The Universal Ground

Katy Pelchy
The Universal Ground
Choice

It seems to me that wilderness is the universal truth. All cultures that I know of revere wilderness and accept its role as incredibly important to the world. It's something, in this world full of entirely different peoples, values, wants, needs, and beliefs, that is common ground. In the end, we will all fight for the same thing: to preserve nature so that we may live. But what is it about nature that so captivates almost every culture? It can't be the simple truth that nature sustains us, or else our only view of the wilderness would be objective in preserving it enough to preserve ourselves. It holds meaning beyond total comprehension. Among cultures, people have different idioms and expressions, but everyone understands the expression of feeling free atop a mountain, or feeling insignificant next to the sea. Any comparison or feeling associated with nature is comprehensible to any person in the world. Yes, we all had origins in nature. But today, more and more people are living apart from it, so origins can't be the reason. Most people have visited nature at some point in time, but the feelings elicited by standing alone on a mountaintop aren't ones that are normally had by tourists driving by in a car. So what exactly is it that makes nature so universal, even in a time as disconnected from nature as we are now? Perhaps we will never know, and perhaps that is best. For if we define the mystery, there is no mystery to keep us connected, right?