Nature Never Looked so Sane

Finding Ballast in the Storm

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here, which I apologize for. I’ve been preoccupied with the Fix Our Forests Act, trying to understand the troubling logic behind it, in which “forest health” is sought with chainsaws, feller bunchers and masticators and fire resilience by thinning forests of their means of gathering, storing and recycling water, fire’s natural antidote. That said, it’s complicated, and I’ve been buried in research trying to understand the nuances as I craft another op/ed. In the meantime, I want to widen the lens a little, and share some observations about the times we find ourselves in.

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Image from Pinterest

I have the privilege of living in an area where wildlife abounds. The surrounding fields and bays are part of a migratory flyway for all manner of waterfowl. On a given day there’ll be widgeon, pintail, merganser, green winged teal, mallard and loon passing through. There’s something magisterial in these processions. A raft of pintails lifts streaming off the water, arrowing north against the islands, and my breath catches at the beauty. But there is more than beauty passing my eyes. Remember that it’s my breath that catches. My entire body recognizes something that is both thrilling and reassuring, an order and integrity that is deeply present in the living world, an integrity that can be understood as a kind of sanity.

Nature is sane. In all its parts and processes, in flowers, in pollen-coated bees, in grazing antelope, nesting birds, drifting clouds, water cycles, rain, growth and decay, a primordial sanity abides. And it’s upon this sanity that we derive our own. It’s not something we create or attain, but are born with, and into. And if we are lucky, raised in a loving and stable family, that sanity extends into adulthood with the hallmark qualities of satisfaction, empathy, humility, patience, calm—a rugged and durable happiness.

It follows then, that as we destroy the fabric of the natural world we also destroy the natural basis of our own sanity. I think we are seeing that now. It parades across our screens, shouts from talk shows and is nowhere more apparent than in America’s capitol. As we have less and less to hinge ourselves to, we become increasingly unhinged. And it’s not a pretty picture.

But at least an image is finally, unmistakably cohering. The current administration’s disregard for the natural world is so blatant that perhaps it will spark a reaction, a renewed vigor in its defense. Perhaps we are reaching a crisis point at which we will finally begin to question our assumptions, the first being that we are separate from, and somehow superior to, the natural world. Perhaps our confidence that we have this all under control, just a few more technological advancements and we’re over the hump, will give way to a necessary anxiety, the unpleasant realization that we are out of control, that the threads to sane human existence are snapping all around us.

I mentioned the natural abundance here. That includes an eagle’s eyrie fully in use. I’ve been keeping an eye on it and wrote this small poem, a reminder of what we’re fighting for.

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I knew of the eyrie
and heard the cry
high and sustained
stretched with longing.
Not the downscaling heckle
of territorial defense
but a request, imploring: feed me.

Then I saw the one of two
swoop in between the branches
land on the lip of the nest
woven with fresh cedar boughs
as the snowy head of the other
rose to be fed.

The one then leapt 
to a neighboring branch
and looked over the water
where the pintail, mallard and brandt
bobbed and dabbled.

More sustenance will be needed
the hooked beak and curved talons
brought to the fore
the solemn ceremony 
of predation. None of it's easy
the tearing and shredding
but it's all of a piece and in accord

even tender
as the one feeds the other
gold beak to gold beak.

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