R-E-S-P-E-C-T

The most magical, reverent, and awe-inspiring moment I've had with nature occurred last year in Utah. I spent spring break at BYU with my best friend, taking advantage of the fresh snowfall with a week of sledding, snowball fights, and more importantly, snowboarding. Perhaps it was the novelty of mountains in general (being from the East Coast, I didn't see a mountain until I was 16), but standing at the top of the slope, surrounded by snowy monoliths, was a truly magical, humbling moment. Sure, the view was breathtaking, but the massive presence of the mountains commanded respect. With feet strapped into the snowboard, I realized just how much I was truly at the mercy of nature; the mountains, impassive and impersonal, could not care less if I made it down the slope in one piece or not. The duality of the moment, the absolute beauty of the clear, cloudless sky, the untouched snow, the jagged peaks covered in powdered firs, and the simultaneous aloofness of the forces of nature to human wants or needs, proved to be powerful.

On that note, nature, both its non-human organisms and inorganic elements, needs to be treated with respect and seen with inherent value in itself. Nature (a term I use to encompass all of Earth and its multitude ecosystems and biomes) is bigger than all of us; this longevity and relative permanence should remind humans that while we try to control the world around us, we are merely genetic happenstance, and are only as important as we perceive ourselves. Humans are products of evolution, no different from any other organism. Even inorganic aspects of nature- mountains, bodies of water, etc.- are the results of chemical shifts and reactions; if we can recognize that all of Nature, and our existence on Earth, is simply the combined effect of really fortunate chance events, then the value of Nature becomes apparent. Placed on a level playing field by probability, if we consider humans to have value, and understand our equality with all of life on Earth, connected by the same impartial laws of chemistry, biology, and physics, then all of Nature has value as well; we cannot hold ourselves in higher regard just because evolution granted us the ability to even decide what value is.

That was an extremely long-winded biocentric rant, but I think Carl Sagan sums it up perfectly in Cosmos:

"This oak tree and me, we're made of the same stuff."