From the country that invented nature

Blogging from the Midlands of England. Sunny! Sunday morning in Solihull a suburb of Birmingham. There's not much left of "nature" in this industrial (formerly pastoral) flatland. When they built a new football (soccer) stadium in nearby Coventry, they had to limit the capacity because the underground is so riddled with abandoned coal mines that they couldn't be sure the ground wouldn't collapse. Nonetheless, the English can be credited with wrenching the concept of nature from its Bibical context and setting it on its feet as an independent entity, an idea that Thoreau, Muir and Leopold expanded to involve a worship and finally a stewardship of nature. And that we are trying to expand to figure out how we can live as part of nature, not something outside of it. This place could use a little more stewardship. But they do a lot better job of honoring their human heritage than we do. The village of Warwick is still built around its Midaeval gate and shops from the 15th Century are still in use. Looks like the original glass in the windows, but I'm sure that's not true.