On Building an Intimate Relationship with the Natural World

People don't tend to protect abstract ideas. It's hard to stand up for something or someone we don't have an intimate relationship with.

When it comes to ecological justice, one task at hand is to heal our severed connection with the natural world. Why would we fight for something we know next to nothing about, for someone we've never even had a meaningful conversation with?

Today, I want to walk around in whatever is left of our wilderness and listen. I want to stop telling the trees and the birds who they are. I want to behold rather than dictate. Become a tracker instead of a trapper.

Can I take out the ear buds and listen? Go out in the world and clear my mind of all my ideas of it? Trail behind something beautiful and curious? Follow my senses like the animal I am?

I want to let other forms of life tell me their story from their own side.