Mission

 

Reflection of the author, "Critter" Cade Campbell, in the eye of a calling Interior Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata cyanotephra)

About 

In modern times, it's hard to find a connection with nature. As a society, we are all too easily swept into an isolated realm of post-industrial, sterile "civilization." While it's often a social norm to consume and absorb as much as we can, mindlessly ignoring the needs of others outside of our own circle, ecosystems that have existed for millennia work harder than ever before. From cyanobacteria allowing us to breathe, birds trying to feed their family with caterpillars that would strip trees of leaves, or agroecologists releasing seasonal fire across pine savannahs, all have profound effects on our seemingly separate lives. Human activity has consequences we cannot imagine, and even the smallest decisions have environmental consequences that ripple away. Sometimes they are beneficial, sometimes harmless, but sometimes lethal. Thriving ecosystems are the starting point of modern society, even the most unnatural, lifeless technology, and the foundation upon which life as we know it is utterly dependent. Even the tiniest, most seemingly insignificant beetles and cyanobacteria, hold every individual's fate in their "hands." Our choices to see this ecosystem as disposable can and will spell our demise, especially in an era of mass extinction, climate change, and new forms of pollution that may never be reversed. It's easy to think that humans are "in charge," and have some sort of otherworldly position above other life on Earth. However, our fate is inseparably dependent on all the other species we rely on to survive from food to carbon sequestration.

The natural environment isn't a sterile place, and we belong there. It requires adaptation, a will to survive. Not only to survive, but to actively work to make the ecosystem a better place. Without this desire, even (or perhaps, especially) the most powerful organisms are the first to die long, slow, and excruciatingly painful deaths. A world where the living, pulsing biosphere "calls the shots," is a world that will survive. Because, no matter what happens, it will adapt. But not without mutuality and the freedom to be independent. We belong on the landscape, finding ways we can live reciprocal, ecologically integrated lives. For tens of thousands of years, our species has done this. The horrors of modern society, marked as progress, can often be realized as enormous errors on the part of our species. 

As Edward O. Wilson states in his 1984 book Biophilia, "The natural world is the refuge of the spirit, richer even than the human imagination." Nature supplies all of our needs, and not just by throwing sustenance to us roughly and in an uncaring way, but giving us food through the intricate art of pollination and the majesty of bull elk bugling in the fog; expecting us to reciprocate. These are untamable features, and no almighty system of slavery, military-industrial complexes, the roar of a coal furnace, cyber-dystopia, or individual uncaring can ever separate us from this reality. It is a choice to embrace a deeper form of "wilderness," the world as it really is. What I like to consider the "real world." A place where modern technology, politics, and rat race workdays are scoffed at and utterly nonexistent. A wilderness where whitewater rapids are sheathed in sun rays, a place where campfires can be built, and a night saturated with laughter, music, and the smell of peach cobbler in a Dutch oven and curls of hickory smoke can mesh back into a world of leaf litter, fungi and millipedes; all of which bathe in a vast, physical interconnectivity of chemical, cellular, and artistic wonder.

Ecological connections are paramount here, but there are also infinitely many skills we can learn as members of modern society to connect with the rest of the biosphere. Our roots are never severed until we're dead or extinct, we just need to reclaim our ability to live symbiotically. Few can do it, but it's our job to try. By learning skills from tradition and science, taking knowledge from animals, plants, fungi, we can learn and share in ways that can power our world in new, improved ways. However, our thriving ecosystem is anything but static; the historic is only part of our understanding of improving society. Everything in nature is constantly evolving, changing in so many ways. It is an unbroken cycle of peaceful entropy; constantly regenerating and remediating.

Through online outreach, we can take advantage of the vast communication and educational capabilities of cyberspace to research, share and recreate with the wonders of the natural world. Photography, long-distance community, and shared advice is abundant on the internet and absolutely vital to the preservation and creation of ecologically-attuned people in the modern era. There is no limit, and I hope you will consider trying your best to live life integrated with nature. It can be remarkably rewarding.

 -    "Critter" Cade Campbell