Fit to Survive
M Alan Roberts

Life in the woods is, in fact, kind of laid back. You are not faced with all of the hustle and bustle of common daily living. One is brought into much closer contact with the elements of nature - the beautiful and serene, as well as the raw and inhospitable. Really, people today forget, or never even learn, from where they come. Just a short 100 years ago, all people had a thorough understanding of their relationships with nature - how they fit into the bigger picture.

Of course, the land was your best friend - the very center of your life. You had to pay attention to it. You had to embrace its patterns and workings. You had to take care of the land and protect it from destructive forces. The governments of the planet were also hip to these concepts and acted accordingly. When election times rolled around, candidates were sure to include issues of preservation and conservation as leading points of their campaign platforms. It was only natural.

Crops were planted and raised without the use of chemical-based pesticides and herbicides. Families would work diligently together for months to ensure a plentiful harvest so that there would be food to eat throughout the year. Cold cellars and canning methods were utilized constantly to preserve the food supply as there were no readily available electric refrigerators/freezers.

Stock animals were raised without the administration of steroids and all of the other techniques used for forcing growth today. Plants and animals were developed in their natural states - as they should still be. Today, diseases like Mad Cow and Avian Flu strains are a constant threat of epidemic sickness spread as a direct result of too many animals being farmed in too little space. They are made to eat their own kind. They are severely mistreated. Their nutritional value is of very little concern.

Trapping, fishing and hunting were not the multi-million dollar businesses that they are today. People didn't pay thousands to be conveniently led to a stocked hunting ground and guaranteed to bag a trophy buck. The hunt wasn't based on how many points that a rack had; it was simply a means of survival. Besides, everyone knows that doe meat is what to eat. To hunt, track, shoot, kill, skin, clean and prepare an animal was just as natural for our great-grandparents as it is for most of us to go to the grocery store on the way home from work today. Many call that progress. I believe that is a progression in the wrong direction.

Our mass migration out of nature and into the cities has created a number of situations that are ravishing our environment and destroying our very heritage. We have, it seems, forgotten our roots and/or traded them in on city-dwelling non-self sufficiency. The results are far deeper reaching than what is obvious. We are losing the ability to fend for ourselves. We are becoming a weaker race. Human "advancements" are disrupting the balance of nature and nature doesn't play well with others when provoked.

For countless millions of years, our once-pristine planet thrived in understated harmony. It is ever-increasingly obvious that the harmonic balance of the natural world has been upset. Soon, nature will be forced to rebel against the onslaught of human ignorance and abuse that it has consistently endured to this point. When that time comes, I will be happy to have remembered the lessons learned by my forefathers - the skills of natural living. It could just end up that country folk are the only ones that will understand how to survive after all. The Darwinian concept of the fittest surviving is not obsolete. In fact, it may be about to prove itself all over again - as all things of inherent nature always do.