I Believe That Nature is Nurture

I grew up in house with a family of 5, I was the youngest, and I had two older brothers that pushed me to do everything. We lived in a house 45 miles northwest of fort collins, we had no running water and no electricity. When I was young I would have nightmares, you know the ones where you think there is a monster under your bed, so you pull the blankets over your head, because that is what’s going to protect you. I couldn’t just flick the on light switch, we had no electricity. I would fall asleep to the sound of coyotes howling outside my window. Then I would wake up to the smell of wood burning in our wood burning fireplace that my dad made when the sun came up. We all had hunter safety licenses at the ages of 9,10,13. We had 25 horses, and about 10 cows. We had a horse back packing company and we would take people on hunting trips on the 90 acres we owned that was surrounded by National Forest. We also each had a license to kill a cow or bull elk every hunting season. We relied on that meat through the winter. We had a garden that we would grow during the summer, and I remember that I would pick the snow peas off the bush and eat them, they were so sweet, fresh and crunchy. We had a milk cow that we used for milk and cream. My brothers and I all took turns milking her, it was a pain. She kicked over the bucket all the time, and I was a clumsy little girl, so on the way back up the hill to the house, the bucket would slosh and the milk would splash out. The cats loved it when we milked the cow, they would meow and beg so we would squirt them in the face and they would lick off the dripping milk. When we went into town it was a big deal, maybe every week or every other week we would go into town to buy things that we couldn’t make ourselves. Like rice, spices, and shampoo. Town was about a two and half hour drive. We made our own soap, bread, had meat frozen, and fresh veggies in the summer. I believe that everyone should get that experience, of relying on yourself for food and shelter. We are so disconnected with nature, and take advantage of how easy it is to just go to the store and buy a frozen dinner. What if that all disappeared? What would you do? I believe everyone needs to learn to live off the land and what they have around them. It is how we used to lived before the industrial humans did what they did. It is important to to be able to survive, therefore I truly believe that nature is nature, and we need to reconnect with mother earth.