Nature Can Inspire and It Can Bore

Nature can inspire, and it can bore

I am one of the lucky ones whom it has inspired.  But not all aspects of nature do even I find inspiring.  A good lot of it, I am ashamed to admit, bores me.

Not only that, but the parts of it that bore me—and presumably others—seem to be winning out over the parts that inspire me.  Every year the inspiring parts dwindle away, fewer and fewer.

It is hardly surprising that fewer people every generation find themselves inspired.  What would inspire you more:  a patch of woods with a hundred giant old trees, or the same patch of woods with ten thousand spindly, little, young trees?  A field with a million dazzling little flowers, or the same field, full of broccoli?  A broad marsh teeming with wild ducks, or a drainage ditch?  Wide-open spaces, or a housing tract?

These are the trends.

Every generation bequeaths less and less to its offspring.  Every generation chews up more inspiration and spits out more boredom.  They come, they see, they conquer.