Having grown up in a fairly rural part of the country, I like to think that I’ve had a number of meaningful engagements with nature. The most intriguing of these always comes after I’ve been in the city for a long time. I lived in Rio de Janeiro for a full year, the first time I’d ever spent any significant time in a city. After a few months I started to feel like something significant in my life was gone. Every time I examined the night sky, I could only find 6 or 7 stars at the most. For New Years, my host family took me out of the city to go sailing with some of their friends. We spent the night on the boat off the shore of a small uninhabited island. I have never been so entranced by my surroundings. The stars were simply phenomenal. The sound of water and the animals on the island at night were fascinating. The weather was a perfect balmy 85 degrees. My family had to show me the most magical part of the little place though. At about 9 o’clock at night they convinced me to jump off the boat and go swimming with them. When the first girl jumped in the water lit up and sparkled all around her. It was mind boggling; I had never seen anything like it. Every time something moved through the water little lights began to sparkle underneath the surface. It turns out, there was some sort of algae in the water that somehow reacted to motion with light, but for all I knew at that point it was fairy dust. I have a hard time using the word magical in a descriptive way, I prefer entrancing, but regardless I won’t forget the way that being outside that night felt.

I do think it’s important to concern ourselves with saving nature. However, I’m not completely sure that it’s necessary. It’s important because people usually don’t think of themselves as being part of nature and the only way to get them to notice it is to talk about saving it. The only reason people need to care is because the species is vulnerable as long as they don’t – it’s actually quite self serving. “Nature” will go on regardless of whether people fight it, flow with it, or disregard it altogether. The relationship is not reciprocal however. Nature is flexible enough to deal with our ignorance, but as it changes, our species may prove to be far less adaptable.On a more sentimental note - I personally hold the belief that life is valuable simply because it is life. I'm not convinced that human life is actually more valuable than any other life, and with that thought, concern over nature should happen simply because nature is inherently valuable.