When Did We Forget We Were Part of Nature?

Every year on World Environment Day we’re encouraged to reconnect with nature.

We are told to get outdoors.

Walk in the countryside.

Visit the beach.

Plant a tree.

Protect wildlife.

All wonderful things.

But perhaps there is a bigger question hiding underneath all of this.

When did we start talking about nature as though it was something separate from us?

After all, we’re nature too.

We’re born into it.

We depend on it.

We are shaped by it.

Yet somewhere along the way many of us started behaving as though nature exists “out there” while we exist somewhere else entirely.

Perhaps that’s why so many people feel disconnected.

Not just from the environment, but from themselves.

Modern life often encourages us to see ourselves as projects that need fixing. Too old. Too young. Too large. Too small. Too hairy. Not hairy enough. Too this. Not enough that.

Nature has absolutely no interest in any of that nonsense.

A tree doesn’t spend its life wishing it looked more like another tree.

A river doesn’t apologise for the route it takes.

The mountains of Wales don’t compare themselves to mountains in Scotland.

Nature simply exists.

Authentically.

Without apology.

Without comparison.

And perhaps that’s one of the reasons naturism can feel so liberating.

Not because of what’s removed.

But because of what’s rediscovered.

The opportunity to stop performing.

To stop comparing.

To stop worrying about whether we fit somebody else’s idea of who we should be.

For a little while, we simply become human beings in the natural world again.

Not consumers.

Not customers.

Not followers.

Not profiles.

Just people.

World Environment Day reminds us to protect the natural world.

But maybe it can also remind us of something else.

We don’t stand apart from nature.

We belong to it.

The same wind that moves through the trees touches our skin.

The same sun that warms the Welsh hills warms us.

The same earth that supports every living thing supports us too.

Perhaps protecting nature begins with remembering a simple truth.

We were never separate from it in the first place.