Your world is man-made, nearly every part of it.

Have you ever spent a day nature—even more than an hour?

I don’t know about you, but I’ve slept almost every night of my life on a manufactured mattress with manufactured pillows and sheets. The nights I’ve camped I slept in a manufactured tent made of petroleum by-products, maybe space-aged materials!, on a similar mattress pad.

Places like the Grand Canyon I visited by car and viewed from carved vantage points walking on paths created for me to explore and view it from. Beaches and oceans I’ve viewed only from groomed shorelines with houses or resorts probably as close as regulations allowed.

Stretches hiking the Appalachian Trail in New England were probably the least manufactured environments I’ve explored, with only a few paint marks on trees and the occasional other hiker to remind my friend and I of civilization, not counting our backpacks with equipment.

Almost every place you go and every place you look, humans created what you’re seeing or created the vantage point from which you see it. I can think of few exceptions. Mainly the stars, clouds, and the occasional rainbow. Odd that those things seem beautiful to us, yet we make nature less and less accessible.

Has anyone spent more than a few hours in nature without anything manufactured within sight or hearing, not even counting clothes?

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