ECO-Tours only purchases trees and dirt to plant them in...

Friday, December 31, 2021

ECO-Tours State of Mind

Being in nature only requires us to understand that the microbiome that inhabits us, reflects our diet and health as well as our environment. Thinking about our living organism is also an exploration of nature. Sometimes, all that is required to take an impromptu ECO-Tour is to jump time, or become unstuck in time. Contemplate the source of the calcium in our bones, or the electrolytes required to fire our nerves. Think about the water we drink, where it came from and where it will ultimately end up. If it is time to sleep, where the fabrics that make our bed came from, how they began life and how they will meet their ultimate demise. The effects of our home heating systems, or the waste we generate from cooking all present us with opportunities to re-think or deeply investigate the hows and whys that guide us to the ecological decisions we make.
There are many ways to gain entre' into the state of our ecological thinking like asking, "Have you ever washed a plastic fork?" or "Do you know what can be recycled in your area?" Or even something as mundane as "How far do you commute?" We could develop a twenty questions about ecological factors for many daily activities and attempt to answer them without even leaving our house, perhaps even our bed on a cold and dreary autumn day that even ducks don't seem to fancy could be an opportunity to take an ECO-Tour of the Mind. Here is a cursory attempt at twenty questions that can help guide any ECO-Tour. Animal, vegetable or mineral? Has it been named? Has it been claimed? Has it been shamed? Has it been tamed? What is the resource? Is it finite? Is it essential? What are the opportunity costs to procure it? What are the legacy costs of procuring it? How will the community be altered? How long will the alteration last? Is this a local phenomenon? Is this a temporal phenomenon? Is it a spiritual phenomenon? What relationships underly it? Can we fix it? Can we repair it? Can we make do? Can we do without? Answering these twenty questions about any ingredient, aspect or part of our lives, indeed, any attitude or belief, no matter how insignificant it may seem can lead to a profound level of understanding not only of the environment but of how we either fit into it or are estranged from it. By answering these questions, it gets us in touch with the depth and commitment of our life energy to our surroundings. This is every bit as profound as taking a test to find out your carbon footprint. Knowing what to do to change things is easy, once you see and understand that there really is a need to. This taking stock of any part of our lives will reflect on other aspects of our lives. How we value things and experiences ultimately creates us, as much as what we eat or drink does. The ECO-Tours state of mind can be had easily, anywhere, by anyone. Why then would people want to book an ECO-Tour with one of our Guides? Because we are trained to take the various routes that come back to the same place, answering the question, How can we appropriately give back to Mother Nature? One cannot be sure what steps are best until you begin to understand the complex interaction between and among members of the native world, the soil microbiome, the grasses and forbs, insect and bird life, mammals and predators. Seeing forests or trees may not be the lesson of the day, perhaps investigating the air that exists between and among them is more important. As with our one square foot ECO-Tour, we can use our minds in a variety of ways to produce thoguht experiments that have the power to teach and inform us long beyond the time it took to see things a different way. We wish everyone the luxury needed to slow down look and think critically and we honor the conclusions you may find when you allow yourself to see into this often forgotten world we all share.

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