On most mornings I go for a walk with my dog, Priya in the parkland near my house. Originally this daily ritual had pragmatic motivations: exercising both me and the dog, clearing my head for the day ahead, and promoting good mental health. Over time this activity has been enriched by my observation and contemplation of the natural world. I see flowers, trees, a creek, birds, and water dragons. Two beautiful rainbow lorikeets emerge from their nest inside the trunk of a gum tree and fly off chirping. A large water dragon looks like a miniature dinosaur as it lumbers out of my path and plunges into the safety of the creek. Priya and I clamber down the banks of the creek and hop over it where it narrows and make our way through a grove of majestic bamboo trees that creak in the wind. I notice how the different trees near the creek produce an impressionist image of a range of shades of green. I am delighted to see how some of these trees have produced beautiful yellow flowers. I catch a glimpse of a kookaburra standing still contemplating its environment before it sleekly flies off in a straight line with a slightly undulating height, so unlike the random flight path of swallows.
And then there is Priya. Sometimes she walks faithfully by my side. Other times she passionately sprints in random directions, just for the sheer pleasure of it. She smells practically everything. She experiences a whole reality that I am oblivious to. These walks can be a source of joy, awe, and wonder. Nature is amazing.
If you did not grow up in Australia, you may think that some of our wildlife is weird, cute, and fascinating: kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, echidnas, wombats, and platypi. Even though they are very familiar to me, seeing a kangaroo hop along is still a delight. Until this year I had never seen a platypus in the wild. When I finally saw one from a viewing platform in a National Park I stood mesmerised as I watched this cute little creature swim and dive, while searching for food on the bottom of the creek. My heart sang. But, why?
While at university I began taking bushwalking trips in wilderness areas with friends. The trips lasted for three to fourteen days, camping and carrying all our supplies. Within a few hours' drive of Canberra, there is a multitude of national parks, each with distinct landscapes and ecosystems. They range from stone-covered river beds at the bottom of deep canyons to alpine areas covered in fields of wildflowers. Why did I find it so enthralling? I encountered beauty. I had a sense of wonder how there was something here that stood outside the rapidly changing world of the city. Human history and personal achievements really did not matter in the wilderness. Looking over a grand vista there was a sense of our own smallness and insignificance. I had an insatiable desire for more and developed a mentality that bushwalking was my default method of relaxing and the only way I could recover from mental and emotional exhaustion.
What is it about our experiences of nature that are so special and significant? What is the origin of the awe and wonder? What produces feelings of resonance, joy, and delight? There is mystery.
To me, speaking somewhat scientifically, the sound of a bubbling brook is "white noise" and not that different from the sound produced by a highway full of cars. But, the effect on me of the creek and the highway is very different. Walking beside a bubbling brook is delightful, calming, energising, and peaceful. Walking beside the road is stressful, tiring, and just plain yucky. Why the difference?
The mystery in my encounters with nature hints at something greater than me, something that may complete me, and something that might place my life in a grander story.
There are two things to make sense of here, nature and my response to it. How do we describe and interpret nature? How do we interpret our experience of it? There are a range of perspectives we can bring to bear. On nature, there are the perspectives of biology and ecology, ranging from genetics to how climate change affects individual species. At what scale we look at the phenomena is a matter of what questions we are asking. Our personal response to nature can be viewed through a kaleidoscope of perspectives: biological, psychological, sociological, experiential, aesthetic, and religious. The representation and communication of our experiences can be expressed in art, music, poetry, and literature. All of these may provide a window into the reality of the natural world and our relation to it.
Here, I want to explore hints of transcendence. There is something going on that is beyond DNA, physical appearances, ecology, biological evolution, and the social conditioning of aesthetics.
Through the ages, human encounters with nature have produced rich and diverse perspectives. In reaction to the rise of scientific descriptions of natural phenomena: from Newtonian mechanics to Darwinian evolution, the eighteenth century, saw the rise of romanticism, which valued the intense emotional experience of individuals' encounters with nature.
Negative sentiments concerning natural philosophy (science) is captured in the poem, Lamia written by John Keats in 1819.
Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine—Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made
This negative sentiment about science is countered by Richard Dawkins in his 1998 book, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder. He contends that science reveals rather than conceals the true beauty of the natural world. A softer perspective is that of Ursula Goodenough, author of The Sacred Depths of Nature, and an advocate of religious naturalism.
For me, my experience of awe and wonder hints at transcendence. But this is not my only feeling. There is also a sense of violation and lament as I see natural beauty being defiled and destroyed. Last week, the creek I walk by each day was flooded by sewage and became black. It was so polluted that dead fish appeared on the banks. The creek smelled so bad I changed my walking route for a few days to avoid the stench. There are countless other violations that grieve me: ancient forests being felled, wilderness areas flooded, wildlife losing their home, and fields of alpine wildflowers killed by late snow dumps resulting from climate change. To me, this sense of violation has a transcendent dimension. It hints that there is intrinsic value in nature and that there is a morality associated with how humans interact with it.
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