Ma Earth, I Owe
Until just recently (my 53rd year) I have lived my whole life, as did my brothers and dad, on one smallish piece of property in one smaller valley on the central coast. I love the place, though not much is left of it. In this way I relate to my predecessors who lived here, generation after untold generation. The thing really is a sort of mother / Mother Valley. In a very real way she raised me, fed and educated me, entertained me, consoled me, sustained and nourished one body and soul, no less than my human parents. I think it is only natural to develop a sense of wanting to reciprocate in some way, but how?
In Australia, the Aborigines speak of “looking after the land.” This, I suppose, means not only doing things to keep the land productive and “healthy” (which in their case, as in early California, involves occasionally burning it) but also to look after the land in an intangible, spiritual way.
I have come to believe that the best thing any of us can do is to constantly give thanks for the land and all in it that we value. It matters not so much to whom--whomever you think deserves the thanks, from God to the land itself. In doing this, you will keep an open mind about what other ways you can be of service. In my case, having been given so much by way of delight, comfort, and education, I wish to do what I can so that future generations of kids like me are able to enjoy the gifts my little valley so amply bestowed on me--fishing in the creek after school, with some prospect of success, being surprised by some little drama in a tussock, finding the nest of some elusive bird, lying in sweet grass watching clouds… on and on without end. I want there always to be open avenues of discovery, so that anyone interested can make some new contribution to the general knowledge. Above all, I want everyone, present and future, to be able to enjoy the same quality of life that I did, and by this I don't mean having more toys or money or clothes; I mean life--the kind of vibrant, vivid, immediate life that our species was designed for. And I am one of those who cannot imagine a genuine life in an artificial world.
However many advantages and comforts and distractions we have in this “advanced” civilization of ours, I cannot but believe that the kind of life lived here 300 or 3000 years back was immeasurably more real, intense, powerful.
Maybe this is just idle fantasy; and certainly there is no going back. But, the kind of “forward” we are going, having experienced only a half century of it, however increased the ease, the overall direction is toward monotony and dreariness. Phony artificial life in place of real life. Being alive is not living. Schoolkids learning about “nature” through a computer screen. Newer isn’t always better; but we are “progress”-oriented culture. So we need to go a different kind of “forward.”
How many times has that been repeated or ignored?
Why I should dare to presume
Preachy, presumptuous
How can I presume to preach to others on such things? I agree, it does seem presumptuous.
The answer is, though, that I would not feel so sure of myself in this regard but for the fact that I myself personally passed through the very same “phase” myself, and later awoke to the arrogance of it.
In my younger days I conceived a very typical white guy notion, or rather a series of notions, each involving making over my own little plot of land according to some inspiration of the moment.
I went through a “native grass” phase in the early 70’s and a native mature-plant botanical garden phase, and a bird-garden phase and a rare-fruit garden phase, and a desert-garden phase and a bamboo phase, and a tropical phase.
These things came and went.
But all the while I also kept an eye rained on the “wild” corner of our little farm, watching the processes of succession inexorably doing this work.
I saw too what the birds really liked and responded to and what mere mere vanities.
Saw one beloved place after another degraded and ruined by those who couldn’t or wouldn’t see real wealth.
Then with some dismay, I saw fervent, self-righteous new “converts” to “native” gardening start to lobby for widespread nature-faking--because I see the movement as nothing more than a new and sneaking kind of nature-faking. There is no zealot like a convert. Each experiment with natural land leaves behind a trail of wreckage--the price of trial and error.
If every new person and ad-hoc group and political agency has to repeat these failed experiments, or if a whole lot of them try the same dubious fad at once, the wreckage is multiplied.
A little knowledge can avert a lot of ruin. Face it, we don’t have that much we can afford to ruin in our fumbling quest to get it right.
If we can avoid pitfalls, don’t we have some kind of moral obligation to do so?
Anyway, a lot of people right now are cheerfully, blithely trying things that others already have tried and know don’t work--or do more harm than good. We all have a right to learn from our mistakes, but not when the public interest has to take the consequences, not when “nature” has to pay the price for our personal foibles--god knows she has to pay enough already, without being forced to suffer the fallout from our good intentions into the bargain.
