Nature

My initial reaction to "marveling" at the outdoors is the thought that I already know the outdoors -- I walk through it every day, and have been on many hiking trips both long and short. There are trees, there are squirrels, some water, grass, and a bunch of insects I still don't really want to touch me. It's hard to overcome this idea that nature is familiar and often boring. Nature itself doesn't seem to have any of the things we deem "interesting" -- it's only when we hear that a nice view can be had at the end of a hike that we'll see it as worth our time to walk through the woods to get to it. I often use nature as a means to an end, to satisfy a craving for seeing something cool or having an awesome experience in the woods. Just as often, it's just to reinforce my own image as a hiker or someone who enjoys the outdoors. But all of these uses are just that: uses of nature. Being forced to be in nature with no real purpose or idea of what is supposed to happen is slightly disconcerting.

With a lack of goal, it's easier to find something new to take note of. What I found after sitting down was that in front of me was a line of ants crawling off towards a tree. I watched the ants and realized they were both heading towards and away from the tree, seeming to return off to under the log I was sitting on. I watched the ants as they interacted with each other in both directions, and was impressed to see there was some sort of communication going on. The ants returning from the tree would come fact to face with one heading in that direction, and they would both momentarily stop before splitting and heading in their respective directions. This happened multiple times on the way with any given ant, and the pause lasted less than a second. After watching for a while, I realized there were far more ants than I had initially noticed, that they were literally crawling all over the ground.

I tried to remember the last time I had taken more than 5 seconds to watch ants, and guessed it must have been more than 10 years ago. It's just not something you notice and stop to watch because of the tiny scale, but it's equally amazing that such a complex system is going on where you can barely see it. This reminded me of Buber's distinction between Experience and Encounter. Buber claims that an experience happens within and that those who have one do not participate in the world. That is, a person can have an experience of something that is entirely individual, and is between the I and the It. An encounter is between the I and the You; it is something that inherently involves another individual and exists between them. I believe that in most previous cases, my hikes in the woods followed the 'experience' line -- I went into nature with preconceived notions about what it would be like and what I wanted to get out of it. Thus, I treat an inherently separate and wild entity as an 'It' and not as a 'You'.

I began to wonder, though, whether one could consider being in nature such as this an encounter, since it does not necessarily include another individual. That is, what does it take to have a true encounter with nature? I, by observing nature, was not participating in the ant's journey. I did not communicate with the ants, but by observing them did have discoveries and thoughts brought on by their behavior. Buber says "True community does not come into being because people have feelings for each other (thought that is required, too), but rather on two accounts: all of them have to stand in a living, reciprocal relationship to a single living center, and they have to stand in a living, reciprocal relationship to one another." A simple viewing of nature is obviously separate from being in community with nature, and we usually think of community as being between two humans. But we would also think of a community of animals living together, like monkeys or possibly even ants. And if we lived more closely to nature we might consider ourselves to be apart of these relationships. However, we have transformed our world so much for our own benefit that we consider nature as something apart from ourselves.

To have an encounter with nature, I believe we must have a much closer constant relationship with it. This is often what people who engage in long-distance hikes do, and it's what we've considered as "shaking off the village." Not only does this allow one to be in a new mindset where they allow themselves to be removed from their normal modes, it allows them to consider themselves to be apart of a new community. Through Buber's logic, it's only when a true interaction of purpose takes place between two entities that they can truly encounter each other.