It isn't that I am an outdoorsy person. Just take a peek in my closet. 50% corporate work clothing; 20% cocktail and fancy party clothe; 30% everything else. Clearly, I am an urbanite. I work in a building that is some combination of marble, glass, and hopefully steel.
It's just that I am acutely aware of the difference between first and second nature. See William Cronon's Nature's Metropolis. Environmentalists might tell you there is not first nature left. I might agree. However, I disagree with the romanticization of first nature which seems to villianize second nature. And really, I think we can all begin to see we have already moved on to third and fourth nature.
We all have a relationship with our environment. It lives in our emotional and cultural memory and imagination. We want we know our children and our grandchildren and our great-grandchilden will walk this earth, and we want them to know the blooming pastels of spring and the fiery bursts of fall. (Note: That is of course a very geographic-specific event). I think we also all know the feeling we get when someone mentions a place we've never actually been, but we saw it once in National Geographic or our favorite book takes place there.
Most people know I like plants. Sometimes more than humans, but humans make me laugh so that makes them infinitely more amusing than plants. When I say I enjoy plants, what I am really trying to say is that I am interested in our connection with the land we live on. What grows here, and what doesn't? How do we care for them? How do they care for us?
It seems simple. "By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for the dust you are and to dust you will return." (Genesis 3:19)
Yes, I enjoy plants. I enjoy learning bits of a dead language so I can refer to them more specifically, but mostly I enjoy knowing that whatever degree of Nature a person enjoys most is a part of a person's identity. And how do you unwind all those complexities? So I often find myself thinking that well, it isn't as simple as I thought.
