In Times of Fire and Flood

Black Saturday. I don’t know about you, but I simply can’t pretend to understand the horror of seeing my loved ones engulfed in a firestorm, or the bitter disappointment of knowing my home’s gone up in smoke, or the sadness of returning to the scorched earth of a once flourishing garden.

We should acknowledge too, that while fires raged down south, the pointy end of the continent was mostly underwater. The floods in north Queensland and the Gulf are the worst in 30 years, inundating thousands of hectares of farming land and drowning umpteen head of livestock. Though I haven’t personally experienced a flood or a fire, my deepest sympathies are with those who have, and are. My thoughts are especially with those who have lost loved ones.

At times like this, it’s all too easy to start pointing the finger, apportioning blame. Already, just a couple of days after the bushfire, the Victorian Government is under attack for its approach to forest management and the controversial “stay and defend or leave early” policy. Instead of finger pointing, I believe that our initial response to events like those of last Saturday ought to be one of shared suffering, coupled with a deep questioning of our relationship to the natural world.

The fact that there even is a relationship might be a big enough question. Despite our attempts to subdue and control nature, to ignore it and pretend we either don’t need it or can use and abuse it, we depend on nature for our very existence. Without clean water and air, nutritious food and resources for shelter, all of which are gifts from nature, we would all cease to exist.

As gardeners, we like to think we relate well to nature, but do we really? Is the relationship mutually beneficial? Or do we gardeners attempt to control and manipulate nature to our own advantage? How mutually beneficial is a garden defined by elements like straight lines, severely clipped hedges, chemically controlled pests and mown lawns? I’m not suggesting an answer here, because all of these charges can be applied to my garden. But I do think we have to ask some honest, direct questions.

In his book Second Nature, the American writer Michael Pollan poses some uncomfortable questions regarding the relationship between gardeners and nature. These can probably be best summarised in his statement “A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule.” To produce a weed-free sward of emerald green, we must control, manipulate and according to Pollan, dictate, all for our own benefit.

So are we as gardeners a bunch horticultural Idi Amins and vegetable growing Mussolinis? As the book progresses, Pollan goes on to talk about his struggles with a woodchuck that takes a fancy to his vegetables, and the weeds that continually overrun his wildflower meadow. He describes his fury, and outlines our darker attitudes toward nature, the willingness we have to exploit it for our short term advantage.

I don’t know if I’m being sentimental or not in suggesting that we relate more warmly to the natural world, but I am sure of one thing: nature is not our enemy. We don’t need to blitz it, or force it or rule it, and it doesn’t exist to be conquered and plundered like a distant colony rich in natural resources.

Perhaps we would be wise to heed a warning from the Japanese farmer and philosopher Masanobu Fukuoka:

“If we throw Mother Nature out the window, she will come back in through the door with a pitchfork.”

I don’t believe Mother Nature is out to get us, or that she exacts vengeance on those who treat her with contempt. Yet natural disasters like fire and flood, as tragic as they are, provide an opportunity to humble ourselves, and to work in harmony with nature whenever we can. Despite our hubris, the world does not revolve around us.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 14th February 2009

Tagged as: Bushfire, climate change, floods, nature, weather