I am not your old man but if I were…I would talk with you about the precarious state of nature. I know there are all sorts of folks attempting to argue or scream at one another about global warming – pro or con. I rather think the debate is long since over as we literally weather the torrents of rain one year followed by multiple years of drought – so bad they have discovered bodies of old, dead gangsters long relegated to the bottom of Lake Mead outside of Las Vegas – to months of deluge and over fifty-five feet of snow in the Sierras. Whether the weather has become unpredictable, despite the importuning of meteorologists filling tv screens, or is just desultory, our lives and those of people around the globe are being damaged and destroyed.
It is, however, more personal than such large conversations suggest. It is observational, conversational. It is about walking, moving, dancing, breathing in or rather out in nature. I am amazed one can find beautiful pictures of natural phenomena posted on Facebook, or Instagram or You Tube all the time. Most of time they are not being posted by the person who took the photo or video, rather by some sedentary soul oohing over the view and reposting it for all their friends.
I can sit in my bedroom on my Hydrow row machine with its expansive video screen and with some exertion on my part cruise down the Thames, the Charles, Miami Bay, some Norwegian Fiord or the Ganges. One can ride a Peloton at the health club speeding up and down the back roads of Italy or France. But do I walk out the door and breathe in the smell of fresh air after a rain storm or stick my fingers into the loam and clay of the tiny piece of earth I (or I and the bank) own. Nope. I hire someone else to engage with such things for me – mow and blow, landscapers, tree trimmers, the kid next door.
Nature, which should be interactive, is being confined to stock photos or scented candles that smell like evergreens - a pallid trade-off for playing outdoors. This is where my grumpy old man gets grumpy – tell those damn kids to play outside, get out of their rooms, get off those fucking computers, off their damn phones – because nature requires contact. We need to touch the leaves of plants, despite the risk of poison ivy. In most cases it won’t kill you, but it can settle your soul.
Not too far from my home is a lovely hiking trail. After a moderately challenging walk, which I truly need to do with more regularity, it brings me to a series of small waterfalls. That sound is magical. It is made up of notes unheard anywhere else. You can’t recreate it even if you are Mozart with a full orchestra. You can mimic it. You can pay homage to it. You can’t replicate it. It is natural. It has sound and taste and texture. It is refreshing and cool and sharp and splashing. When you come upon it, it is not Niagara, just a small element of nature, you can feel the tension of your world ease out with every breath. If there are others at the overlook, a rare occurrence now the pandemic has ebbed and people have returned inside, you can see them lined up just watching the fall of water, breathing the moist air, feeling the mist on their hands and faces. They are interacting.
I have a small garden in my backyard. I found my way to it late in life. But I plunge fingers into the cold soil, getting black under my fingernails as I make room for the roots of herbs and vegetables. I am rewarded throughout the year with tomatoes, and eggplants, and lettuce and too many herbs to name. I can stand there and smell the intermingle of their perfumes. The bees and hummingbirds benefit too spinning and swimming about. We interact together over the same abundance.
Behind my house after the rains are vernal pools. Ponds attracting geese and egrets and ducks feeding and playing. Hawks and falcons and owls in the trees searching for food. Crows harrying the hawks to keep them from their nests. Frogs at night croaking boisterously to find a mate until there is one lone bachelor left bemoaning his solitude.
These things are life’s gifts, and we ignore their powerful nature at our own peril. In all the action and interaction there is a profusion of fragility. If not careful we will ignore the outside world to death. We have seen it – coral reefs killed and skelatonized. Forests stripped so only the outside ring of trees is left to fool the unobservant driver freeway flying by; bringing flooding and mudslides and homes toppling down hillsides with such disrepair. There are species of birds dying out, no longer present in our world where they used to fill it with squawks and songs and what was present for us when young exists no longer. Elephants and gorillas are confined to parks, tigers only visible at zoos, where we interact by buying tickets and eating popcorn getting to know them through glass or iron barriers. Nature requires attention to survive and visibility breeds longevity. So, walk out your door. Breath in your air. Taste its abundance. It belongs to you if you just take the time to notice.