Pseudo-Nature Center

The Nature Center in Springfield, Missouri is a funny thing. Men and women and children flock to visit nature when the sun is high and the air is warm. Couples walk and hand hold the trails. Singles jog the paths to be surrounded by the pseudo-wild as though to recreate a sense of their primal selves. Gleeful children toss stones into the water and enjoy the simple splashing and consequential ripples. I can tell that mothers and fathers wish for their children to understand and enjoy nature and so they bring them here.

What's funny is how closed off nature is to us at a place like the Nature Center. A patch of forest spared a concrete lifestyle and surrounded by the roaring highways is not nature. A path laid in stone and gravel or soft bits of bark and wooden planks is not nature. Rails to separate you from this miniscule version of the wild is not nature.

The Nature Center is a place where people go to visit and experience nature much in the same way as people go to the zoo to visit and experience other animals. It's sanitized and kept at an arm's length away. After a walk through the trails set by man to lead them through a predictable trek, people run back home to enjoy their convenient lives away from nature, away from where they've come from.

It's funny to me.

What is rarely noticed can be so beautiful

My, how time flies.