Did We Learn Nothing?

An Essay

I’ve found that if I keep my head down on my park walks, I will almost forget, for hours at a time, what it is that I’m walking through.

Everything about nature is so relaxing to me; the sights, the smells, the sounds. Hell, a snake just scared the absolute shit out of me, but even that gave me an adrenaline spike which I found quite pleasurable.

That’s what I walk for, of course.. pleasure. When I am depressed, anxious, scared, or sad, I can come out here and tickle my senses by smelling the fresh cut grass and watching a family of squirrels chase each other up a tree. Deep in the woods I am in a different world, and boy how I much prefer that world!

You see, outside of the woods there are these most detestable creatures. They are parasitic symbiotes that latch on to you at your most vulnerable and suck what remains of your soul clean out of your body. The most common name we give them is “Humans”.

Deep in the woods you may encounter one of these “humans” from time to time, but nature has a way of protecting you from one another. Perhaps it’s a pheromone that is released when the body encounters the trees and the mud, the sticks and the bugs, the grass and the dirt… but when you’re in there, you are less inclined to give a shit what clothing store the other is boycotting, and on what principles (as if the common “human” even has them anymore)

So blissful it is to be in nature and away from the hullabaloo of daily bickering.

Then, of course, I come out the other side of the trail to find a Civil War monument and always stop dead in my tracks. How could people be so angry when surrounded by all this glory? How often were the soldiers gazing off to the horizon witnessing god’s majesty in the form of a sunset while having the exact same thought I am?

I look at the beauty. Then I look at the monument. Then I think of the “Humans” and all I can do is wonder: did we learn nothing?

Have a good one, y’all