Find Your Respect for Nature

As I flew out of Anchorage, Alaska, headed back to my lab in Colorado, I saw the beautiful glaciers in the mountains. This image tells a story of beauty and sadness. You can see the light of the setting sun reflecting off the glaciers and lakes. But it’s sad to think that if action isn’t taken, they soon will be gone.

When I was a child my grandparents would take me to Exit Glacier in Seward, Alaska. I would play in the frigid waters of the river and make snowballs out of the glaciers foot. But those times are long gone. The glacier has receded back into the mountains and it is too unstable to get near it. In the past few years much of the foot has calved off and even diverted the previous river system. This is the glacier former President Obama visited when he came to Alaska.

For college I moved to Denver, where my lab is now. When you’re in a big city and urban environment, you don’t see what you do living in Alaska. Alaska has no big cities like the rest of America does. In Alaska you live in nature. You are educated about it and taught how to interact with it. You don’t get that education in the rest of the US. From a young age we were taught the salmon lifecycle and we raised them in tanks in our classrooms. We went on field trips to glaciers, to rivers, and up mountains. We got to experience nature, and with that experience came respect.

In cities you don’t find that respect for nature. I’ve seen people throw trash out their car windows without a second thought. I’ve seen people walk past plastic bags caught in bushes without a second thought. The attitude is so different here in the city.

The place I did see respect for nature was at Rocky Mountain National Park. My girlfriend and I went camping up there for a weekend, and for the first time since coming to Colorado was I finally happy to be outside. There nature exists without extreme changes from humans. It’s the type of nature you won’t find in a city. It’s the type of nature where at night you can look up and see the stars. If you’ve never left a city you won’t know what I’m talking about. Without all the light pollution, you can really see the stars.

If you live in a city, I ask you to go experience nature for yourself. Really experience it. Go on a long hike. Go camping. Go rafting. Go Diving. Do something that truly lets you experience nature and hopefully you too will gain the respect for nature that so many of us feel.

It’s the reason that so many scientists and nature lovers fight so hard to spread awareness of problems like plastic pollution and climate change. It’s because they have found and understand that respect for nature and we are going to fight to make sure it sticks around.

The thing that many people don’t realize is nature doesn’t need us. We as humans have only been around for an extremely short time compared to the geological timescale. Life has been around long before us and will exist for long after us. To quote one of my favorite authors, Michael Crichton, “Life finds a way.”

If we continue going on the path we are on, we won’t destroy the world. The world will live on and regrow. What won’t live on is us. Humans. We will die at our own hand. That hand is carbon dioxide and methane that chokes us. That hand is plastics that fill our seas and land and starve us. That hand us ignorance, which blinds us from seeing the damage we’re doing to not just the planet, but ourselves.

I hope you enjoy my writing. I plan on posting about environmental problems, but most importantly about solutions that individuals can do to make a difference. If you’re new to my writing, welcome. If you’ve come over from my Instagram, welcome back. I hope each and every one of you will learn something new by reading my stories. Or at least that you consider your own views and reflect on them.

If you want to catch up on some of my past solutions and stories find me on Instagram @that_environmental_chemist

If you want to see more of my photography check out my photography Instagram @logan_sewall_photography

I hope you have a great day, and that you find that respect for nature.