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Sometimes it feels like it's getting harder to enjoy nature, to get close enough to it that our senses and aesthetic consciousness become engaged, close enough to experience that magical loss of boundary between us and the world. To find a virgin patch of wildflowers that hasn't been trampled confers a responsibility to try to leave it that way for the next person to discover, to say nothing of the specific needs of insects and the general interdependence of the ecological web as a whole. A patch of wildflowers can take only so much of that up-close-and-personal love.
Meanwhile, the more we turn the planet over to cities and suburbs and food production, the more we impoverish our heritage of wild nature. You know the end is near when nature becomes akin to a museum diorama--look but don't touch--instead of something intrinsic to our lives, part of who we are.
