It’s often implied, if it’s not said outright, that nature is a cruel, cold place. We’ve all seen trees wrapped around each other fighting for light; late frosts that leave flower faces disfigured; fawn carcasses. These images feed the “red in tooth and claw” idea of nature that many of us grew up with – the woods as a horror show where self-interested plants and animals are locked in a desperate fight for survival.
And yet it’s just as easy to look at nature and see the spirit of cooperation that imbues everything. Above ground the trees might be fighting for light, but below ground they’re partnering with mycorrhizal fungi, through which they’re potentially sharing nutrients, and receiving them, from all the other plants in the neighborhood (including the ones they’re supposedly fighting with). Studies in recent years have shown that birds, mammals, even fish recognize the alarm calls of other species and use this information to stay safe. The farmers use the bees and the bees use the flowers and the flowers use the bees and the farmers – everything touches this way, or is separated by just degrees.
We can let either one of these perspectives inform our interactions with nature. Tending a vegetable garden can be a cold, calculated war of sorts – on bugs, on weeds, on herbivores – a harvest gained through attrition. Or it can be an exercise in cooperation, where we build up the soil to make it more resilient, encourage beneficial insects to deal with unwanted pests, plant extra as a means of making peace with token loss. We can practice forestry in similar ways – cut and then spray and then plant the trees we want in an attempt to impose our will on the woods, or let nature dictate the composition of our forest and work with that – acting less like a god and more like a partner. One approach seeks to dominate, the other to nudge things in our self-interest.
It’s been fashionable since Li Po was writing poetry (at least that long) for naturalists to wrinkle their nose at the domineering approach and celebrate the holistic one, but this can come off as judgmental. Rather than separate people into camps, I think it’s more productive to acknowledge that this tension exists in each of us; these competing visions are a part of both human nature and nature, nature. Most of us live in homes built to keep the natural world at bay, travel on paved roads that defy the landscape, advance our self-interests through control; at the same time most value cooperation, selflessness, and the outdoors as a place where we can lose ourselves and be humbled by forces outside of our control.
Do we use the rotenone? Do we kill the porcupine? Do we subdivide and build the house in the forest? Each of our lines fall in a different place, but it doesn’t mean we’re not all struggling with some version of the same question.
Title from “The Exile’s Letter,” by Li Po, (699-762 AD).
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