Frontiers

How many times have you heard such and such is “the last frontier”--Alaska, the deep ocean, outer space, the mind. It goes on and on. 

“The” frontier, as we mostly understand it in this country, came to an official end, was formally closed, in 187_. 

The west coast was the end of the line. No more wild Indians, no more land free for the taking. 

We are a people with a nostalgia for the frontier, all of us in one way or another the progeny of adventurous risk-takers, a nation of gamblers. We all, except those of us who can claim to be 100% California Indian, and arguably even they--if you go back far enough--come from ancestors who at some point packed up and headed across an ocean, later across a continent, in search of a new start. Some to get rich, some to get away, some just out of wanderlust. We are a selected lot; and by that I don’t mean select--that applies (?) quality. What I mean is a subset of an otherwise stable, settled people, a minority of the most adventurous, most inquisitive, most fearless that our Old World home towns had to offer. Like every other quality, these can be used in positive and negative ways, and were--in spades.

We are the issue of the restless, the seekers, the congenitally never-satisfied (=insatiable) lookers-over-the-next-hill, always wanting something bigger and better. 

We seem to be obsessed with frontiers.

It isn’t the temperament that bodes well for the kind of long-term stability, the contentment with their lot, that the Indians eventually came to exemplify. It doesn’t bode well for us to stay put long enough to really feel like natives of a place, like our stay-at-home cousins back in the Old Country did. It may happen yet. I hope it does, for the sake of our descendants and the land itself. There are signs of it here and there, but still the average Californian changes residence and moves x times in his life. 

But for now, and for those of us who still need to explore and pioneer, be assured that it is never over. Frontiers are infinite.

Frontiers of knowledge, of self-improvement, of land-improvement. 

Even at so gross a level as naming the various plants and animals that share our home, the end is still not in sight. This, to one, is the most exciting frontier available to us now. 

Pursuits/treasure hunts/detective work like this is of increasing importance now that so much land is being eaten by various blind forces, land that is often to some creature or other what Ishi’s little domain on Deer Creek was to him and his tribe--the last refuge, the last stand. 

And the thrill of discovering some new creature or plant is real and intense. I can tell you from experience.

This is where we can try not to make the same mistake we made with the Indians--so far we aren’t doing too great a job of showing we’ve learned the lesson.