prefer nowadays to stay at home. With wanting to be more in nature, I realised how much I stay home, just to avoid to scenery of the “city”. This thing we call a “city” is just continual cement blocks, filled with people, who all go to other cement blocks every day to make a living, filled with other people doing the same, and who then just want to be able to survive the city, by ultimately escaping out to nature every now and then. Where there are no other cement blocks, and no other people. This is of course, for those who are privileged enough to do so. It’s hard to get a few days off of work, it’s hard to go somewhere and be in nature free-of-cost because even camping needs somewhat of a budget, it’s all become so hard to head into nature. It would seem as if they don’t want us to. Thus, people daily flee to the parks. And while the parks are beautiful, especially on sunlit days, the parks just feel like miniatures of where we’re supposed to be. The parks, are in some way, the matrix of nature. The parks are designed to ease minimally the great hunger for green escapes, and they mask the true need we desire. Not just the parks, but there is even a rise in home aesthetics now to mimic natural forms and colour palettes. Apps now mimic natural sounds to help you sleep at night or to meditate. Everything seems to be designed in a way to copy nature, yet to never take you to it, almost.

The time for vacations arrive; People make sure to book hotels with pools, in front of beaches, others make sure to book bungalows in near-by sight-seeing areas, and there are also others who get wooden lodges in the snowy mountains. It sounds fun and relaxing. But isn’t that just two to three weeks out of the year, for most people? And even in those vacations, a lot of the time, the mass percentage of vacationers don’t aim exactly for nature. They aim for “relaxation”. And I don’t blame them. I understand them. And even those who aim for nature, really, I’ve never met someone who wanted to go back home after having an amazing time just enjoying the sun and sea, or whatever is their environmental cup of tea. What if though, we shifted our lives in a way, not to always be on vacation, but to be near nature, and live a life in nature?

Can we achieve living in nature? Not necessarily isolated, but can we help each-other out to live together, harmoniously, closer to nature?

I guess many people don’t want to be closer to nature. I guess they don’t want to actually work physically and directly with what they consume. They probably don’t want to get their hands dirty. I understand that too. It doesn’t have to do with degrading the job of someone who does that, let’s say a farmer, but rather so, not everyone carries the same ambitions. Someone wants to be a doctor, let’s say, and not a farmer. The doctor can’t just be in nature, the doctor needs to go away and study. They can come back later, but the doctor can make a lot of money in the city, to buy nice things, to not have to work extra for their basic needs. Except of course, the need to be in nature. They’re far from that unfortunately.

But to me, it only feels natural. I’m not saying I’ll drop everything in a day and become a farmer, but I do want to get closer to it. And I’m not saying everyone is made to be a farmer, or to live in nature… There are many practices, that in supporting communities everyone could do their part, and live to provide for all. But the modern-day life has a such a tempting, glossy appeal to it, that it makes sense why no one wants to really do anything. Except to consume what’s already made, and just live on their own ambitions. It’s easy. It’s unproblematic. It’s individualistic, yes. It’s stress-free though, when there’s enough accumulated stress from other areas of their lives. So how would we be able to get to nature, live there, and enjoy everything from mother Earth, without really working for it? It’s impossible. We have to work for it. Whether we like it or not. And in actuality, we don’t need to do as much as we think. Let me lay an example: If you plant a tree today, depending on the tree of course, within a few years, just making sure to keep it safe enough from weather conditions, pests, or anything that could harm it, the tree will take its natural course, and give you everything you need from it eventually. It’s not little work, but nature does in a sense you look out for you too.

There is one phrase I have kept dear to me for the past 10 years, which I saw (of all places) online on Tumblr, which is by the American poet and environmental activist Gary Snyder, which states: Nature is not a place to visit. It is home. Besides me recommending to you, to check out his work on this type of environmental philosophy, I will suggest that you also keep this line in bold dear to you as well. It made me realise that modern-day life makes us think that nature is “alien” to us, as we’ve amassed a technological construct of living. Modern-day life makes you think you’re incapable of catering for yourself. You need a job, to make money, to buy food, to pay rent, to live. When in actuality, we can do everything on our own. Again, it won’t happen in a day if you’ve grown up your entire life not knowing how to care for yourself -the natural way-, but we can make an effort to learn how-to. To know that what I do, I do by myself, for myself. Without needing to depend on a system that someone carved for their benefit. The big ol’ “1% taking advantage of the 99%”. We could really let the 1% “starve” if we stopped indulging in all these things they make us think we need.

If of course, that’s what we want. And I think that’s what I want, at least.

I’ve come to despise in a sense the city I live in, and wish to go back to the island. I can’t entirely leave back my “city ways” but I can learn to appreciate them more whenever I decide to return to the city. I can sort of imagine it as a “treat”, rather than making that my every day life. Because in reality I can’t wait to go back to my village right now. Where there are mountains to my back, and the sea in the front of my eyes. And I am blessed to have the option to do so. Not everyone is so lucky. Besides having decided to reside in our more natural habitat, and while this all may sound like “slow-living” ambitions, it is in actuality much more possible to want to do, rather than to just think that I’ll spend the rest of my life working away infinite hours at unsatisfying jobs that can only make me hate my existence more. I’ve never been one to chase a career, or really much any path in life, yet now I feel like I’m starting to pave one. All I know is that nature is involved on this path, and nature can guide me through it. Perhaps I desire to offer something back to Earth, and nature understanding now how much deep appreciation I have for them.

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There is a need in me to mention this; The title of this series’ piece is “MISUSING NATURE”, as in a notion. Not how we actually misuse nature, which we really do. We abuse nature. I thought about writing about this as well, though as the series follows more existential and spiritual worries of the human mind, I decided not to go into the destructive part of humans in nature. Other than that, I hope you’ve enjoyed this writing, and feel free to let me know your personal thoughts.