my Caffeine Landscape

I'm sitting in one of the many Starbucks I frequent as a student, and just finished reading two of the articles I wish to use in one of my research assignments. But this isn't about my assignments, or about my experience in Starbucks; it's about a concept that is now starting to make sense to me.

Nature isn't a thing, it's a relationship.

Think about it for a moment: what exactly do you define as nature? The forest outside town? The park down the street? The moss growing in the cracks on your walk? Now, try to come up for a definition of nature that can include all those things, but exclude all the things you feel aren't nature. It's hard, isn't it?

That's because nature isn't a thing, but a concept. Nature is nature because it is outside of yourself, because you define it by what it is not. You walk through nature, appreciate nature, maybe you even fight for nature, but yourself are never really part of nature, are you?

Nature is something with ownership. Nature is something with value. Nature, then, is something that can be sold, right? It isn't sold that often, though. What is sold is the experience of nature, the park pass or the kayak rental or the guided tour. Again, nature is something to be experienced.

Just thought I'd share that, since it's consuming my thoughts at the moment. Now, I'm studying culture (read: ideologies and power structures) and human/social geography, so that puts a bit of a slant on my views. Care to help correct that? What did you come up with to define nature?


pinecone photo by me