Three Beautiful Things 07-17-2026: Seeing Nature as Thou (Not It), Sausage Soup, Eating Hunted Game

 1. As I continue to read Robert Macfarlane's book, Is a River Alive?, my mind turns to Martin Buber. Buber distinguishes between I/Thou and I/It relationships between people. the I/It relationship turns people into things. A person gets objectified, robbed of basic humanity. The I/Thou relationship embodies respect, empathy, and recognition of another's intrinsic value. The I/It relationship uses others for personal gain. The I/Thou relationship is one of openness, listening, and mutual respect. 

Simply put, Macfarlane asserts that overall, we've turned the human relationship to the natural world into an I/It relationship. The natural world is a resource. Rivers, trees, fish, etc. are objects for our use and only have value as we humans determine what their value is. 

I haven't even reached page 100 of this book -- and Macfarlane never uses Buber's Thou/It contrast -- but already it's very clear that Macfarlane is urging his readers to see the natural world as a world we can listen to, empathize with, and treat not as a collection of objects, but as subjects possessing intrinsic value that exists before we humans assign value to it. 

In the reading I've done over the years about oceans, whales, eels, mountain lions, beavers, salmon, forests, rivers, mountains, and more, I've encountered Macfarlane's central thesis about the natural world before. 

But, the other reading I've done has not taken me to the places in the world, like the cloud-forests of northern Ecuador, Macfarlane is taking his readers and Macfarlane is making his case with language and by making connections that are unique to his experience and his style of writing. 

2. Because I can keep our house comfortable when the temperatures outside are so hot, I can enjoy hot coffee and hot soup. I made another sausage soup today and enjoyed it thoroughly. 

3. Reading Is a River Alive? in July of 2026 has transported me back to a book of essays I read some time after its publication in June of 1990. It's by Brenda Peterson and is entitled Living by Water: True Stories of Nature and Spirit. These essays unquestionably explore Peterson's understanding of the I/Thou dimensions of the human/world of nature relationship. 

I need to reread one essay of Peterson's that has stuck with me over the past thirty-five years. 

It's entitled "Growing Up Game". In it, Brenda Petersone recounts, with affection, her father's life as a hunter and how she grew up on game. As I just suggested, I'm going to reread the essay. But, as I remember, the thrust of this essay is how Peterson came to understand that hunting game doesn't necessarily mean objectifying the animal, of seeing the moose or elk or deer as an "It". 

In fact, as I remember, Peterson sees her experience of growing up dining on game as a spiritual one in addition to being a very satisfying experience for her physical senses and a source of nutrition for her body.