"Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars" - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
When we think of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we often picture marches, megaphones, and policy change—not rivers, mountains, or dawn breaking over a quiet horizon. Yet nature was one of King's powerful sources of metaphor and meaning. His speeches are filled with images of “justice roll[ing] down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream,”(King, 1963) long arcs “bend[ing] toward justice,” and mountaintops that offer clarity and perspective. These images weren’t decorative—they were grounding.
King’s nature language framed social struggle as part of a larger ecological and spiritual process, reminding people that change moves like seasons: unpredictable, cyclical, and ultimately generative. In his final “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, King described the vantage point of a summit—vision, perspective, and the ability to see possibility beyond crisis (King, 1968). That image resonates deeply for clients who feel caught in the valleys of anxiety, grief, identity work, or burnout. Nature gives us both metaphor and method: we can climb, pause, orient, and begin again.
King’s legacy also threads into the roots of environmental justice. Although the field did not formally take shape until the 1980s, historians and EJ scholars trace its lineage back to civil rights organizing, including King’s support for the Memphis sanitation workers, who faced unsafe working conditions, exposure to toxic waste, and racialized environmental risks (Bullard, 1993; Cole & Foster, 2001). Today, movements for clean water, green space, and climate equity often draw from that same civil rights vision.
For nature-informed healing, King offers a quiet but meaningful invitation: to see justice, belonging, and community care as ecological concepts. Landscapes change; systems adapt; small forces reshape bedrock. Our work—whether personal or collective—lives in that same terrain.