It is hard to describe what it feels like to have devoted your life to studying and loving "the environment" including some battles to save parts of it and the planet is dying anyway. It is like spending your life on a sculpture or work of art only to come home one day and it is smashed into bits, not only the sculpture itself but all the rules you used to build it because indeed, the "rules" of ecological science are even changing. These are the "rules" I learned in college and graduate school. These are not following the scientific paradigms anymore either. Even the framework or lens I use to view nature is quickly falling apart. I feel hopeless and heartbroken (see The Ecology of Grief, Working Through Environmental Despair and The Politics of Species Arrogance in the book, Ecopsychology edited by Roszak, Gomes and Kanner) and now there is grief because as I marvel at the magnificence of an oak tree, I wonder if it will even be around in another hundred years? If really all I am doing now is observing this 4 million year old experiment coming to a close so I cannot assume the oaks will be here in even 100 years. The climate may change so drastically they die. So I take nothing in nature for granted anymore. Every aspect of it to me now is even more of a miracle but grief contaminates my experience with it. This leads back to hopelessness and anger. As if I deserve something from loving nature. She is supposed to stick around and stay the same or even get more lovely with time but she isn't because she can't. The inevitable truth of it all is as human population and consumption increases, there is just no way nature can be preserved. No way. Put it in the terms of physics if you will...it will be physically impossible for her to endure and persist in the face of so many impacts. So what was once joy and curiousity is now grief...like finding out your dear friend is dying of cancer. There is time, but she is dying. Your time is limited so your friend is all the more precious, the situation all the more painful, the outcome out of your control and dubious. You don't know what to do. You resort to trying to enjoy everything your friend has to offer. You see her as the miracle she is. Funny you did not see her this way before she became ill.
So now I feel as if all I am doing is looking through the window of time because our planet has cancer. I am re-reading John Lovelocks's book on Gaia and the idea she can adjust to all these changes due to a kind of cybernetic immune system but
I think, if she is an organism, like any organism, its resilence only goes so far.
We have shown her such profound disrespect. We have lost our ability to wonder and wander. We deserve what we may get as a species but do we have to take her out with us? Will she be ok like so many of my friends say?
I seek refuge in the idea that the problem is the human species has not fully evolved and we are still run by the primitive brain or reptilian brain. Many have elaborated on this not the least of which was Carl Sagan. If you look at the problem in stricly evolutionary terms, you can seek some comfort in the idea that human evolution has not progressed far enough for us to make the conclusion that protecting the planet is protecting ourselves. Isn't it absurd that the "most intelligent species on the planet" does not get this simple fact? And maybe, if there is a God, this is in fact its greatest joke on the human species. That we did not get it in time to save ourselves. We did not get this simple fact. You do not spoil your own nest. You do not kill your own planet. Indeed, the joke is on us?
Whatever way you look at it, it is tragic and sad. It is pointless...or feels so.
I only know that the oak tree have become even more magnificent to me. The acorn woodpecker, even more precious. The sky, even more blue. My own mortality should be enough for me to see these things as precious but in keeping with my species, it is not. Not until that last second before we die do we really see...
The final irony--in the end, it will be ecological ignorance that kills us.
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3 comments:
Wow, this is so beautifully and poignantly written. A friend of mine, Anna Haynes, suggested I read your blog. I could have been reading my own thoughts, feelings and reverence for nature. Like you, especially as one who feels "empathic" with nature, I experience enormous grief for this planet. I marvel in my new ecosystem, Humboldt County, where Redwoods abound, a tree with whom the Native Americans used to stand in tandem, backs against boles so wide it would take 20 people hand in hand to finally reach the first person again. My Native teachers stood backs against the red bark to assimilate the tree's wisdom and strength. I have a special place in my heart for my dear Oak tree friends. Having lived in the Napa Valley for 20 years I fought hard to save those ancient copses and forests......ripped from the ground or mowed over by back hoes, I watched them fall one by one like soldiers vanquished. The greedy, toxic wine industry raped and sterilized one hillside after another for a stupid, stinking grape.
I share every sentiment expressed in this blog. I return to my friends Roderick Nash, PhD; Thinking Like A Mountain, a guide for Deep Ecology; Thoreau, Emerson, Burroughs, Wallace, Terry Tempest Williams for consolation. I too, as though I am living my last day, breathe and feel every pulse of sweet nature and work hard not to be that cancer that kills this planet's mind blowing diversity. I celebrate my garden, my forests, my creature friends everyday as though I am seeing them for the first time, not the last. I too have been assured this planet will triumph....hmmmmm. I don't know. Facing the 6th massive extinction in Earth's history, caused by MAN.....I still find it difficult to believe.
Thank you for this beautiful post. I second every single compassionately, poignantly and eloquently expressed thought, feeling, and concern you lament here. May our Earth prevail, please! With fewer people I pray!
Elizabeth Tjader, Ferndale, CA.
Thank you Elizabeth. This is the pool of pain that I live with and tap into to express my grief and bewilderment about the saga of the most "intelligent species on the planet." We are a puzzle. THis pool is within you as well...
I contemplate starting an earth grieving group where we get together in small pods close to our homes to share poems, go for hikes...and observe what is left.
It is so comforting to read your beautiful reply. It helps me know I am not the oddball on the edge of the rock singing hail to the planet at the nuclear bombs fall...
We are collectively in a deep depression over the Bush years too and the utter selfishness of the Democrats not to "risk it" by holding these monsters accountable for their behavior. While I will be relieved when our oppression under Bush will be gone, I cannot believe these people will walk away scot-free, making millions with some lobbying firm...this has to be the lowest time in the history of our country as far as seeking justice is concerned. Millions dead and dying at their hands.
This morning while cleaning a windowsill, the tiniest of spiders
(body 1 mm at the most) climbed onto my hand. And so it goes. A tiny bit of joy on my finger. Precious and innocent. I know what you mean about seeking joy in nature even in the midst of ruin.
On that note, I fight the destructuve "fire clearing" empire building of CalFire. Habitat destruction in the name of being "safe". Are we going mad now?
All empires do...
I'm rambling. Thank you so much.
I would love to meet you sometime.
Please let me know if you are in our neck of the woods.
V
Hello "V".
You and I share passion and heart for our Earth. It was comforting to me to read your original post, knowing there are other human beings who feel as you and I both emoted.
One thing with which I have a terrible time is this age of technology. I'm speaking to you via a blue screen with no human characteristics upon which I can recall or take delight. I hate where we're going. Personally, while the internet is fabulous for research, it is killing us as far as communities and what makes being alive so wonderful: our senses.
I wish I had met you under an ancient Oak tree, woodpeckers pecking, California Sister's fluttering above our heads, the arms of one of the most revered trees in history offering sanctuary for our bewildered moments. How in the world will we fight to save our wild places if we're all sitting in front of one of the most impersonal new forms of connection, the cold, silent computer, offering nothing comparable to the experience of "being" with a season?
What do you suppose is going to happen to literature with the loss of habitat and non human species? Will we read of lovers meeting and the thrill of that immortal first kiss under a cell phone tower?
God help us. And sometimes I think that Presence is all that can possibly help us.
We're determined to trash this planet and believe me, every day I read one more article about how we are destroying our dear, beloved Earth.
Thanks, "V" where ever and whoever you are. I hope one day to "meet" you, in person, perhaps intoxicated and spell bound by the sweet smell of a wild white clematis or the siren call of a reawakened Ceonothus boasting brilliant purple/blue during the most beautiful season on Earth, spring.
Elizabeth Tjader
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