Ngā Hua te Taiao: Relationship with the Earth

Good news stories (and more) for the planet 

Kia ora, Salient reader! Welcome to our fortnightly column on the environment, sustainable living, and the small, stubborn act of hope amongst a world on fire! Check in every second week for waste-free recipes, genuinely good news, and practical ways to lend a hand—nudging a happier, healthier earth a little closer into view.

Relationship with the Earth 

It is likely that you, as a reader of this column, already swoon over the beauty of our Earth, and relish a moment spent under the trees. Or maybe you’re quite happy indoors, content with the cleanliness and order of a mud-free life. Whicher way you fall, it can be easy to feel that—whilst perhaps enjoyable—a relationship to the natural world is not a need to have. ‘It won’t fix climate change.’

Currently solar power is booming, fortuitously working out both economically and environmentally. This is good, but it’s also fragile. If humanities ‘why’ is not because we care, but because prices are low, then we surely walk a dangerous road. How will we ever truly care, if we do not first know the Earth on which we live?

Might a lack of relationship to the land which we inhabit be a contributing factor to the western world’s glacially slow progress towards ‘sustainability.’ Perhaps if our country's current leaders had grown up in a society where relationship to the land mattered, they’d be less likely to push for new mines, and delay the reduction of our emissions. Perhaps I am dreaming. 

Take this as an encouragement to hug a tree, climb a mountain (or a hill), stop and smell the flowers, and wonder at the birds flying overhead. It all matters. As a university student, you will be a future leader. So, for the sake of our Earth, build a relationship. 

Restoring land without restoring relationship is an empty exercise. It is relationship that will endure and relationship that will sustain the restored land. Therefore, reconnecting people and the landscape is as essential as reestablishing proper hydrology or cleaning up contaminants. It is medicine for the earth.- Robin Wall Kimmerer (in Braiding Sweetgrass)

How to get lost - Jachin Brown

Getting lost: to some, a problem and to others, a nightmare. But in its obscurity lies opportunity, an opportunity that there is more to life than this! For as it is true that at one time you knew nothing of what you now know, and it is also true that there is still much more of you to be found.

So, can you remember it? What it felt like to be unsure yet curious, to be timid but not afraid, to be searching but not yet found. Do you remember what it felt like to be lost? But fear not, hope remains! You can reclaim this superpower; you can reclaim the ability to wander and to wonder,  with these four simple steps:

Be Present - Choose our world over your devastating digital device

Be Curious - Notice those alluring anonymous alleyways 

Be Bold - Explore that suspicious-sounding side street 

Be Kind - Chat to the heartwarming humans you find along the way

*Pro tip—avoid Google Maps at all costs!