Wildlife

Wildlife

I have written stories about many different types of critters this year, some real and some imagined (since I cannot swear what caused this noise or that). This morning while showering, I glanced out the smallish etched-glass windows in the shower and saw that a large hawk was sitting in the branches of the seed pod tree of the Agave Americana that had sprung up over this year. That “tree” is about forty feet tall and will only last for this year as the Agave desperately tries to propagate and fulfill its mission in the circle of life on the high chaparral that is our home on this hillside. In the same way that honey badger don’t care, hawk don’t care if its a tree, a pole or seed pod stem, to him (her?) its just a perch over the landscape from which to observe smaller beasts of the field that are available for breakfast. One of the nicest aspects of this hilltop home is the way the chaparral falls away to the West. It makes for a lovely and broad couloir that the birds of prey can survey as they gently drift on the thermals circling the hillside in search of food. We see hawks every day, and yesterday I even saw two turkey vultures or midget condors out for a pass over the hillside. We have seen plenty of owls and that is what occasions the building of a barn owl box by Jeff for us to share with our neighbor Mary. The benefit will presumably be that our property will have fewer rattlesnakes, gofer holes, bunny-chewed plants and squirrels (both the furry tailed kind and the rat-tailed kind).

I watched that hawk on the limb for several minutes as his head slowly swiveled left towards the Ocean and right towards the mountains. I wonder whether daytime hunting is as good for hawks as nighttime hunting is for owls? I guess long ago nature split-shifted the birds of prey so that they would compete less with each other and more against the refined art of swooping and snatching a moving object at several hundred feet of range. There is something quite telling about that when I think of the human species. Hawks and owls have to be good at hunting or they die. Those that are especially good live a long an prosperous life and propagate many like-skilled offspring, who will have their own set of challenges of adapting or dying. This is the Darwinian way of evolution and it is only man that makes allowances for one another and allows for the perpetuation of the less skilled or lethal of the species. In many ways that strikes me as the essential difference between red and blue (I don’t think we need to tie it to an organized political party, but can just capture the gist of the fundamental life view of the two subsets of humans). Are we as humans just another mammal that forms a never-ending array of life-form that evolution has unleashed on this bountiful planet? Possibly, in my most cynical moments. Or are we truly God’s chosen, which is to say, something different and better? Here we are, back at nature versus grace, yet again.

Today is Thanksgiving. I read many more things these days, mostly online, like we all tend to do. One of my most valuable daily readings (religiously read from start to finish) is the daily email from Heather Cox Richardson, a professor of history at Boston College. She is a specialist in the Civil War and Reconstruction and her commentary these days is astoundingly valuable in understanding the divided nation in which we live. The fundamental divergences between red and blue very closely parallel those of the grey and blue. That historical perspective is why I like referring to these two camps in colors rather than political party, because Republicans were the blue and Democrats were the grey. But she spoke in her email of last night (she produces her thoughts late in the evening) about Thanksgiving and the fact that we are wrong to look at the Pilgrims of Plymouth as the originators of the fine American tradition we all know so well. She makes the very accurate and poignant observation that the national holiday we call Thanksgiving really originated during the Civil War and was a product of the northern states’ governors first, and then of Abraham Lincoln, who made a day for giving thanks during troubled times a tradition of significance.

Yes, the Pilgrims called a momentary halt to their aggressions against Native Americans, and yes, there was a harvest theme of thanks to the plenty that would take the pioneers and Indians alike through the harsh northeastern winter, but there is so much more to the notion of Thanksgiving. It’s resurgence and institutionalization into the national psyche is a result of what was in the mid-Nineteenth Century, the worst moments of our national evolution when we were pitted man against man in a battle for the soul of our country. Does that sound familiar? It should, it gets said every day for the last five years at least. We are again at such a moment except this time the natural world has highlighted our struggle in a most tragic manner. We are certainly in conflict amongst ourselves, red versus blue, but we are also in even greater conflict with both our planet and our natural evolutionary enemies in the form of a virus. The planetary issue is one brought about by the proliferation of our species to eight billion beings and our impressive ability to fight against nature with our intellect to use the resources of the planet in ways that better our momentary lives at the expense of the very planet that supports us. The more immediately harmful viral impact is a result of a life form that is not really even a life form, but which takes on the characteristics of a life form by purging our bodies of its natural resources much the same way humans are depleting the planet. Both operate with great abandon and a decided lack of forethought, and both endanger themselves unwittingly.

Stay with me here because this is a multi-layered analysis. So, like our forefathers during the Great War between the states, we are engaged in yet another Great War between the states and strangely enough it is about perceived enslavement this time, not actual physical enslavement. The red feel enslaved by the growing demographics of brown and dark colored skinned peoples, and want desperately to maintain their freedom (and dominion). The demographic hordes just want an opportunity to live and prosper as their white brethren have achieved. Meanwhile, this non-life-form has chosen this moment to attack us as a species while we, as a species, continue hundred of years of attack on the very Earth we inhabit. Wow, that is a lot of conflict happening at once and like any multi-front war, something dramatic is likely to happen from one direction or another.

And here we are, back on the tree branch, surveying the landscape trying to figure out where our next meal is coming from on this day of Thanksgiving. The solution in this context seems crystal clear to me, or at least I feel compelled to say so in writing. We must first look to save our planet or we have nothing to fight over. Then we must save ourselves by choosing a path against this pernicious virus that acknowledges its inanimate and indiscriminate strength against us and our need to bow to its strength by adjusting our lives somewhat. This adjustment should be done with the view that this is hardly the last inanimate threat to our species and perhaps changing our ways will further protect us in the future. And lastly, we must recognize that nature did not put us on this planet to fight one another (hawks and owls rarely are driven to such), but rather to find a manner to thrive collectively. The only thing we really have to be thankful for on this Thanksgiving is our ability to learn from history, to learn from nature and to learn from each other how to survive. That is the wildlife we have before us.