Mother Nature says ...

It's nice to know I'm not the only one.

One time when I was hiking up Harney Peak (which is Lakota holy ground) with my father, there were these three young white men. They were wearing shorts, socks, sneakers, and nothing else. They had no wilderness gear at all, which is a poor idea even on a day hike. They were being rude and disrespectful, and we weren't the only been-there-before hikers who tried to dissuade them from that. They weren't dissuaded.

And then I looked at the horizon and saw a towering wall of black clouds. The three yahoos decided to try beating the storm down the mountain (a bit over 3 miles of moderate-to-rugged hiking). Dad and I scrammed down the trail to a pocket cave, where we sheltered from the downpour and pea-sized hail that ensued about 15 minutes after first sighting the clouds. We ate lunch and watched the show. Eventually it stopped and the sun came out. We hiked down in a world of jeweled leaves and falling rainbows; it was enchanting.

When we got back to the lodge, we discovered that many people's cars looked like they'd been whacked with hammers, and the nearest airport had gotten all its windows broken by hail. Never did hear what happened to those fool boys, but I bet their hike down was not nearly as fun as ours.

If you don't respect Nature, she always has the option of kicking your ass. She might or might not decide to, and she might hit just you or everyone in a several-mile radius around you. She might be pissed at you in particular or at everyone in that several mile radius ... or heck, even someone who was there last week or last century and it took her a while to decide to respond. Sometimes you can't really tell what she's aiming at, other times the connection is rather conspicuous.

It keeps life interesting.

We usually drove up into the Paha Sapa, the Black Hills, over the course of a day or two. That helps. The trail to the peak is about a 7-mile round trip. We usually wore good walking shoes, layered clothing, carried food and water, etc. It's a reasonable day trip from Sylvan Lodge up to the old firewatch tower and back down again. The trail is well marked in most places, and up on the rocks there are enough landmarks that it's not hard to find your way. It's not idiot-proof, so I guess people could get lost, but we never had a problem with it.

Interestingly, I never had a problem with the height, either. I got altitude sickness in the Rockies a time or two, but never in the Black Hills. Maybe just a little extra tired. But ... the forest breathes for you. Huge, ancient black spruces and a few other trees tower overhead. Under them the air is rich and spicy. Up on the rocks it's thinner and sharper, but in the forest there is plenty of oxygen.

>> In what way were the guys being disrespectful - were they littering the place? <<

Let me think ... they didn't seem to have anything to litter with. They were loud and obnoxious, telling off-color jokes. They didn't seem to care where they were or appreciate the place; they acted like it was there for their convenience. They kicked at things on the ground, mashed the plants, weren't careful about staying on the trail or walking lightly off it. (The trail proper is wide and well-made in most places. You're supposed to stay on it in the forested areas and not trash the plants, but the peak is mostly rock so people can spread out there without doing harm, as long as they're reasonably careful.) They spooked the chipmunks and the birds. And they were not receptive to polite suggestions that they settle down a bit. Just ... young men being self-centered and obnoxiously rowdy, without caring about the effects.

>>Thing about nature is, you might care mightily about being kind to it and conserve electricity and not live a wasteful life etc, but nature isn't going to be special nice in response - it'll still kick your ass :) You can't be anthropomorphising something that powerful.<<

In my experience, nature has a personality and great power, but does not think in human terms or always respond as a human would. There is not a perfect correlation between behavior and response, but there is a very definite blip in the statistics. If you understand nature and behave respectfully, most of the time you'll be okay. If you push the envelope in search of adventure, you might get killed; or you could get killed just being in a storm path. But sometimes nature does favors for her special friends; I've seen that often enough to consider it valid. You can't rely on it, but asking for it when you need it does no harm, and sometimes it just happens. Conversely, people who are careless with nature tend to get hurt. Often it's quite ordinary, like getting stung by hornets after throwing rocks at their nest, or gashing open one's hand while attempting to carve graffiti into a blackthorn tree. But sometimes it is so ornate, it has a flavor of truly poetic justice. If a guy falls 30 feet out of a deer stand and breaks his back over an anthill that he didn't notice while setting up the stand, and lies there for several days before being found, it just makes me wonder what the devil he did to annoy the forest that much.

>>I love looking at the pictures of abandoned towns and cities - doesn't take long for "civilisation" to roll back as plant and animal life take over.<<

Yes! One of the things I love about Torn World, actually, is that deep time effect. All the Ancient artifacts are at least 250 years old, and many are 1000+ years old. One of these days I'd like to work up a timeline, such as I've seen in some other resources, designed for TW contexts as a clue archive for people wanting to hint how old a given area is.