#nature docs

It's Earth Day every day, fam.

Our Planet | Official Trailer

For whatever reason, I was very suddenly and voraciously obsessed with the history of Naturalists. They were not included as a primary aspect of my linear-progression STEM focused education, and I found so many familiar names and ideas suddenly surrounded with context. 

So I’ve been trying to dive in all the way, because it’s so easy to raise a historic figure, particularly a champion of nature, on a pedestal these days, so many biographies are written with love and care and focus on beauty, dismissing the colonialism and classism and racism that funded these expeditions, sometimes displaying them as noteworthy qualities of success. 

In order to balance that human bias, I’ve also been consuming documentaries about the planet, literature and media concerned with local conservation efforts, finding the people who are still Naturalists, you get the idea. Our Planet has been on my list for a while because people keep talking about it being different, focused on the actual human-impact, uncomfortably real, and I think I’m going to round out this obsession by watching it and I’ll get back to you when I do. 

But so far, what are your opinions? How do you consume nature docs or literature focused on the human-nature interaction? I’ve always been one for a good disaster film, The Perfect Storm, The Wave, I like the man vs. nature plot because I think it is universal, and also I just love big storms, I always have. There’s something about them that validates an existential crisis, reminding us we’re only human on days where it feels like every aspect of our life is controlled and structured, nature comes in and reminds us to pause, breathe, try to find a synthesis. 

<b>David Attenborough:</b><i> Look at this adorable family of otters! Look how cute they are when they play together!</i>