The Order and Chaos of Nature

I just stepped in from a hike through the Grand Forest on Bainbridge Island, Washington. The forest is quite nice, if you like all spongy and mossy (which I do). The dominant trees are douglas-fir and Western Red Cedar, but none of these are old growth trees, so there is a proliferation of smaller plant life under the moderate canopy: Sword Fern; Huckleberry; and a ton of other plants that I'm not familiar with. The relative density of plants creates a habitat for lots of small animals, various birds and squirrels.
Anyway, as I looked into the messy tangle of plants, I remembered a line from The Mission: referring to the jungle, Father Gabriel says, "It's a trifle overgrown." This, in turn, made me think of a comment that one of you had made to me privately, saying that left on its own, nature tends toward chaos. This comment reminded me of the Genesis passage in which God tells the people to subdue the earth.
This is all very fascinating to me because I have always been of the camp that views the natural world as balanced and ordered, self-balancing and self-ordering. Once again, you my friends are pushing me into more nuanced ways of viewing the world.
I would love to hear more of your thoughts on this topic.