Sights, Smells, and Sounds: The Essence of Nature
The smells of nature are like words in a story; they all come together to create a vivid and enchanting narrative that engages all the senses. The sights of nature are just as captivating, showing the beauty of the uncorrupted world. And this essence does not go unrecognized by the black community.
However, there is an ongoing debate in society regarding the type of relationship that African Americans have to the environment. Some believe that African Americans reject the natural world while others argue that there is a deeply rooted connection that black people have to nature. This dispute has been taken on by environmental historian Dr. Dianna Glave in her book, Rooted in the Earth: Reclaiming the African American Environmental Heritage. She disproves the notion that having a deep connection to nature and the outdoors is incompatible with being black. This book and numerous clips in The HistoryMakers Digital Archive act as inspiration for this week’s blog, shining a light on black’s love for the environment.
As environmentalists and non environmentalists alike reminisce on what appealed to their senses as children, one can see that nature has a prominent impact on their lives. Federal government employee Robert Foster is a lover of all things nature, having been raised on his family's farm with a large community of other African American sharecropping families. But even as an adult working for the federal government, he still stays connected to his upbringing through nature,
“Well, the smells would probably be just my gardening around here, you know, the smell. Because…[I] came up on a farm, and that's why I got a lot of flowers and plants. That always keeps me humble, keeps me natural. Everything I plant reminds me of my childhood, you know. …When you say smell, it's like hydrangeas, honeysuckles, things like that. Those are my childhood smells. That's the plants I plant out here. When I walk out there, I still have that, you know. The sights (laughter), you know, I didn't come up with skyscrapers and buildings and stuff, so…just--you know, just looking at what the world is…how beautiful the sky…the moon. When you're sitting out there on your porch and smacking mosquitoes and you see the stars…Being here gives me that opportunity to see that sight 'cause…you didn't have lights in the country (laughter). So…that sight…The trees, the changing of the fall and the color.”
Another HistoryMaker whose childhood memories of nature still manifest in their life, financial executive Mary Bush, is immediately taken back when she is prompted to think of childhood smells:
“Well smells, oh gosh (laughter), it just came to me so strongly, and that's honeysuckle because we had honeysuckle growing along the the sides of our, our backyard [in Birmingham, Alabama] and I love the smell of honeysuckle plus I used to love to pull the little blossoms off and you know you can suck the juice out and it was very sweet and very good…As for sights, I would say just nature. When I bought this house [in Chevy Chase, Maryland] about ten years ago, one of the things I said is, I want a big backyard. And if you look out the back before we leave here today, you'll see I have a big backyard and that's because we had a big backyard at my home where I grew up and just the trees and the flowers and just the beauty of nature so those, those kinds of things just really resonate with me today still.
Fashion designer Etu Evans was also impacted by the sights and smells of his childhood, prompting him to his it in his designs as an adult:
“I also vividly remember my grandmother's floral bed, and that's how I actually got into flowers. She would actually have me walk around with her and she would always point out the names of them. And I use a lot of floral silhouettes in my designs. They may not look like flowers, but they're parts of flowers actually.”
Etu Evans with his shoe designs.
Newspaper publishing chief executive Marguerita Le Etta Washington shares this love of flowers. The sight and smell of flowers brought her peace and nurtured her soul so much that she prayed they would never go away:
“Flowers, I love flowers, I don't love to plant 'em, I remember when I was about seven years old, I was in my backyard and I was actually praying. We had some flowers and I was actually back there praying for more flowers. And I remember I was calling some names like peonies and snowballs and that kind of thing…And I guess my dad [Edmund Washington] must've heard my prayer because he went back there and planted a whole bunch of flowers. And that's what I grew up with, the smell of the flowers. Then I had a swing out there too, and, you know, I love to swing and smell the flowers.”
Leah “Dookie” Chase is a chef who is famous for her creole-style cooking. She actually pulls her knowledge of cooking from the nature filled life that she lived. This type of experience is known as environmental knowledge, something that most African Americans have a lot of. She speaks passionately,
“I kind of go back now and appreciate that kind of upbringing because I think people that are brought up in small towns around farm things tend to know a little bit more about life--tend to maybe respect life and appreciate life more because you're around living things. You had to work the garden, so you knew where your food came from; you planted the potatoes, you planted the onions, planted the garlic, you planted the okra, you cut the okra, you saw them grow, you fed the pigs every day, you saw them grow, you even saw them being butchered--everything. You picked strawberries, so that meant you going through the woods to get to the strawberry field, and you're gonna come into wild fruit like crab apples, like muscadine grapes, like mayhaws--all kinds of things; so you tend to like and live a little bit more; you understand more about living and living things when you grow up in the country…You know, in the fall you smell those leaves, and hunting season you smell those leaves, and it is good. You learn to appreciate everything. Rivers--we had one river that went through our town, and we would sit on the river bank in the bayous and fish little perch and come home, and that was your breakfast with some grits and fish. You learn a little bit of everything; you learn that when crops come in how you can save 'em for the fall by cannin' them or drying them. Now, sun-dried tomatoes are the big thing, you know, the, the elegant things to work with in your kitchen when I was comin' up; that's how we preserved 'em. We sliced 'em and sun-dried the tomatoes and canned the tomatoes and dried the okra and--because you didn't have freezers like you have today. So you really learn to live; you learn to appreciate everything when you grow up in the country.”
Leah Chase with her natural ingredient creole-style dish.
Using environmental knowledge in one's profession is a beautiful way that African Americans express environmental appreciation. Lilian Thomas Burwell is a female visual artist who allowed nature to take life in her painting process:
“At that particular time I loved to garden, [I] didn't have much money so I would sometimes take a plant and divide it at the root. Or maybe I'd cut stems off and let it root. And I was very much involved with digging in the soil, and as I worked with this, it was very relaxing and very therapeutic. I became particularly aware of the evolving cycles of nature, you know. It was like, you know, there's a root and from that comes a stem, and from that comes a leaf, and then from there comes a bud, which makes a seed, which starts a root again, you know, falls to the ground…Everything in nature seemed to be cyclical and I just became completely immersed with that sensitivity. When I started painting, I started painting a form that I saw in nature. I would just start from this thought, I would just start looking at a plant and not look at it anymore… [Painting this way] was my effort of really getting, you know what--addressing something that came out of me and not anything else on the surface.”
Lilian Thomas Burwell’s “Snowbird” from 1983.
The above HistoryMakers managed to know so much about nature through either personal involvement or the passing on of environmental knowledge through heritage. But there is an alternative way that many are able to gain an awareness of their surroundings, nature study. There are many black owned schools that prompt this type of environmental education. From as early as 1897, there have been Nature Study schools or nature study classes that inform black youth on ways to utilize and admire the natural world. Geneticists Patricricia DeLeon is one of many who have been given such instruction, and she considered it to be an enlightening experience:
“Ms. Hines [her favorite teacher]…had an impact because she did a lot of the physiology, botany, and the plants, soils and things like that. She really drilled it in me...and really--it was fun. I mean, I liked it. When you leave class, you could walk and you can look at the soil…It was nature. It was around you…You were connected to it. You're engaged in it. And that was why… [in] calculus, I couldn't go any further because I couldn't relate it to anything in my being…But I think, and it has really helped me as a professor to really relate what I do…to teach to life, because people see things in a context, you know. You need a platform in which you can do it, and 'cause when you can actually leave the classroom and pick a leaf and say, oh, here's a venation that we were studying or here is this. It makes it meaningful.”
Black people have a deep and multifaceted connection to nature that can be traced back to their ancestral roots. Throughout history, Black people have relied on nature for sustenance, medicine, spiritual guidance, or simply peace of mind. As seen through our wonderful HistoryMakers, African Americans have an interconnectedness to nature; nature is viewed as a living entity that must be respected and revered. This belief in the interconnectedness of all things has led to a deep reverence for the natural world.
Journalist, educator, and author George Davis is a strong believer of this interconnectedness, for he incorporates nature into his whole livelihood. He has created a project that will honor the intrinsicness of nature and is pushing for it to be completed. His purpose for this is simple,
“...Unless we begin to see ourselves as connected to nature, we can't save the planet.”
AMBASSADOR UPDATE:
Hello, all! It is Spring Break at PV! So this week has been made up of mostly contacting my judges on my 3 submissions and ranking them according to their grading. Since it is their vacation, I won’t have the final ranking until after the break. But I am excited to find out who is currently in the lead. More to come soon!
SEARCH TERMS:
Environment paint
Nature paint
Nature art
Art grass
Environment art
Smells plant
Smells nature
Connected to nature
“Nature study”
HEAR THEIR STORIES:
REFERENCES:
Glave, Dianne D. Rooted in the Earth: Reclaiming the African American Environmental Heritage, 1st ed., Lawrence Hill Books, 2010.
