Response 1: What Is Nature?

I grew up in northern British Columbia, surrounded by nature--or what we typically think of as the natural world.  My house sits in the middle of a five-acre property, surrounded by lawn which stretches into field which stretches into woods.  It's impossible to escape the traditional definition of nature in a place like that, where tree lines replace picket fences and clay replaces concrete, and the sound of tires on a gravel drive is the most urban thing you hear.  When you know you're a ten minute walk to a lake, that the owl on the fence by the school bus stop will be there tomorrow, that the hair on your dog's back raises every other day for a reason.  Forestry is the primary industry, so much so that the town (population 5,000) is in crisis when the mills lay off workers.  Nature matters.

Each summer, tourists and townspeople compete for camping spots on the lake, and a fishing derby is held; each winter, the lake glazes over with ice, and we replace boats with snowmobiles, find a different way to fish.  There are mountains to climb, deer to hunt, trails to take by four-wheeler, boat and dog sled races.  But it's never one-sided.  It's clear to all who inhabit the wild that nature has its ugly side--that the Mountain Pine Beetle will continue to destroy miles of forest until the temperature drops to -40 degrees Celsius; that winters with too much snow will cause the lake to flood the highway in the spring; that it's no surprise when even urban areas are issued a cougar warning.  Living near the woods, I've had cats leave and never come back; had foxes and hawks eye my rabbits; seen my dog tree countless black bears--the kind that feed when you play dead.  No one ventures out without armor, of sorts.

Joyce Carol Oates, in her essay "Against Nature," states up front, "[Nature] has no sense of humor: in its beauty, as in its ugliness, or its neutrality, there is no laughter."  Though my primary thoughts about the natural world do not pertain to its humorlessness, this statement is true--universally and personally--and speaks to a collective definition of nature.  However, it's complicated; if you regard "nature" in part as human nature, there is laughter--laughter is in our nature.  Even when laughter is not present, it is not intrinsically non-present--rather absent, or situationally lacking.  In the "natural world," laughter is not possible.  We project our emotions onto nature--but everything that is, simply is.

For this course, I'm less interested in defining what nature is (although I'm very interested in that, and thus far agree largely with Pattiann Rogers) than I am about what nature can tell, or teach, or evoke.  Barry Lopez said in his essay "Landscape and Narrative," that a story "draws on relationships in the exterior landscape and projects them onto the interior landscape.  The purpose is to achieve harmony between the two landscapes."  I'm hoping to be able to achieve this in my own writing, and come to terms with not only the relevant characteristics, but also the inherent is-ness, of nature.