I myself am identical with nature

“I myself am identical with nature” is a concise expression of Alexander von Humboldt’s view that human beings do not stand outside the natural world they seek to understand. The book first presents it as Humboldt’s rejection of the ideal of a perfectly detached observer, then recalls it as language for the narrator’s own felt participation in a garden alive with other beings.

Humboldt’s Claim

In the discussion of Paul Stamets as a scientist in the Humboldtian mold, the phrase marks a way of knowing grounded not in distance but in belonging. Humboldt held that feeling, the senses, and imagination help disclose nature’s order; human subjectivity is not an external vantage point, since the imagination that interprets nature is itself part of nature. The narrator sets this understanding against the modern ideal of observing from outside the system, an ideal he says would have been anathema to Humboldt.

The statement is paired with Humboldt’s observation that “Everything is interaction and reciprocal.” Together, the two expressions describe nature not as a collection of discrete objects set apart from a human observer, but as a web of relations in which the observer is also involved. The claim is not offered as a scientific finding about identity in a narrow sense; in this passage, it conveys a relational account of perception and participation.

The Garden Experience

The narrator recalls the phrase during a walk back to the house at dusk, which he identifies as the peak of an experience. Dragonflies moved among the phlox, repeatedly touching down on the blossoms before crossing the garden path. There were so many that he wondered whether they were real; Judith later came outside and confirmed the sighting.

The scene altered his position within the garden. Instead of experiencing himself as an alienated observer looking at distinct objects, he felt implicated in the activity around him: one being among many, in relation to the whole. Recalling Humboldt’s words, he says that for the first time he could remember, “I myself am identical with nature.” The phrase thus returns not merely as an idea about Humboldt’s science, but as the narrator’s name for a change in how the garden and his place within it felt.

Meaning and Aftereffect

The narrator remains uncertain how to classify the experience, saying it seemed at moments like a spiritual experience. What he can identify is a heightened sense of other beings’ personhood and an opening of the heart toward his parents, Judith, and even the plants, trees, birds, and insects on the property. Some of that openness persisted afterward, and he remembers the experience as one of wonder and immanence.

In that context, the expression holds together a moment of bodily attention, a philosophical inheritance from Humboldt, and a lasting emotional change. Its force comes from the shift it names: nature is no longer simply what the narrator looks at, but a living field of relations in which he finds himself included.