Hello! It’s been far, far too long, my friends. Autumn is here! Here in New England the leaves are turning, and the temperatures are cooling. The nights feel quiet and peaceful. Truth be told, I started writing this piece last autumn (with every intention of posting after my last post). Alas, life got busy as it does, but I’m back at it! So here we go. I hope you enjoy it! ___________________________________________________________________________
I’m outside trying to write, thinking on which topic to focus on. There are just too many!
After days of clouds and rain, it’s a beautiful sunny autumn Sunday morning. Taking advantage, I decided to go work outside at a local apple farm that thankfully has Wi-Fi. (Very 21st century of me, no?) I ordered myself a coffee and apple cider donut- because of course that’s what you get in New England at this time of year - and settled in for a good writing session with the apple trees as my backdrop. Perfect scenery to tap into some nature-focused writing!
And then promptly spent a good half hour hanging out with honeybees.
Not intentionally, of course. They came to hang out with me. Remember my sugary sweets?
Suddenly, these bees wanted my coffee, my donuts, the inside of my backpack, and the fake painted strawberry on my hoodie.
(I felt bad for the latter.)
They’re cute though, and they’re not wasps, so I hung out with them - totally distracted from writing. Feel free to be momentarily distracted with me in this short clip of bees searching for sugar!
And while I admired these little exploring bees, all this got me thinking: my relationship with bees and other creatures have totally changed since I was younger. (With the exception of aggressive pointy little things. I respectfully still stay away from those.)
Not so many years ago I would have gotten very nervous around these little critters, swatting them away or just getting uncomfortable and leaving back indoors. But I’m not allergic and they aren’t aggressive. So why was I reactively jumping to conclusions that this little buzzing fuzzy flying bug wants anything from me but the sugar that might be around me? (Though admittedly, it can get annoying when there are many of them and they won’t leave your coffee alone. I had to cover the cup with a napkin and tell them “Get your own coffee!” Side note: bees don’t care or understand English.)
I wonder how that happened, that calmer feeling around these little guys. It’s not like I like, or dislike nature more or less than I did before.
In retrospect, I slowly got to know them more over the years. I’ve heard stories from others, people petting bumble bees and what not. I’ve been around them more often when I spend more time outside. I know they’re important in keeping life - us - alive. And it’s not like I’m walking into their hives. So now here I am, hanging out with some bees that seem to want my sugared coffee and donuts, and not going back inside to stay away.
Now I'm wondering if that’s how it is with us humans and our relationship with the rest of nature. If we are nature, and enjoy nature to some degree, but we keep our distance due to our lack of understanding of or relationship with nature. By human nature (hah, see what I did there?), we stay away from what we don’t know or don’t understand, and we hear horror stories. Like, the trees are innocent, but those bears and fisher cats? No thank you! (Still no thank you - I don’t recommend hanging out with bears and fisher cats unless you are a well-trained person who knows what they’re doing!)
But let’s go down to the very basics. What is our relationship to nature? We like to look at trees and waterfalls and go into woods for peace or maybe to get a breather. Science articles have come out saying that being out in nature helps decrease stress/anxiety/depression. All great results, and honestly rather intuitive. But in our society, unless you’ve been taught to really get to know what you’re looking at, we don’t know much.
So, try this with me for a minute.
If you happen to be outside, look around you; or if you’re near a window, look outside. Do you see a plant or a tree? Do you know that tree or plant's name? If you do, that’s pretty cool (and if you were the one who planted them or it’s a common flower like roses, I know you know!). If you don’t, don’t worry - many of us don’t. Even for me, when I should know after being taught. I am terrible at remembering names, and that goes for all species unless I’ve gotten to know them. What I find sad is that we’ve been taught that getting to know these particular neighbors is not considered important. We’re taught basic skills to just function in the society that we’ve built. Now, I can only speak from a western US perspective, coming from a largely populated, lower income suburban area, and having gone to schools where teaching the names of trees, plants, and land was barely touched upon. Sure, we learned the basic functions of nature in science, did some cool outdoor “projects” in elementary school (that no one remembers), but we weren’t really taught to build a relationship with nature. It’s just something that’s there, something “other,” to be observed (and for some, to manipulate for our use). We as a society treat nature as a separate entity or like an object that sometimes does really cool stuff, and that’s it.
Food for thought. I have two questions for you: If species like a plant can grow, require nutrients, become fertile, and die, then isn’t that plant living? If a plant is living, why do we as humans tend to act like they’re not?
Then this leads me to more questions! If species - like bees - are just trying to live their life like the rest of us, why do we act like they’re a nuisance unless they please us?
Why do we treat plants and some species as some inanimate objects or lesser beings? Is it because society as a whole don’t deem them important? Or because we’ve been taught to think we’re the superior, decisive species? As humans, we have a history of playing God. Sometimes we don’t even realize it. We can be the kindest of people, and we still determine the level of importance to everything based on our ideas of worth and usefulness, and how alive it appears to us.* We clash around ethics regarding animals and humans. Everything else is barely debated, unless it’s something we humans need, or some brave soul brings attention. We do a lot of taking from another living source - in large quantities at that.
Even though we have a vague concept that something is living, do we respect or deem them important enough? They’re barely alive and more of them than we can mentally imagine. As a whole, we haven’t really taken time to build a relationship with majority of non-human creatures to feel the need of a reciprocal give and take, we just take.
And here we are now dealing with the ramifications of all our taking without giving back, including our bees that keep our lives going. We’ve been treating the rest of life around us as dispensable goods with an infinite supply, possibly all due to the type of relationship we’ve created with the other species we cohabitate with on this planet. Except for those still working with the land, most of us have barely built one.
And look at that - you're still here. Since you are, let’s play a little game. This is something I’m going to call “playing with the lens filter.”
This won’t take much effort. It's a shift in perspective.
Let's take you back to that first little request I made earlier, to look outside and see who lives around you. The next time you're outside, near a window, or somewhere near nature, go find out the name of that tree or plant you don’t recognize**. Get to know your neighbor and recognize the life there, even for a moment (the non-human ones, but it’s not a bad thing to say hi to your neighbors if you’ve got them, hah!).
It's a bit of mindfulness in the present. A shift in perspective takes some playing with if you're willing to try. Eventually that perspective brings awareness, awareness brings us to the present and brings us to think about new approaches. Awareness brings us to live consciously and maybe eventually that perspective will organically develop into a change in our lives.
Maybe that perspective will have you realizing that bees are adorably, curiously, nosy.
Cheers, Kat S.
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*I can’t speak for all people. I speak from the perspective of someone raised in a western mentality in the United States.
**Fun resource, if you have a smartphone and the time, there are so many cool plant identifying apps for free out there! I use LeafSnap, and there are plenty others. Feel free to let me know if you use any plant identifying apps that you think are worth checking out!
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