Puddock Hill Journal #18: Take a field trip to your own backyard.
Nature is a great seductress. She calls our attention to what she wants us to see—the flashy flower, the bird’s colorful plumage, the neons of a coral reef—while camouflaging many other varieties of living and nonliving things.
I have recently come to the conclusion that allowing ourselves to be seduced in this way is something of a lazy habit. For the subjects of the backyard steward, it can even be fatal.
Of course, there is no harm in appreciating the beauty of garish flowers or bright butterflies, but if they become the exclusive target of our focus, we miss the myriad natural elements that sustain them—and us.
It has almost become cliché to bemoan the fact that so few in modern society know where their food comes from. Michael Pollan, in his bestselling book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, proposes that if factory farms had glass walls, the animals would be treated better. Seeing is knowing.