I did not know I was part of nature until about five years ago

Originally published 1/30/26 here.

In one of the groups I host for spiritual companionship around climate change, I offered a series of questions from Sarah Jaquette Ray’s A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety. They were designed to help us get in touch with our emotions about this changing planet so that we are not shut down by them. The following is part of my reflection. If you are interested in these kinds of conversations, see details at the end on the new group I am forming.

The “age of overwhelm” is real but so is our breath, our bone, and our might.
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Eileen

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​I did not know I was part of nature until about five years ago. Nature was outside, it was recreation, it was weather. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest during the spotted owl crisis, nature was a place for animals or a resource for capitalism. Living outside of Los Angeles during drought and fires, nature was trying to kill us. Living in the Midwest, nature is the property of big agribusiness and their corn for cattle in China. Until five years ago, nature was something to protect from me or for our food supply.

And I need that food supply; I cannot survive outside of human systems. I do not know what I can eat, what seed I would need to grow would look like, and I have never killed or dressed an animal for food. Evolutionarily, I am so specialized in my skills and existence that I cannot depend on the natural world for survival without the mediation of western capitalist systems.
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Nature has been a picture, not a place.

And a small minority of other humans benefitted from that disconnect: gas and oil and row croppers. Salmon and bees and I all paid a price.

Which I knew. I came up in the early days of the recycling movement, during Hanford Nuclear’s pollution of my watershed, before Al Gore’s warnings. And it terrified me. My feeling of overwhelm shaped my lack of engagement for a long time. It was too big so I checked out. I told myself that racism was a more manageable problem to address—classic White lady hubris.
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Then I got to move to an acreage. I was outside more than ever, walking the dogs in all weather but also learning from my wife how to steward the land. I took a friend’s class on ecospirituality and learned about forest therapy and my imagination came alive. I received invitations to sit with the outdoors, to be of the outdoors. I learned to remove ticks without a glove and pull deer bones from the mouths of my dogs. I learned that just as I am seeing the trees and the birds and the deer and the alfalfa butterflies, they are seeing me.

So I have transitioned from living in one narrative about nature to another. I have at times felt angry at the first for not having the second sooner. But then I rejoice that I did, that I heard the call.

Sometimes my feelings get hijacked and I have to protect them so I can function without fear, with love and hope and gratitude. I do have the capacity to learn and I did see an owl last night. I am not alone. I have partners who are adapting and still present. Still here and moving and birthing. There will be life after us and a new version of us.

The feelings I need to keep tending to all of my world—my neighbors terrorized by ICE, my neighbors needing the feeders refilled—are peace, joy, gratitude.
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I left one of my jade plants, below, facing in one direction for so long that it became very lopsided and started to tip over in its pot. But, just as it is now becoming more balanced through a slight turn, so am I.

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Walking the Wild Edges

Group Spiritual Accompaniment for Challenging Times

March–October 2026 • Various days and times available • Online

We live in and love a broken and beautiful world, and we are not meant to carry that love alone. We find ourselves at the edges of systems—religious, political, and ecological—that are beleaguered but could be lifegiving. Walking these wild edges, we find like-spirited seekers, and together we hold the big questions of vocation, calling, and journey.
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Learn more and register here: https://thebtscenter.org/wildedges-2026/