The one-time essential chores such as growing our own food, pumping our water and the killing and butchering of our meat are now becoming obsolete. Although there are many families that have gardens and grow some of their own food, this is often a hobby and not a necessity.

Modern technology has enabled us to supply ourselves with all our physical necessities simply by going to a store. A trip to the store is usually done in an automobile, even if the destination is only several blocks away. We seldom find it necessary to walk anywhere.

There are elevators and escalators to whisk us between floors and larger airports have moving sidewalks. Farmers, who have always been hard workers, putting in long hours in all kinds of weather, are now using machinery that is making the job easier.

Many people are walking, going to gyms or even playing tennis, all for exercise. In many jobs, we either sit and push buttons, watch a monitor or stand while doing a repetitive action.

Not only our jobs but our spare time as well has become complacent. Through the years, conversation and reading have been replaced by television. When communicating with others we send a text instead of talking.

Many surveys have been done on how many hours our children watch TV and spend time on their phones. This percentage of time is way too high. To combat this, many school teachers are encouraging our children to read more books. Our grandchildren when in grade school would read assigned books during summer vacations, with personal pan pizzas as a prize.

Humans have accomplished many marvels and the TV and cell phones are two of them. To be able to sit in our living room and watch what is happening around the world at the very moment it is occurring is quite a feat. I find myself watching more TV during the winter evenings than other times of the year. Mary Alice coaxes me to play games or put a puzzle together instead of sitting in front of the television.

However, all this technology does not come without a price.

All these conveniences have taken us away from nature. We need to experience nature, to retrace our footsteps, feel the sun on our backs and the dirt under our feet.

Do you realize that some people in our cities go months on end without walking on dirt?

We all live by human’s law. We know how unreliable and changeable human’s laws can be. However, nature’s laws are true, never changing and showing no discrimination against anything. In nature, there is a balance and a harmony found nowhere else on this planet. Nature is the same today as it was yesterday, a year ago, or even 100 years ago.

We look at nature and know that the oak tree will come from the acorn, the daisies will always be the same color, skunk cabbage plants will stink and the moon will rise in the east while the sun sets in the west.

This is the way it always has been and always will be.

Nature is something that we can count on. To me, in this fast moving, changing world of today, this is very comforting.

The Native Americans were in tune with nature. An old Sioux Indian named Black Elk said this: “You have noticed that everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that’s because the power of the world always works in a circle, and everything tries to be round. The sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball and so are all the stars. The sun comes forth and goes down in a circle. The moon does the same and both are round. The life of man is a circle from childhood to childhood and so is everything where power moves.”

I must be half Native American because at times I feel like I am going in circles.

Bill Bower is a retired Pennsylvania Game Commission Wildlife Officer. Read his blog and listen to his podcasts on the outdoors at www.onemaningreen.com.