What's natural?

Wilderness is clearly nature. The glacier and the grizzly, sand and scorpion. But how much nature does it take to make nature? We went hiking (really just a short ramble) in the Cotswolds on a fine sunny cool spring day yesterday using public right of way paths that date back to prehistoric times. These paths, the shortest way between little villages nestled in rolling hills not unlike Wisconsin, were paved during the middle ages, but the stones are now lost beneath the agricultural fields. Yet the right of common passage is jealously preserved and guarded. You see muddy boots in the nicest restaurants, the reddish clay turning slick and sticky at the slightest provocation. Mud and wind, sun and sky haven't changed since thousands of years ago, but all the rest has. I have no idea what originally grew here, whether grass or trees. Now it's sheep and hay and vegetables. It's outdoors, and there's an elemental freedom to it all, but is it nature?

On a different natural note, these folks are way ahead of us in the department of whole, fresh and local food. Organic everything in the market. Local foods in the restaurants. Organic cheese in the quick mart. Organic local flour. You don't have to ask. Remember how hard it was to find local flour for the 100 mile dinner! Amelia had a box of food delivered this morning - carrots, broccoli, parsnips, banana, apples, salmon, pork, bacon etc., etc., all organic. Expensive yes, but delivered to her door on order.