An Ode to Mother Nature

Surrounded by tall grass, I was hiking the last leg of a short trail out to a remote bluff. As I crested the bluff, a spectacular panorama opened up before me. Yellowstone Lake was shimmering in the sun, encircled by a sprinkling of forested patches and miles of unspoiled fields, complete with sedate, roaming bison. All framed by mountains in the distance. The natural beauty of it all was truly breathtaking.

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The Great Outdoors

It was the last day of my seven-day solo trip to Yellowstone National Park. After my initial spell-bound awe, I sat there, alongside the lakeshore, reflecting on my week here, the sights, and my explorations in the park. It definitely was an epic adventure – one for the books.

I had wanted to see Yellowstone since the 6^th grade after seeing a documentary on the park and then subsequently hearing about my mom and dad’s travels there before I was born.

So finally getting to Yellowstone was a kind of a pilgrimage for me. My friends and family were surprised that I wanted to go alone, but I maintained it was something “I needed to do”.

The trip lived up to and surpassed my expectations. I was determined to see as much of the park as I could. I divided the park into sections. By camping centrally in the park, I could get out early and tackle a section every day. So, with my trusty new Fitbit (the one with only dots on the face), I clocked over 45,000 steps a day. It was extremely exhausting, but very rewarding.

While there were people around, I saw the popular spots like Grand Prismatic Spring and Old Faithful in the early morning, while I headed to the more isolated locations during the day. It worked out perfectly, minus one pesky… freak hailstorm!

But the trip turned out to bear unexpected gifts. It became somewhat of an inflection point for me. On the bluff, sitting on a makeshift stone bench, I realized that areas like this needed protecting. While Yellowstone was protected by the US government, what about all the other areas humans are taking / have taken over for their own use? We are wiping out life and habitats all over the world – destroying places like the breathtaking view in front of me.

I made up my mind there and then that I would play a part in protecting our environment and keeping our natural world pristine. And as my Yellowstone journey came to an end, I left feeling fulfilled and at peace with the new motivation to protect our natural world.

America’s Greatest Idea

Created in 1872, Yellowstone National Park, was the first of its kind in the world. Land could actually be set aside to preserve the natural world. What a novel concept!

Soon after, the national park system was established to protect lands that were “reserved and withdrawn from settlement, occupancy, or sale [to be] set apart as a public park or pleasuring-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people.” People started to believe that natural wonders should be protected.

The national park ‘idea’ took off and soon other areas of the country were nominated for national park status. Some of the earliest parks came into existence before 1920. These includes some of the most well-known parks such as Yosemite, Mount Rainer, Grand Canyon, Zion, Acadia, Glacier, Crater Lake, Rocky Mountain, and Hawai’i Volcanoes (even before Hawai’i became a state!).

Then, during the Great Depression Era, the unemployed were given jobs in national parks. They created internal infrastructure and accommodations for visitors. Much of which are still in place today.

Following World War II, the national park experience became an integral part of American culture and became common travel destinations for people. To this day, millions of people visit the national parks every year.

Today, the US has 63 national parks and over 400 other locations (with various designations) entrusted to the national park service. Additionally, there are hundreds of state and local governments that followed suit to create their own locally managed parks.

“It is the course of wisdom to set aside an ample portion of our natural resources as national parks and reserves, thus ensuring that future generations may know the majesty of the earth as we know it today.”
– John F. Kennedy

Moreover, using Yellowstone as a model, other countries were soon to follow. The national park idea ignited a movement across the globe. Currently, there are over 3,000 national parks worldwide spanning over 180 countries.

Governments finally came to the realization that preserving land too valuable in natural wonders and wildlife was a good idea.

A Brief History of the World

Why is protecting the environment and planet so important? In order to answer that question, we have to backtrack a little to understand why Earth and life are so special.

The sheer ludicrousness that the Earth exists at all, is all but incomprehensible. On top of that, the number of variables that had to go exactly right for humanity being here, alive and intelligent, are all the more unfathomable.

In the beginning…

About 13 billion years ago, there was a big bang. We’re not entirely sure what happened or how it occurred, but it kicked off the start of our entire universe.

Somehow our universe got all the particles and constants just right. Things like the speed of light, the elements, and different quantum forces were all calibrated perfectly to remain stable and bring stars into existence.

Then, 4.6 billion years ago, a bunch of dust got together and accumulated enough mass to trigger nuclear fusion. Things got a bit hotter from there and our sun was born.

The bigger leftover clumps of dust coalesced, gravitationally speaking, into the ~~nine~~ eight planets (I’m still bitter about Pluto) in our solar system.

One of these planets just happened to be at the right distance from the sun so that water was liquid – most of the time. The primordial Earth contained a “soup” of unexpected compounds such as methane, hydrogen, and carbon dioxide. Oh, and water too.

For whatever reason, this “soup” was where the precursors of life came together. And then somewhere around 3.5 billion years ago, single celled organisms came into being.

This primordial Earth’s “soup” of compounds had all the right elements for the basic building blocks of life – including carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorous, to name a few. But curiously, no oxygen, yet.

Soon after, maybe a billion or so years, cyanobacteria proliferated using photosynthesis to create their own food. Photosynthesis uses the suns energy to turn carbon dioxide and water into glucose (plant food). And luckily for us, produces oxygen as a byproduct.

Those little green suckers multiplied like rabbits and turned our atmosphere from mostly carbon dioxide to the 20% oxygen we see today. Believe it or not, we wouldn’t be here breathing oxygen if it wasn’t for the primordial life that converted the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere into the oxygen rich atmosphere we have today.

After that, came the age of the eukaryotic cells where the single celled critters got more complicated adding in different organelles into their structure. This is where the main branches of life started – the earliest ancestors of animals, plants, and fungi.

Then, about one billion years ago, multi-cellular life showed up – spontaneously?

And a cascade of biodiversity followed over the next 700 million years. Simple ocean life started to populate the oceans, including jellyfish, clams, and the like. Plants of all types and sizes proliferated all over the ocean.

While animals split into two groups, one that started the vertebrae branch of life, while the other became insects. Animals started evolving very unique evolutionary branches of their own. This was the era of fish, reptiles, and amphibian ancestors. Both animals and plants started to evolve to live on land to get away from all the competition in the water.

Not long after the first dinosaurs ruled the land and the sea. Mammals were merely rodents at this stage of the game.

Then, a lucky break occurred for mammals: 65 million years ago, an asteroid impacted the Earth. This impact wiped out all the dinosaurs because the earth was shrouded in a dust cloud for years and years. The dinosaurs and their food sources all died out.

Mammals were more resilient. But the extinction event paved the way for mammals to be the dominant form of life on the planet.

Over the next 70 million years, our great ancestors evolved from rodent-like creatures to apes to the homo sapiens we are today. Add in a few hundred generations of humans and boom! From there, it was only a matter of time until we invented fire, the wheel, agriculture, language, and writing.

Then, tribes got bigger and bigger. Eventually humans inhabited every continent in the entire world to become the apex organism on the planet.

Of course, this is the only the abbreviated version of history. Condensing the events that encompass 13 billion years of history into a few hundred words does have its drawbacks, but the main point is: The probability of all these variables coming together in the way they did for YOU to exist is mind-boggling.

“Never tell me the odds”
-Han Solo

This little history lesson just shows us all the fluke coincidences that were needed in order for us to exist at all. We could very well be the only planet to harbor life and intelligent life in the entire universe. Our planet is the only known instance we found of life in the cosmos. It needs to be protected, treasured, and treated as priceless.

In Defense of the Wilderness

The earth has had five great extinctions in the past. EACH of these extinction events wiped out at least 70% of all species that were living at the time – an incomprehensible amount of devastation and loss of life.

These extinctions teach us that the planet is not invulnerable and life is indeed very fragile.

Unfortunately, it appears we are at a start of another extinction age, one of our own making. Humanity has kicked off a sixth great extinction because of our actions.

One million species are at risk of going extinct within the next few decades. We have already eliminated 60% of overall animal populations since 1970. Because of our environmental negligence, climate change and pollution are destroying habitats all over the world.

Humanity depends on facets of the food chain to survive. Thus, we’ll suffer too if we let the sixth great extinction continue. If we don’t act now, there won’t be much of anything left to protect in the not so distant future.

Every day, there are more and more people encroaching on Earth’s natural spaces. While yes, national parks and the like are protected, but are they the only areas that should be protected? Should we preserve more of nature?

Where will the line be drawn? What’s stopping us from taking over all the natural areas that are not protected by law?

I’ll tell you what is…. Nothing.

We’re doing it right now, all over the world. Every year, 7 billion trees are cut down. Approximately one tree for every person on the planet.

That’s an area the size of Costa Rica, EACH YEAR. Let that sink in for a minute.

Whole forests are being hacked down. Complete ecosystems, containing all manner of plant and animal life, are collapsing as well.

If entire food chains fail, there will be less food for us, less carbon sequestered by plant life, a hotter earth, nutrient depleted soil, ungrowable crops, and mass desertification. It’s a vicious downhill spiral. Life will struggle to survive.

The bounty in our world is now slowly being snuffed out, thanks to humanity and our actions.

The Circle of Life

With just a few steps into the woods, you’re immediately transported to a world out of time. There’s a persistent serenity and inherent peace just being surrounded by nature.

The sights, sounds, and smells, contrast greatly to the human world we inhabit. While, being fully present in nature – feels good and right.

Personally, my spirits instantly lift and the stresses of my daily life melt away just being amongst the trees. I can let my mind wander and often I’ll get some new idea or insight.

On a hike, I came to the deep realization that all of nature is interconnected. The systems of the world need to work together, in harmony, from the infinitesimal small inanimate particles up to entire biomes to make the web of life possible.

The sun is something we all take for granted. It is so pivotal to all Earth’s lifeforms; without it, life would not exist. If not for the sun, the food chain would quickly breakdown because plants wouldn’t be able to photosynthesize to produce food.

Our planet is blessed with an abundance of water in all different forms which replenish, renew, and self-cleanse throughout the biosphere’s water cycle. In fact, all of life’s basic elemental building blocks have their own systems, known as the biogeochemical cycles: carbon cycle, nitrogen cycle, oxygen cycle, phosphorus cycle, sulphur cycle, water cycle, the nutrients cycle, and the rock/mineral cycle.

These cycles have worked together for billions of years to make our home planet habitable. It’s miraculous how they all work together.

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Even life’s nutrients have a cycle. The plants use the nutrient-rich soil to grow, while also collecting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Between the soil, air, and sunlight, plants have all the basic elements they need to live.

Plants are the lungs of the planet – they provide the necessary oxygen that animals need to breathe. Furthermore, plants also provide sustenance for herbivores. And, in turn, herbivores are the food source for carnivores. Animals use the oxygen in the air to convert food into energy. Altogether, this is the system that makes up a basic food chain.

And even in death, an animal’s remains return life’s basic constituents back to the soil. Through the synergy of microbes, fungi, and insect life, everything is broken down and nutrients are distributed back into the soil. So, even the little buggers keep all manner of plants and animals functioning.

In this way, even death has purpose. By providing the raw ingredients to a new generation of plant life, matter and nutrients are passed on through to the rest of the food chain in the never ending “circle of life”.

All in, this fundamental “circle of life” occurs all around us, every day, all over the world. These fragile systems, working together, keep the world turning and life thriving. All this is now at risk because humanity has overstepped its bounds.

But we can learn from nature’s cycles and processes. Let’s take heed and piggy back on what nature teaches us. It is not too late.

The future of life on the planet depends on us.

The Key is Stability

Native Americans understood the circle of life. They honored and revered nature. They respected the inherit equilibrium in the natural world. After all, if the buffalo were all hunted to extinction, then how would they feed their families?

Native Americans never consumed more than they needed. When they killed, they did so out of necessity, not excess. They used all parts of their kill. Native Americans were grateful for the bounty of nature and knew intuitively that there was a balance to all things. They had an appreciation for all life, great and small.

By understanding the amazing forces that created our habitable, breathable bubble in the universe, we can also appreciate all the variables that had to be set exactly right for the Earth to exist.

And like Native Americans, culturally, we have to come to internalize how remarkably special our planet is with all its natural systems. These systems have maintained our biosphere and renewed life for billions of years.

Only through the dependence of everything on one another is the web of life possible. Not only did life mold the planet into what it is, but it constantly renews and provides an endless cycle of rebirth. It is limitless and never-ending unless something BIG creates instability.

The more we study the ecosystems and the world’s biosphere, the more we understand the subtle balance in everything. Keeping the world in-balance is key in how we’ll Save our Planet. Making sure all of Earth’s systems run smoothly together is pivotal for preserving a healthy, enduring Earth.

The Battle for Mother Nature

I hope you too can appreciate the forces of nature and stand in awe at our amazing planet. I hope you realize how important it is to safeguard the wild places of the world and our irreplaceable natural resources.

We must step up to become defenders of nature. It is humanity’s most important calling.

We have been gifted with intelligence. Right now, the Earth is slowly falling apart around us. We need to resolve to stop passively overwhelming it and start actively fighting to save it. We need to protect our planet, even if it means safeguarding the world from ourselves.

The national park idea has been with us for a long time. But the fact that we need to set land apart to forbid human intervention tells of the power humanity has. We need to use that power for good, not destruction.

With great power, comes great responsibility.

Just as the national parks are protected and “preserved for future generations”, we must also take that notion further afield and vow to defend all wild areas to limit humanity’s ever-expanding footprint in the world. Down the road, it would be amazing to see huge swatches of the planet set aside as ‘wild’ preservation areas.

We need to see ourselves as caretakers of the planet. The wilderness is not something for us to claim and own, it is to be nurtured, appreciated, and a respected sanctuary for life.

We only have one home world. There are no backups, we need to really be cognizant of our actions and only as a unified force can we hope to return balance to the world.

Yes, the Earth is big, but like everything, there will always be a breaking point. Humanity is now at a point in time where we are approaching a severe imbalance with the natural world. We are at a crossroads in history.

Climate change is starting to get out of control, if we don’t do something now to ameliorate our predicament the world as we know it will cease to exist. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not risk losing the only world we have.

Humanity is impacting nature’s balance the world over. We are disrupting ecosystems and forever changing the landscape of the Earth. There is only a very limited amount of time to turn the tide and prevent the possibility of all manner of apocalyptic futures.

We are affecting the environment on a global scale in irreparable ways and need to act to curb our excesses. We’ll need to reimagine how we function as a society and go about our daily activities. Soon we’ll have to make drastic changes if we hope to see the possibility of A Grand Future.

All of nature is sacred. We need to be mindful of what we’re doing to our home world.

We are the protectors of the planet and all life.
Let’s not fail in our responsibilities.

So next time you’re out in nature, look with new eyes to see the spectacular natural world around you. Think of the processes and life all around you – underfoot and overhead. Immerse yourself in nature’s restorative powers and be humbled by this oh so incredible world.