When I think of what it means to be human, to be awake, to be in love with the world, my focus always comes back to nature, her spirit and magic, manifested through biodiversity. As a child, I walked to school under generous trees, marveling at the acorns, the jig-saw puzzle bark of the Japanese elms, the color of the liquidambars exploding in the fall, painting the sidewalks peach and scarlet and yellow and green. At ten, I learned to skin dive in southern California and was mesmerized by the shimmering reefs teeming with life. Orange garibaldi and green and purple iridescent seaweed, violet, red, pink and white anemones, sea urchins and orange starfish nature's gifts were all treasures, shells on the beach and a kaleidoscope of dried grasses, flower petals as light as the breeze, seeds that fly like tiny helicopters, or burrs in my socks clinging to me like golden spiders. Nature was my teacher my companion, my inspiration, the source of all my best ideas, and my most tender feelings.

Slowly, the shallow amusements and worldly ambitions that crowd the mind of a young man eclipsed this sense of awe. But through devoting two and a half decades to the study of art I was led back to nature. As humans, we are nested within a system that is infinitely creative and recognizing this unleashes our own creativity. When we are awake to nature, we live in a state of astonishment and as we move into relationship with nature, we contact our creative potential.

 

If we lose our capacity to imagine and create, what will we have left? If nature loses hers, how can she sustain herself? The discussion of biodiversity isn't just about science and survival and ecology, it must also be about creativity which lies at the very core of what makes us human. When biodiversity is threatened we are threatened, fundamentally. Without it we lose our humanity.