Nature's Verbs

Nature’s patterns are beautiful to look at, observe, and learn from. Nature’s verbs are the very makings of our universe. This time, think of verbs that occur in nature. For example, how about split, grow, or evolve? How about spiral, tile, scale, layer, cluster, or crystallize? How about adapting, dividing, disintegrating, decomposing, dripping, wrapping, glowing, radiating, and camouflaging? For all of these verbs and a million more, nature has a purpose in the cycle of life. Nature’s verbs are gifts for our lives. The actions are all part of larger ecosystems.

Examine the natural world around you and see how form and performance unite in nature’s patterns and verbs.

Looking to nature for answers opens up new possibilities and solutions for human imaginations creating regenerative processes and biodegradable materials. Nature’s circular economy of birth, life, and regeneration decomposes its waste, creating topsoil nutrients. Plants produce seeds to regenerate more plants each growing season. Seeds and nutrients in the soil support production of food. The water cycle provides the moisture to stimulate seed growth and rooting. The world is plentiful with natural food sources in the water and on land; yet it has lands that are too hot or too dry to grow food.

Learning from Nature’s verbs offers life-long exploration for scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians in STEM/STEAM-related fields, as well as artists, archaeologists, architects, botanists, biologists, biodiversity specialists, carbon date specialists, ecologists, environmentalists, hydrologists, geologists, medical researchers, and many more. Our generation’s charge is to design change into a world that does not exist but needs to exist to ensure the Earth’s Health, biodiversity of Life Health, and Human Health in the future. We can grow food in vertical farms supporting local food security; we can work to clean our rivers and freshwater lakes. We can work to decrease ocean acidification. We can replace biodiversity of life when we build. We can reduce consumption of goods and create more regenerative materials. The world is calling us to take action. What can you do?