Where’s Dr. Doolittle when we need him?
I have watched cows. I know why they’ve been labeled as contented beyond the obvious alliteration. They meander across a dewy pasture in an amazingly random pattern. Rarely looking up to see where they are. They possess no internal GPS to inform them where they are, they just don’t care. As long as the grass is plentiful they munch away. You can stand in the pasture after they’ve left and observe their weaving, circuitous, perfectly random path by noting where the dew has been munched up with the grass. It’s a path about ten or eleven inches wide that resembles a wild yet extremely calm scribble.
If you watch birds enough you know when they’re going to poop. You can recognize the bird’s body language.
We don’t take the time to see what’s going on around us. We’re way too caught up in our own little daily routines. We’re too busy, too much on our plates, too many pots on the stove. Because of this, most of us have lost out tie to nature.
We’re the top of the food chain. There are no predators for us to worry about unless we live in the wilderness. We’ve become extremely arrogant in our manufactured environments. We don’t care about what’s going on around us unless it directly affects our daily routine. It’s sad.
Some people still live close to nature. The Onge tribe from India’s Andaman Island suffered only a couple of deaths as a result of the December, 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Thousands of years of living close to the sea had taught them that after the ground shakes the wave comes. When the earthquake hit their tiny island they knew to move inland to higher ground.
Animals are still attuned to hidden signals humans don’t recognize. They know to eat more as the barometric pressure drops presaging an oncoming storm. They feel pressure waves that can foretell earthquakes. We could probably relearn a multitude of useful things from them if we took the time.
Legend has it that humans could once converse with the animals. We lived in a more harmonious atmosphere. But after time, we grew arrogant and gave the animals names that they didn’t use for themselves. To punish us they quit speaking to us in languages we could understand.
Go to the woods. Go to your back yard. Find a comfortable spot and sit on it; the ground works real well. Turn off the radios, ipods, cell phone, and all that other crap we seem addicted to. Chill out. Look. Listen. You’ll be amazed at what you’ll learn. Do this often enough and you might understand the animals again.
If you watch birds enough you know when they’re going to poop. You can recognize the bird’s body language.
We don’t take the time to see what’s going on around us. We’re way too caught up in our own little daily routines. We’re too busy, too much on our plates, too many pots on the stove. Because of this, most of us have lost out tie to nature.
We’re the top of the food chain. There are no predators for us to worry about unless we live in the wilderness. We’ve become extremely arrogant in our manufactured environments. We don’t care about what’s going on around us unless it directly affects our daily routine. It’s sad.
Some people still live close to nature. The Onge tribe from India’s Andaman Island suffered only a couple of deaths as a result of the December, 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Thousands of years of living close to the sea had taught them that after the ground shakes the wave comes. When the earthquake hit their tiny island they knew to move inland to higher ground.
Animals are still attuned to hidden signals humans don’t recognize. They know to eat more as the barometric pressure drops presaging an oncoming storm. They feel pressure waves that can foretell earthquakes. We could probably relearn a multitude of useful things from them if we took the time.
Legend has it that humans could once converse with the animals. We lived in a more harmonious atmosphere. But after time, we grew arrogant and gave the animals names that they didn’t use for themselves. To punish us they quit speaking to us in languages we could understand.
Go to the woods. Go to your back yard. Find a comfortable spot and sit on it; the ground works real well. Turn off the radios, ipods, cell phone, and all that other crap we seem addicted to. Chill out. Look. Listen. You’ll be amazed at what you’ll learn. Do this often enough and you might understand the animals again.
posted by steve | 9:55 AM
1 Comments:
I live surrounded by nature, trees, birds, flowers, water. And it is so lovely to be in it. Yesterday on Oprah, some Dr. was explaining to people what their poop is supposed to look like if they are healthy. I thought to myself, man have we really screwed ourselves up so badly that we are obsessing about the shape of our poop. Heaven help us.
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