This is part 3 of 4 in our The Wild Side series.
Let’s face it: nature has a bit of a head start on developing effective and sustainable processes for creating and maintaining life on Earth. If you see where humans have attempted to best nature, nature either fights back or reminds us of just how inefficient we are.
It’s no wonder that most druids in TTRPGs are 100% over humans trying to assert their dominance over civilization. When castles and towers fall, the wild flora is the first to call dibs on the ruins.
Despite humanity’s best efforts to tame, dominate, or control nature, nature always finds a way to thrive.
Your lawn doesn’t want to be cut each week, so why spend hours fighting what comes naturally?
Outside of D&D and TTRPGs, many of us fail to question our assumptions about the “modern” or “civilized” structures around us that many druids find perplexing if not simply grotesque.
Show us a throne in nature. Where is the org chart in the animal kingdom? Where is the kanban board of fruit production that indicates when the pollinating consultants join the project? Where is the book that explains how flora and fauna should live and transcend?
Don’t worry, we’ll give you a minute to find it.
Oh, it doesn’t exist? Imagine that.
When we start to rely on what humans have created to inform us how to live and be in community with each other, we miss out on our own connection to nature and its teaching.
Nature reminds us that our body and our spirit are more important than our cash flow. Nature wants us to reclaim community so that we might be able to thrive together rather than let competition and capitalism drive us to extinction. Nature continues to reveal mystery after mystery despite a long lineage of revelations from the mycelium under our feet to the expanding cosmos above our heads.
Nature knows that if we do not listen, they will simply champion the species and ecosystems that do. Nature can wait. Our lives are too short to afford the same patience.
It’s time to reclaim your wild side.
May the forest be with you!
Sincerely,
Autumn & Jerod