In Harmony with Nature

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

This, simply, is a character or a society who, either by training or by intuition, understands the resources and rhythms of nature exceptionally well, and lives accordingly. They may be able survive in, or travel through, an apparently forbidding wilderness with ease. If they're not an actual Nature Hero, they'll probably be a virtually self-sufficient farmer or gardener, able to coax glorious harvests out of the ground with a single trowel and love (and certainly never with pesticides) and will pontificate about the ancient wisdom of the soil. At the very least, they'll be able to experience a simple jaunt through the countryside on a deeper level to any more urban-minded people around them.

In more Anvilicious works, this overlaps with Friend to All Living Things. Usually, however, living In Harmony with Nature requires you to kill the occasional creature, and even if you never take more than you need and have immense respect for the little critters you're roasting over the campfire, this does tends to deter them from gathering around you adoringly while you sing.

When confined to cities, characters who are In Harmony with Nature will often become distressed and wonder how the other characters can bear to live in such choking sterile surroundings. Characters Raised by Wolves will almost inevitably be like this, as will the Magical Native American and the Noble Savage. Often a characteristic of a Mary Suetopia.

See also Harmony Versus Discipline, this trope being Harmony.

Examples of In Harmony with Nature include:

Comic Books

  • Definitely the Wolfriders and Sun Folk in Elf Quest, but brutally subverted by the Gliders, who've cut themselves off from nature. As for the Go-Backs, they're too busy fighting the trolls to care one way or another.

Film

Literature

  • The Lord of the Rings. Partly by virtue of the quasi-medieval setting, many of the societies and individuals included are depicted In Harmony with Nature in one way or another:
    • The hobbits, especially Sam, in that farmerly-wisdom, son-of-the-soil sort of way.
    • The elves in the spiritual "The trees are talking to me" way.
    • Aragorn in the "I can tell you the entire life story of who walked through that hedge and bent that twig" way.
  • The elves in The Inheritance Cycle are even more In Harmony with Nature than even Tolkien's elves, to the point that they are a bunch of pompous vegans who use magic to bend nature to their will.
    • As a vegetarian I think it's cool that there are vegan characters...I just take offence to the fact that the elves are ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS RIGHT. Seriously. The main character converts to vegetarianism solely because the elves tell him to, while having no problem with slaughtering hundreds of people in battle.
  • In How I Live Now, nine-year-old Piper is like this.
  • Neville Longbottom, from Harry Potter, is an Herbology prodigy, eventually taking over the Professorship in that subject upon the retirement of Professor Sprout.
  • This trope is parodied with various characters in Cold Comfort Farm, notably Elfine.

"She learns from the skies and the wild marsh-tiggets, not out o' books."
"How trying," observed Flora.

  • In Adiamante, a science fiction novel by L. E. Modesitt, Jr., the future people of Earth are In Harmony with Nature because they have to be. The environmental damage of the past has so damaged the planet that even the most "minor" disruptions would have big consequences.
  • In the Star Trek Novel Verse, the Kazarites and Irriol are two races like this. The Kazarites have telepathic and empathic links with animals, and accordingly have a culture greatly concerned with preserving natural eco-systems. This empathy extends to animals beyond Kazar itself, allowing them to aid in the restoration of other, more damaged planets. In Star Trek: Mere Anarchy, their "ecopaths" play a role in the terraforming of central planet Mestiko, which has been heavily damaged by a pulsar. The Irriol are even more In Harmony with Nature, to the point where they are willing to sacrifice their lives to predators if they sense that the ecosphere is better served by their deaths.
  • Parodied in Discworld; the wizards expected Mustrum Ridcully to be a "roams the forests with every beast his brother" type, who talked to birds, because he was a wizard who lived in the countryside. He turned out to be a Great White Hunter who shouted at birds ("Winged yer, yer bastard!"), but he's still more in harmony with nature than the other wizards, who never leave the city if they can avoid it.
    • Magrat seems to expect witches to embody this trope, even though she's seen enough of them to know they're more farm-oriented than wilderness-oriented. Witches were generally depicted as more In Harmony with Nature than bookish wizards, at least until I Shall Wear Midnight pointed out that urban witches are entirely possible.
  • Dickon in The Secret Garden astounds even his family with how happy he is on the moors and how well he gets along with animals. He teaches Mary, Colin, and even Ben Weatherstaff to do the same, though his knack is always the best.
  • In Heidi, Alm-Uncle has many elements of this trope (with the comeuppance that he is not a people person.) Heidi manages to live in harmony with the goats and charm everyone around her. She also suffers in city environments.
  • In The Blue Castle, Barney lives this way, and when Valancy comes along to live with him she takes to it like a fish to water.
  • In fact, the vast majority of L. M. Montgomery heroines possess this trope. Anne asserts that she could never be happy someplace that didn't have trees. Jane of Lantern Hill blossoms when she moves out to the countryside, is a great gardener, and even before then, had an affinity for the moon. Marigold (from Magic for Marigold) loves nothing better than to roam the hills and shore of Prince Edward Island.

Live-Action TV

  • Grizzly Adams was like this.
  • Cody Lundin of Dual Survival is another example, trying to live as close to nature as possible and having worn neither long pants, shoes, nor underwear in the last 20 years. However, he's no idiot (the man knows how to survive in potentially deadly situations) and is willing to compromise in some situations (he'll wear protective footwear in terrait that warrants it, like snowfields and sharp rocks).

Music

Tabletop Games

  • Druids in Dungeons & Dragons.
    • Druids in general when they are portrayed in fiction. There's little evidence that the real world druids were actually living in any more harmony than the rest of the human race.
    • In the same game, rangers are also generally portrayed like this, but have more leeway. Barbarians and spirit shamans are also liable to be associated with this.

Video Games

  • World of Warcraft features druids, who are (as noted above) described as this. Night elf and Tauren druids especially.

Web Original

  • Kuraii, from a type of cat species in The Gungan Council, is as close to nature as most sentient beings could ever be.

Western Animation

  • In the Camping Episode of The Simpsons, Marge and Lisa were separated from the rest of their family. With nothing, they managed to have a nice fire and a comfortable place to rest. Marge was even seen sweeping out the hut and arranging the living animals in a row. Homer and Bart, on the other hand, were not so lucky...
  • The ponies, in My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, aren't so much in harmony with nature as crucial to its functioning. They clean up the winter snow, change the seasons and the weather, tend the 'wild' animals, and nurture the plants. One character even speaks of the Everfree Forest as a horrific place because the plants grow on their own and the animals take care of themselves.
  • The fairies in Fern Gully are like this, as guardians of a rainforest.
  • The Wood Forgers seen in the ThunderCats (2011) episode "The Forest of Magi Oar" think they are this, being the Forest's self-proclaimed guardians. They're not. Their desire for power is harming the forest (through a paper mill), so much so that Viragor, the true guardian of the Forest, wants to evict them.

Real Life

  • Ray Mears.
  • Ancient Hawaii. The people had sort of a shifting schedule of taboo that made sure that they never ran out of a resource.
  • The Aborigines. Even their religion was based on being in harmony with nature.
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