Improving Nature By Leaving Her Alone

IN GEORGE WASHINGTON'S DAY, nature was the enemy. Nature could be improved upon by conquering it, taming it, molding it to fit man's needs. (Man's needs, not women's.) Maybe, we have made progress since, at least in our understanding of nature. Then again, considering that we are still threatening to destroy the ecosystem, maybe not. In Washington's day people felt great one day and dropped dead the next from mysterious diseases, and every summer during the eighteenth century the city of Philadelphia emptied out in the summer as people fled the annual epidemic of micro organic diseases which ravaged the city of forty thousand. No wonder nature was the enemy; nature was brutal. Washington himself died, bled to death, from a perfectly curable common cold, because he insisted on bleeding, and lost several pints of blood, believe it or not. Maybe we've learned a little since. Like everyone else in early America, Washington rarely had any cold, hard cash, but unlike everyone else he owned half the state of Virginia, including the south east area, much of which is the "Dismal Swamp". It was useless as was, and George Washington thought to improve it. He thought it would be a good idea to drain the swamp, and use the land for tobacco and cotton. The plan didn't work very well; the soil was unsuited to those crops. Now over two hundred years later, we have wized up and decided to once again allow mother nature to have her way. The Dismal Swamp is being restored to its natural state. The ocean is rising up and beginning to submerge the east coast of the United States, thanks to human intervention in nature. Widespread flooding is increasing in the low lying coastal and inland areas of North and South Carolina and Virginia. Miami, Florida has routine floods, as the ocean encroaches into the sewer system. But we are starting to try to restore the natural marshes, swamps, and delta areas,and reversing our previous obsession with dam building. It might be a good idea to let nature take her course, since we don't seem able to improve her after all.