If you were asked what nature is to you, what would you say? You would probably think of the countryside, the woods, the mountains, the sea. These scenarios are what we generally call “nature.”
Then if we wanted a more correct definition, we would only have to open the voluminous tome of the Treccani at the letter “N” and find written there this: “Nature: the total system of living things, animal and vegetable, and inanimate things, which present an order, realize types and are formed according to laws. “.
” TotalSystem” already gives us a clue, but I will come back to it in a moment.
If I were to evaluate it from a historical perspective, the discussion would become a bit more complex, but it can also be understood through a simple question, “Who for you today lives by nature?”
I bet many of us would immediately think of farmers, forest rangers, those who, in short, by trade or choice, are more outdoors than inside a house, factory or office.
Are you still with me? Well, I’ll get to the point quickly.
Experiencing nature
Today “living in nature” is an expression that is heard often and can otherwise be expressed as a tendency to live according to natural, relaxed rhythms in harmony with the time of things, like alternating night and day, for one thing.
Do you know, for example, when this relationship-until a few centuries ago totally natural-was twisted? As electricity became more widespread and available to more and more people, it allowed homes and cities to be lit well after dark and created a de facto artificial dì.
Such events, however welcome and progress-bringing they may be, have a non-secondary and far-reaching effect, such as upsetting mankind’s relationship with nature: from then on, in fact, man increasingly realized that he had power over it and could do almost anything he wanted with it. The relationship began to distort, needless to deny.
From then on, living naturally-facciously-has increasingly been perceived in two different ways: living in a time and with rhythms outdated by modernity or being somewhat “strange,” thus living outside modern society.
Returning to nature
We come now to the present day. Today there is an increasingly pressing need to return to natural living. Both because the issue of humanity’s impact on the environment is perceived to be central (and you know how much we care), and because the pace of modern life is often unsustainable and leads many to alienation and, in more severe cases, mental illness. It is not an exaggeration to think that running or, more generally, outdoor sports are also an expression of this need, although linked at times to the individual competitive spirit.
Today, however, our relationship with nature is still a child of that nineteenth-century idea of domination, albeit to a more mitigated degree. In fact, when we try to live “in nature,” we often mean only its most pleasant aspects: the beautiful scenery, the pleasant weather, the relaxed pace. This is an intellectual and aestheticizing view of nature that translates into taking only what is most pleasurable it offers.
Going back to the peasants we think of when we refer to those who live in accord with nature, it is worth noting that for them, especially decades or centuries ago and before the industrialization of agriculture, nature was the only reality they knew, its rhythms coincided with those of man, and the relationship they had with it was not always simple and idyllic, just think of bad weather or famines.
We are part of a system, we do not dominate it
Remember earlier I was pointing out an element in the Treccani definition? That’s right: the “total system.” “Total” means that nature includes us, who are part of it. We do not command it, we do not dominate it, if anything, unfortunately, we often exploit it.
To experience it only in its positive aspects is to have a distorted relationship with it because it means taking only the good it gives us and ignoring or rejecting its negative sides. Which are then only bad for us, because they create hardship, sometimes destruction, sometimes famine. The whole catalog of aspects of nature that sometimes make it less pleasant for us, in short.
Yet all of this is, pardon the repetition, “natural.” Nature is a system that, again according to the Treccani, has an order that is formed according to laws. Here, nature has laws, and for centuries we have tried to subvert or ignore them, exploiting and polluting it. Perhaps I am being a bit extreme in saying that even experiencing it only for its most pleasant aspects is another form of exploitation, but I don’t think I am far from the truth.
What we have long lost is the natural relationship with nature (sorry again for the repetition) and that is to consider ourselves integrated with it, part of and equal to, not dominators. Man is an element of nature; he is not its lord.
“Very well,” you may be saying to yourself, “what does running have to do with it?” It has something to do with it, because in my opinion runners and, more specifically, trail runners are men and women who have a proper relationship with nature. On what is this relationship based? On respect, and respecting it doesn’t just mean not throwing cards on the ground and not picking rare flowers-it means accepting it in every manifestation.
Trail runners are those who run in nature by being part of it, respecting and loving it and accepting that it can also be ruthless and take them to the limit. The rules of the game are not made by men and not decided by trail runners: nature makes them, and we are part of it and must accept them.
We can have a proper relationship with them exactly as we would have with a person we love: accepting their merits and flaws. And never forgetting that “good and bad” and “good and bad” are just names we give to the effect the things that happen to us have on us. For nature there is no such thing as good or bad, no such thing as pleasant or unpleasant: she exists herself, with her animal or plant living beings, the end.
For nature if there is a thunderstorm there is just a thunderstorm, for us humans it can be a nuisance or something to complain about.
Trail runners see the storm and think, if anything, about covering up, just as a runner when it rains thinks that-well, it’s raining!
Trail runners accept and understand because they are part of nature and do not see it as a beautiful setting for their runs.
And what can you do? First, do as the trail runners do. And then you begin to look at nature as a giant, complex system of which you are a part, not being in the least bit its ruler. Some respect, in every sense.