When nature is not nature...

My little family and I recently rugged ourselves up and braved a wintry Melbourne day to visit the Melbourne Museum, where the main attraction is currently the Titanic exhibition. But before we walked through the Titanic exhibit - which, incidentally, was great, and worth being packed in like sardines for - we thought we could walk through the Rainforest Secrets permanent exhibit. It's quite amazing, and is in the centre of the museum. It effectively brings the outdoors inside, as there is no roof. But as we entered the glass sliding doors to walk up the pathway, a sign had been put up blocking our entrance saying, 'Due to high winds and wild weather, this exhibit is temporarily closed for safety reasons'. So, we wandered off to another area and meandered around until we were ready for the Titanic - which is a timed exhibit, where you 'board'.

After exiting the Titanic, we walked past the rainforest again and saw it had been re-opened. Clearly the dangerous winds had subsided enough to stop the managers worrying about law suits....But it got me thinking. We had all braved the so called 'dangerous winds' to get there, and if the tree's in the exhibit are affected by the winds, well isn't that part of nature? But clearly this is an artificial nature. One that is manipulated, managed and tightly controlled for customer's/visitor's.
Paying to 'experience' nature, in a controlled environment means we are not really experiencing nature at all - it negates the whole point. It made me feel that the whole orchestrated process was contrived and a little absurd. This was further illustrated to me when a young boy turned excitedly to his mother and asked, 'Can we keep going so we can see more of the nature?' Real nature exists, and it isn't found indoors, or in a museum. Real nature can't be contained, is largely uncontrollable and is innately beautiful.

As we were leaving the 'nature' exhibit, I felt overwhelmed by how strongly I felt about experiencing real nature, and what a formative and positive effect spending time in the Australian bush had on my childhood.
I recently heard an interesting segment on Radio National about how important it is for kids to spend time in nature. Richard Louv, the main interviewee, claims that paediatricians in the US rarely see broken bones these days, and that they are increasingly seeing repetitive strain injuries from computer games. Ironically, repetitive strain injuries have longer and more serious complications than broken bones apparently. So kids, put down that PlayStation console and go climb a tree!