Nature Good. Period.

To name just one magical experience I’ve had with nature, and then to have it be the most magical, is most definitely not a simple task for me and quite possibly not possible. When it comes to nature, I’m still a little kid full of wonder. My most recent magical moment happened just yesterday. A couple close friends and I biked down to the Potomac and worked our way up its bank to a lot of big rocks sticking out into the river. We worked our way out to the edge, and then the sun set and the sky was pink and orange and blue and yellow and the clouds were purple and yellow, and the river was rushing around me and if I concentrated hard enough I couldn’t hear the traffic from the highway across the water, or the planes overhead. It was really windy, and as each gust blew by us it whipped up the waves. We sat and watched gusts race down the river until it got dark and then biked back. Last weekend, a friend and I biked through Rock Creek Park and skipped stones on the creek. A couple weeks before that, I took a walk through a park to the river, and the creek flowing through it was half frozen, and I spent hours following it. Not too long before that, I was cross-country skiing along the St. Croix River in two feet of snow. I’ve done my best to have magical moments as often as I can.

Of course, my anecdotal evidence might not convince anyone else that nature is worth saving. Some people not acknowledge the intrinsic value of nature. For those kinds, there are valuable economic roles that the environment plays. Besides doing a lot of work for us behind the scenes (like carbon sinking and filtering water sources), nature is beneficial to our health in a lot of ways. This link and this link tell you why nature keeps people healthy, and helps them heal faster. Did you know that indoor air pollution is often higher than outdoor pollution? What more do you need to know? Nature good. Period.