A Nature of Imagination

Guerrilla Gardeners plant flowers on a Los Angeles Street

The two texts assigned for this blog created a clash of terminology about a conflicted relationship. For McKibben, “nature” is a depressing word, as he believes none remains. For Marris, though, “nature” instigates curiosity. Both definitions change the relationship between humans and nature, and they create two paths: despair over the past or hope for the future.

For McKibben, the relationship between humans and nature is a battle. Nature is at war with humans. Even after “Nature has endured and outlived and with dignity reclaimed so many schemes and disruptions of man,” McKibben argues that climate change has ended nature. If nature must “endure” and “outlive,” this assumes that nature is engaged in a fight. Nature is fighting humans for the same resource—the world—and by the competitive exclusion principle, nature is losing. McKibben misses the hubris in his argument that assumes humans have enough power to recreate the entire world, or that human society is impenetrable and permanent. We are no more permanent than nature, perhaps even less so, as nature continues to reclaim our own cultivated spaces.

            Even as nature reclaims our cultivated spaces, humans aren’t quick to claim nature as their neighbor. Emma Marris argues that although most Americans live near natural subjects or urban parks, they cannot recognize it because the definition of nature is limited to “wild,” curated, landscapes—National Parks. She argues for a new understanding that brings human society and nature together with nature as “anywhere where life thrives, where multiple species live together...where things are growing.” This definition acknowledges nature’s “self-willed” transplantation into urban areas. Instead of drawing a line between “nature” and “human,” Marris acknowledges that humans are natural. Life indicates natural forces. Natural forces imply relationship. Seeds evolve. Children touch nature. Grad students explore backyards. The new term allows us to embrace curiosity instead of fear.

A Guerrilla Garden in Perth, Australia

McKibben is afraid, and perhaps rightfully so. Chemicals and plastics poison our water. Deforesters and developers annihilate diverse habitats. Such actions inhibit and destroy life. Yet nature lives on.

Limiting our definition of “nature” to untouched “wilderness” not only limits our curiosity for the natural world but it limits ourselves and our own growth as humans. McKibben writes that he escapes to the outdoors because in the “outdoors we venture into a sphere larger than ourselves.” The outdoors is a space of imagination. It is a space where wild things, and wild ideas, can grow.

If we allow ourselves a wider definition of nature, then we expand our sense of who we are in the world instead of relying on exclusion and fundamental lines. We meet the sphere larger than ourselves—nature—and expand our imaginations wherever we find it. When we expand our imagination, we find endangered species in our overgrown yard and prairie hideaways over old train tracks. We find new understandings of ourselves and our world.

What if we encountered the world in this way? Children, who ordinarily might have stayed indoors at their computers, might instead run through, touch, and play with nature. Cities might integrate natural subjects into urban planning blueprints. Natural public spaces, more inviting than concrete, might bring neighborhoods together. Perhaps, we might find a way to love nature, wherever, and whoever, we are.  

Questions to consider:

Where in Muncie, could you find an untraditional plot of “nature”? (Perhaps one that fits more with Emma Marris’ guidelines?)

OR

Imagine that the ideas “Nature” and “Humankind” are embodied by two people. What kind of a conversation would they have? What would their relationship be like? What would an ideal relationship look like between Nature and Human?  

P.S.

I included photos of some early efforts to redefining nature in urban spaces. Guerrilla Gardeners hunt for unclaimed patches of soil and repurpose them into miniature parks and gardens for the public. Imagine them like St. Francis Robin Hood Gardener Vigilantes.

P.P.S.

Does anyone want to start a Guerrilla Gardening club?