The Power in the Leaves and Trees

Nature is where we began, and nature will show us our end.

In my “Innovation” class this week we got to work with Rachel Coady, a smart, and personable planner bent on returning society to nature. As a class, we trekked out to Lands End and discussed the wonder and incredible innovative practices that are found when you observe your natural surroundings. If San Francisco is one of the epicenters for technology (which tends to pushes us away from nature), working with Rachel helped us to see the beautiful technology right under our nose. Nature is still the world’s greatest inventor.

We talk a lot about being a “solutionist,” someone who, when faced with a solvable problem look for cultural “gaps” that can be fixed. Like social engineers, solutionists try and make something more efficient by identifying the needs (or “gaps”) that we’re living around (without addressing), and then finding solutions for communities. Once identified, we solutionists go into nature and observe how different species solve related problems. After all, the planets ecosystem evolved to sustain itself, without much concern that humans stuck around.

For example, if you’re an urban planner faced with redesigning a city’s transportation network, examine the structure of leaves, and how a plant organizes the transportation of nutrients from its roots all the way up to its leaves. As a species, we humans have evolved to focus on the control of nature, to insure our safety and the propagation of our genes and communities. As the problems we face become more intertwined with our natural surroundings, looking to where we started might be our best solution. We might engender some respect by viewing our environment as the leaseholder to the apartment we call Earth. We can’t survive without nature, but nature would thrive without us.

As we work on our class first project that revolves around looking to nature for innovative wisdom, irony has struck. I prefer to enjoy thinking that I am the master of my surroundings. A few days after dominating the hike to the top of Mt. Tam and experiencing one of the most jaw-dropping views in San Francisco, I woke up with Poison Oak all over my face. If we’re willing decimate countless natural ecosystems in the interest of “progress”, I have to cede defeat as nature covers my face with hives, and makes me looklike I belong back in middle school.

Point to you nature. Way to put me in my place.

Man vs. Wild?