Care – Wild Photos

For most of us, the natural world is nothing more than an endless mine that we expect to provide us with the natural resources our consumer driven lives need. We also see the natural world as an limitless sink that we assume will continue to dutifully absorb the enormous amounts of waste that comes with our Industrial way of living.Hundreds of years ago, the indigenous leader Chief Seattle prophetically reminded us that “the earth doesn’t belong to us; we belong to the earth.” Belonging to the earth, of course requires us to do our part to care for the earth. Instead of misguidedly supposing that the earth exists to fulfill our every desire, developing an attitude of caring for the earth will entail accepting certain limits and boundaries to how we are to interact with the natural world.While caring for the earth is a necessary and worthwhile task in itself, we should also understand that caring for the earth is also caring for ourselves. The same Chief Seattle also revealed that “whatever befalls the earth, befalls the children of the earth.”

By caring for the earth then, we are also making sure that the conditions will be right so that our own species can continue to flourish as part of the community of life. Caring for the natural world is a responsibility of everyone, whether you live in a New York high rise apartment or a rural Kentucky farm.

Us adrenaline junkies and outdoors enthusiasts, of course, have a special reason to care for the earth as well: without caring for the natural world, we might soon find our planet overrun by urban sprawl and suburbs, and there is not much outdoors fun to be had in those places!