Cardinal Rule

It is always safer to take something out than to put something in. 

Indians extracted for 1000’s of years and never (intentionally) put a single thing in--and yet left us with a land of unparalleled natural beauty and diversity. 

And yet, here we come and start putting things in (weeds, pests, diseases, US) and everything goes to hell. 

Many peoples’ well-intentioned knee-jerk notion of “giving back to nature” get translated into Planting Things. 

This is presumptuous. Arrogant. It treats nature like a glorified garden, a canvas for expressing ego, for exercising control. It implies that you have no faith in the power of nature. You might be surprised how resilient Mother Nature is, if you give her half a chance. 

Next time you want to do something nice for Earth, first put your idea to the arrogance test. Are you playing God? Are you painting a picture? Planting a garden? Gardens are fine and so is painting. But there are places for those things. There is plenty of cultivated ground, plenty of canvas. If you really respect nature you let nature do the planting. You do the weeding, but only because you/we brought the weeds in the first place. Repairing our mistakes, that is our role in natural wild land.