My Connection to Nature Is Not Peace — It’s a Reckoning
Ahmedabad, India
2025, Junior, Creative Writing
What is your connection to nature? That question assumes nature is still something we can connect to—something untouched, serene, alive. But what if it isn’t? What if the real question should be: who turned nature into a casualty of war? Not metaphorical war, but literal—systemic, strategic, profit-driven destruction. For many of us, nature isn’t a place of refuge or reflection anymore. It’s a site of violence, a battlefield shaped by machines, concrete, and greed.
We’re told to speak softly about the Earth, to find solace in the sound of trees or the touch of soil. But how can you speak gently about something that’s being torn apart? When forests are flattened to make room for mining rigs and factories, when rivers are poisoned in the name of economic expansion, when the air we breathe is collateral damage—what’s left to connect to?
Militaries—the largest polluters no one wants to talk about—consume more fossil fuels than entire countries. Fighter jets guzzle tens of thousands of gallons of fuel, while missile testing shatters ecosystems in seconds. All this is justified in the name of security, though it makes the planet profoundly unsafe. Strangely, these emissions don’t even count toward national climate targets. It’s like we’re playing a rigged game where the biggest offenders aren’t even on the scoreboard.
This isn’t just environmental degradation—it’s calculated conquest. Forests become materials. Oceans become dumping grounds. Mountains are blasted open to extract lithium for batteries that power the illusion of green progress. Even the sun is captured, stored, commodified. This isn’t stewardship. It’s siege.
We tell ourselves we’re advanced. We build smart cities in deserts, reroute rivers, seed clouds, terraform coasts. But then the floods come, and we act surprised. We build barriers instead of slowing down. We respond to natural backlash with engineering—more tech, more control, more distance from the very world we’re destabilizing. It’s absurd. We think we’re in control, but nature keeps proving otherwise.
And all the while, nature gets commodified. The rainforest becomes a drone backdrop. Coral reefs turn into curated Instagram experiences. People put filters on sunsets while heatwaves collapse power grids. Wealthy tourists escape into climate-proof resorts. Meanwhile, the rest of the world—especially those in the Global South—gets the floods, the droughts, the displacement. Sustainability becomes a brand, not a goal.
We’re sold the narrative of individual responsibility. Use less plastic. Take shorter showers. Go vegan. But what’s one metal straw against an oil rig? What’s a compost bin when entire ecosystems are razed for palm oil or cobalt? It’s cosmetic action, a pacifier for the powerless, while the system carries on unchecked.
So again, what is my connection to nature? It’s not peaceful. It’s not meditative. It’s confrontational. I don’t find solace in trees—I see what’s left of them and feel a tightening in my chest. I don’t walk by rivers and breathe easier—I think about pipelines, about toxins, about the communities who can’t drink their own water. I don’t connect to nature like it’s a separate space. I see it as the terrain of every major fight we’re refusing to name.
The knowledge that once came from living with nature—passed down through generations—is fading. Replaced by algorithms that optimize yield, models that predict droughts but can’t stop them, markets that price the unpriceable. We’ve lost the language of listening. Now we quantify, monetize, weaponize. And we call that progress.
Resilience? That’s just what we demand from people we refuse to help. Communities on climate frontlines are hailed as “resilient”—but resilience is not a choice when abandonment is the
default. They’re resilient because they’re forced to be. Because the global economy needs places to dump its waste, and those places are always homes to the vulnerable.
“Healthy environments lead to healthy humans.” That’s a nice slogan. But the reality is, health is a luxury now. Clean water is a subscription. Air purifiers are status symbols. Entire cities live under toxic smog while companies greenwash their logos and donate to wellness campaigns. And the poorest pay with their lungs, their futures, their lives.
Nature is being stripped for parts. Packaged as “carbon credits” and traded on markets that pretend they can offset destruction with accounting tricks. We’re auctioning off the atmosphere and pretending that planting a few trees will balance the scales. That’s not a solution—it’s a cover-up.
Climate change is not a solitary problem—it is a network of crises woven into the fabric of modern systems. Wars over oil and water are now wars over existence. Militarization fuels environmental degradation, and environmental collapse demands more militarization. This is a loop that feeds itself, a feedback cycle of destruction. The more we destroy nature, the more we justify building weapons to protect ourselves from the fallout. And the more we arm ourselves, the more nature suffers in silence.
And the information sphere? Curated outrage, distraction, control. We’re told who the villains are—often activists and radicals—while the real architects of planetary collapse sit in boardrooms, untouchable. Movements are diluted, turned into hashtags, commodified like everything else. Activism becomes spectacle. Rage is curated into consumption.
So yes, I have a connection to nature. But it’s not a soft one. It’s sharp. It’s filled with anger, urgency, and clarity. I walk outside and feel the tension between what’s real and what’s being erased. I look at the sky and wonder how many satellites are up there watching, how many corporations are counting clouds. I look at a dying tree and don’t think about poetry—I think about policies.
This isn’t just a climate issue. It’s a global power structure failing to hide its rot. Nature is not vanishing. It’s being extracted, erased, and replaced with illusions. And we’re told to write about how that makes us feel—as if emotions alone could counter empire.
My connection to nature isn’t serenity. It’s resistance. I see what’s happening. I won’t romanticize it. I won’t turn it into metaphor. Nature isn’t a backdrop—it’s the frontline. And the longer we pretend otherwise, the more of it we’ll lose.
Until we name the real culprits—industries, militaries, governments that treat the planet like a resource vending machine—we will remain complicit in the destruction we mourn. My connection to nature is not passive. It’s not nostalgic. It’s not even hopeful. It’s a reckoning. And from that reckoning, real change might just emerge—not from serenity, but from a truth too long ignored.
Reflection
This piece is a response to the sanitized narratives often attached to “nature writing.” I chose not to romanticize the natural world, but to confront the violence done to it—through militarism, industrial greed, and systemic erasure. My connection to nature is shaped by anger, not serenity; urgency, not nostalgia. I drew from my previous work on climate injustice and expanded it through the lens of resistance. The essay rejects passive reflection and instead becomes a critique of power. Writing this was an act of reclamation—of voice, of clarity, and of the truth we’re often too afraid to face. The idea came from my frustration with how nature is sanitized in popular narratives. I was inspired by the contrast between global environmental collapse and the soft, romanticized tone most writing adopts. Being creative gives me clarity—it’s where my anger becomes articulation. I chose writing as my medium because it’s where I feel most grounded; I’ve used it to explore themes of power, injustice, and climate in the past. Through this piece, I’ve learned that nature isn’t just beauty—it’s battleground. My message is simple: stop pretending this is peaceful. Nature is not scenery—it’s suffering, resistance, and the frontline of truth.