Spiders: I don't like them crawling on me and I do squish them when they are in the house but it isn't really a big deal.
Wild Foods: It's always fun to find berries to eat and shall I say it is interesting to try rosehips and pinegum.
Wild animals: Cool to watch but keep your distance.
I have known people who scream at spiders, think it might be dangerous to eat elderberries and terrify themselves telling stories about how cougars are going to jump out at them and kill them on a hike. That really isn't me but sometimes you hear about people doing stupid things and getting hurt or killed in the wild.
I've gone camping a lot but the vast majority of the time it hasn't been remote camping, and the same with hiking. When I did go on my fieldschool, which was amazing we were a three hour hike up a mountain. No road access, limited cell phone coverage, no bathrooms or water. We dug our own latrines, and filtered our water. We could have had broken a leg or had bear problems or got altitude sickness, not to mention the snow storms and the freezing nights. None of the disasters happened but the snow did.
It was the only time in my life that I've actually felt just a little the full scariness of nature. I remember thinking if something bad happened we could really be in some trouble. Death seemed realler.
Sometimes it seems like nature to the modern person is still so limited. I went camping this weekend. It hailed right before we set up our tent. We could have backed out we could have gone to a motel but really what was the worse that could have happened. Hail and wind knock over our tent and we sleep the rest of the night in our car? Not really that big of a deal.
I guess this is kind of a lot of rambling but what I'm trying to say is that I love nature, and am not scared of it but I also have learned enough to respect it. I'm not going to walk up and pet a wild animal bird, squirrel or deer (not that most would let you). I will eat wild blueberries, and yellow wood sorrel but I will also avoid poison ivy and thorns. I will take precautions. Respect and love together. (Maybe that is the strongest type of love anyway).
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