Perhaps it is time for the human race to ponder when food necessitated a label of being "natural."When did this really become a necessary demarcation?
Is there really another palatable option...
"unnatural"?
Foreign to the universe at large, banned in 20 countries, developed by chemists in protective white armor, will not decompose, unintelligible, unpronounceable...
"Let's tear into that cellophane wrapper, nuke it and throw it on a styrofoam plate for lunch!"
If we don't need a field to grow our food, do we need a meadow or mountain to stir our emotions? To unleash our dreams? To scatter our spent energy into a breathing organism that is sure to nourish our very soul?
“We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.”
― Henry David Thoreau,
Children are closer to nature than all others. Maybe it's because they are lower to the ground, the dirt itself. They wear the scent. Maybe they need all that open to absorb the sound and motion they've anguished to conform to "inside" dignities. The stratosphere is close enough. That will do. Sea level to the limits of space is about enough room for their voices and bodies and anticipations.
A child becomes laced with air and clouds and flows with the stream and dives deep into the breath of every leaf and limb. Belly-crawling to freedom. Rolling in delirium. Only the young truly make nature so tactile and real. And, dew-drenched and filthy and pulsing, they reach out to touch, pet, poke, grab, paw, squish, pour, splash, claw, caress.... With greedy hands, bold and determined, they pull it all in and rub it all over. Painted in sweat and dust, a mask of nature--the warpaint on technology--is absorbed, it is a part of them because they make it so. They connect to the simple magnificence, and become grander, freer, happier. And, these glowing screens....the bologna, the "chicken and waffle" artificially-flavored potato chips, the red-colored sugar water of creativity....what are we to do with these tablets and phones
and remote-controlled, brainwashing, lobotomizing icons of "entertainment"? Can we spoon-feed the light and life of our children with chips and processors? Let us put them aside long enough for something natural. Feed the mind, the imaginations of our children's lives with something messy and alive.
If nature is a mother, then children are her champion.
And, it is all won and celebrated in our own backyards.
