Elizabeth Watkins - Making Nature Sacred

On page 41 John Gatta states that “In the poet’s view, humankind lives at once within, yet apart from the community of animal Creation. We belong and do not belong to ‘nature’”. What does that mean? When I first saw that statement I thought about how we as human beings isolate ourselves from nature. We don’t dwell in nature, we dwell among it. We build up houses and roads and make ourselves “civilized”. When are we directly interacting with nature? Only when we go out into it on purpose are we belonging to nature. We go on walks, we hike, we camp, we lay on the beach. We’re among nature when we choose. To me there seems to be no instances when we really unconsciously belong to nature. We’re always making conscious decisions about our surroundings and about what we are apart from.