Worth Keeping

There is something about nature. By something I mean the power it possesses to affect me when I am immersed in it. Recently I had the pleasure of visiting the Pacific Northwest and was blown away by the mountains and incredibly tall red-wood trees. Beyond viewing the beauty there I also toured several Native American historical sites there and observed their lost way of life. Upon learning how they lived I felt a deep jealousy of the simplicity and beauty of their life. Living off immense wilderness, plentiful with food and a perfect climate seemed to me to be the ideal life. The ease of life they enjoyed can be seen in the amazing art they had time to develop, not having to spend most of their days just surviving. The totem poles which they built out of stone tools are an amazing accomplishment. Living off a healthy diet of fish and immersed in incredible natural beauty they were able to design a beautiful and unique artistic style which is one of my personal favourites in the history of the world. I personally like to think that the reason those Natives never progressed technologically is because they already had the perfect life.

Of course nature’s beauty is all around us and is as diverse as the Earth is large. After my trip I returned home to the Atlantic Northeast. Although nature’s physical features are not as immense or powerful here as on the Pacific, it is beautiful all the same. Inspired by the wilderness on the Pacific I went hiking in Blomidon Provincial Park in Nova Scotia and all but forgot the Pacific, coming face to face with Nova Scotia’s own unique wilderness.  I feel so lucky to live in a nation with so much untouched wilderness, but at the same time I am afraid that our nation could end up like those in Europe where their forests and wilderness have been all but obliterated. Much of Canada’s wilderness is so because no one has developed it yet, but little of it is actually protected. Logging, mining and the tar sands are constantly destroying our wild (and it is ours) with little stopping them, all in the name of economic progress. Surely in a nation as large as Canada we can have both: large comfortable cities with plentiful energy and natural resources while maintaining large swaths of wilderness and expansive national parks. The government simply needs to commit to protecting large areas of wilderness from private interests and surely this will benefit the greater good. In our times of in-activity and stressful, stimulated lives, getting back in touch with old home in the wild can be the best therapy.

-DG

P.S. I have included several photos of my recent trips.

Nature Blog