The Real Art of Being Green

There is more to “being green” than separating our plastics, glass, and paper. Being green is more than using fewer plastic water bottles and buying the correct organic cleaners for our kitchens and toilets. Greening our lives should mean when and how we look at nature. Instead of separating our trash we need to separate ourselves from what separates us from enjoyment of the simple outdoors.

Does anyone remember the childhood fantasy of being alone in the woods or on a quiet beach? Even though we might have been only a short distance from home there was still the sense that we were explorers, pioneers in a new land. With it came the feeling that we were even looking at familiar scenes through different eyes – adventuresome eyes. Walking through natural surroundings without ever-present electronic distractions can open our senses to what an old biology professor of mine once expressed as what we’ve looked at before but haven’t seen yet.

As adults, we’ve probably abandoned the pioneer fantasy, but that doesn’t mean we have to relinquish our sense of curiosity and exploration. To reach that sense means first again enjoying being alone – with our own thoughts and observations. Sometimes then all it takes is looking up into the trees, into the sky, or down at the trail, or into the brush or rocks. Even on a well-travelled trail nature throws things at us that we hadn’t expected or noticed before: a red-tailed hawk soaring overhead, a harmless hog-nosed snake rattling in the fallen leaves at our feet, a crab scuttling into a sandy burrow on the beach, a mushroom popped on the forest up that wasn’t above ground yesterday.

The trick to making our lives green is to bring the idea of the outdoors back into our homes and our everyday lives. Including the observations of our walk in the forest or on the beach in everyday conversation inserts the activity of being green into our lives. We cannot expect our friends and family to appreciate the value of having nature in their lives if we can’t express the simple importance of it in ours. That’s the real meaning of being green.