What is nature trying to tell us? | Candace McKibben

For more than a decade when I take my daily walk, I wear a weighted vest with the hopes of increasing bone density. Like my mother before me, I have osteoporosis, and at the encouragement of my specialist have been trying to improve my bone health through diet, exercise, and daily doses of calcium, vitamin D, and vitamin K2.

A walk of three to four miles each day had become not only treatment for my bones, but also for my soul. Being outside in nature is where I prefer to be and having a doctor’s recommendation for it adds to its justification and importance.

But the last few months, with the record-setting heat that begins early in the morning and persists until late at night, walking outside has been a challenge. While I am certain we have had hot summers before in my lifetime as a native Floridian, the unrelenting heat that has lasted for weeks now, with little sign of breaking, seems unprecedented and deeply concerning.

It should not come as a surprise to us that the climate is changing in drastic ways. Scientists have been warning us for decades about the cumulative effect of depleting the earth’s resources and ignoring the signs that nature has been sending to get our attention.

We have been warned

I remember hearing when I was in college then-President Jimmy Carter encouraging Americans to lower the thermostat in the winter and wear a sweater or increase it in the summer and wear lighter clothes. I remember hearing Al Gore give a lecture at Vanderbilt when I was in my early 30s about the ways in which our earth would be impacted if we did not reduce carbon emissions. We have been warned and, some would say, by nature herself.

In the powerful Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction book by Richard Powers, "The Overstory," a character, Dr. Patricia Westerford, says at a trial in which she is an expert witness, “We scientists are taught never to look for ourselves in other species. So, we make sure nothing looks like us! But trees want something from us, just as we have always wanted things from them. This isn’t mystical. The ‘environment’ is alive - a fluid, changing web of purposeful lives dependent on each other.”

Through the lives of nine complex characters, author Richard Powers helps the reader listen to nature, and in particular to trees who are trying to convince us of the need to protect the environment. When in the Amazon rainforest, Patricia’s guide shows her the sustainable means of harvesting from the rubber tree, called “tapping,” and tells of the poachers whose harvesting kills the tree.

It is there that an extraordinary sight comes into view, first of the “tappers,” and then Patricia. It’s an enormous tree of a species unknown to her, whose trunk has grown into a remarkable image of a human woman.

Patricia gasps at the sight. She knows that human brains naturally find patterns in random places, an adaptation of the human brain that makes people see people in all things, a psychological process called “pareidolia.” But when she tries to convince the others of this dismissal, it feels wrong. The tree really does look exactly like a woman, her branch arms uplifted to the sky. And the native rubber tappers say sadly, “It is the Virgin [Mary], looking on the dying world in horror.”

Sounds of nature

Having read these words just days before seeing the redwood trees in Northern California this past June, I, too, gasped when hiking through the Jebediah Smith Redwoods State Park at an extraordinary sight. I saw, in the base of a magnificent redwood, what appeared to be the silhouette of a grandmother bowed in prayer. It was for me a sacred moment.

Another remarkably creative effort at getting us to pay attention to what nature is trying to tell us comes from the organization, “Conservation International.” They use brief films featuring prominent actors highlighting important elements of nature like the wave, the forest, the sky, and the coral reef to make the point that “Nature does not need humans. Humans need nature.”

In addition to the aforementioned short film series titled, “Nature is Speaking” Conservation International offers recordings of the sounds of nature in a series titled, “Hear Me While You Can.”

From Tanzania to Guyana, to the Philippines, to Papua New Guinea, to Madagascar, and so many more critical ecosystems needing protection, you can listen to the soundscapes of nature, including intricate birdsongs, the murmur of insects, and trickling streams, from places across the globe. The thinking in creating the audiotapes is it is hard to care for places you have never experienced. So, listen, experience, so that you can care.

I was particularly moved by the brief recording of Maui, where the humpback whales migrate 3,000 miles from Alaska to Hawaii and congregate in the warm, shallow waters around Lahaina to breed and raise their young. Their mournful voices fill the air in the recording.

Arriving as early as September each year, thousands of whales appear before the peak in January through March. With the devastating fires there fresh in our hearts and minds, we think not only of the tragic loss of human life and property, but the fires’ impact on the marine environment and the flora and fauna that makes Maui such a magical place.

Lifeline for the future

One of the most extensive and hopeful articles I have read on listening to nature was written by Chantal Van Ham, European Union Program Manager of Nature Based Solutions, in May of 2020. She writes, “The wisdom of nature is the lifeline for our future and our most important ally in finding the pathways to transform the harmful exploitation of natural resources into a regenerative system that balances human aspirations with a healthy planet.”

Van Ham shares statistics on the devastation but also ways in which communities around the globe are paying attention to the lessons of nature in mitigating the damage and solving the problems. She praises the forests, the ants, the kelp forests, and the bats’ role in agricultural production.

She shares stories of cities around the world that are incorporating nature’s wisdom in creating biodiverse green spaces, like London’s seven mile long “bee corridor” of wildflower meadows, or Singapore’s hospital gardens incorporating trees, plants, waterfalls, and the resulting birdsong.

Van Ham concludes her article with the words of Joaquin Phoenix, who stood up for the voiceless in his Academy Award speech for Best Actor in the film “The Joker.” He laments that as humans we have become disconnected with nature. But adds, “Human beings are so inventive, creative and ingenious, and when we use love and compassion as our guiding principles, we can create systems of change that are sentient to all living beings and the environment.”

As the days this week were hotter than last week, not only in the South but across the globe, I pray we all will be convinced of the need to listen to nature and work together to restore health to our planet.

The Rev. Candace McKibben is an ordained minister and pastor of Tallahassee Fellowship.

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: What is nature trying to tell us about the health of planet?