When I am at home, I take a walk through the forest every day. On the very hot days usually at or just after dawn, when there is still some cool to enjoy.
At the moment, I’m not at home. I’m catsitting for a friend and taking my walks through the fields and agricultural land. I’m familiar around here, and usually while I don’t find these walks as nourishing as the ones through ‘my’ forest, I enjoy being out of the built-up areas.
During this morning’s walk, I found I wasn’t enjoying my surroundings very much. On reflection, I realised that it was hard to witness the devastating effects of the drought all around, along every stage of the walk. I recognised the contrast with being in the forest. There, evidence of the drought is also present: the ground is very dry, even on the paths that are usually perpetually swampy, leaves started turning and falling at the start of the month already, here and there even stinging nettles are turning yellow. However, as a whole, the forest exudes nature’s ability to endure and survive hard times. There is life in the experience of hardship.
It suddenly clicked for me, that the forest forms a mutually supportive eco-system, a community, which pulls each other through. Not necessarily unscathed, but still going. Whereas in this agricultural area there are plants, but no ‘communities’. The crops have been separated from other plants to the greatest degree possible, the grass and weeds have to take what they can get from the narrow strips they inhabit, the trees are on their own or in only small clusters, exposed. It’s each plant having to take care of itself as best as it can. This erodes its resilience and chance of survival in hard times.
As I pondered this, I realised it is also a very striking metaphor for how so-called advanced modern life and culture works. Consumerism and individualism taken to an extreme leave us having to cope on our own or in small groups, exposed to the elements (of the stress and hardship that life brings), deprived of the mutually supportive communities that we evolved to live and thrive in. No wonder our resilience and mental health are eroding.