and habitation. (Ironically, notions and reality often don’t match. The creation of many of America’s national “wilderness” parks required the eviction of local residents, both white and Indian.)
Are not both extremes rooted in the illusion that we are separate from nature, in what environmental historian William Cronon has called “a dualistic vision in which the human is entirely outside the natural”? If we imagine ourselves as essentially separate from nature—perhaps as the unseen evil presence of man in Bambi —how can we possibly imagine a place for ourselves within it?
When we do think of humans as part of nature, we usually imagine ourselves standing at its pinnacle. As the T-shirt states, “I Didn’t Claw My Way to the Top of the Food Chain to Eat Vegetables.”
It’s quite a fantasy, this linear food chain with Homo sapiens at its apex. It neatly avoids the cyclical truth of our own mortality, glossing over the fate we share with the large carnivores, which are, as environmental scholar Paul Shepard once wrote, inevitably “pursued by microbes, fungi, and plant roots.” Maybe the T-shirt should read, “I Clawed and Clawed But Couldn’t Escape the Food Web—Soon I’ll Be Feeding Vegetables.”
There’s beauty here, when you stop to think about it. If I am buried in a plain pine box, the nutrients of my body will return to the earth. Of the water molecules that reside within my veins and arteries when I die, perhaps some will be drawn up into a growing tree. Perhaps some will find their way up into clouds, come down in a spring rain, and course through brooks where trout feed and spawn. Of the calcium atoms in my shoulder blades, perhaps a few will end up in the leg of a frog or in a falcon’s wing. Inevitable reincarnation.
Picturing ourselves in league with the large carnivores—or with the owl who plucks the grouse from the air and who must, in the end, return to the forest floor—has its comforts. Though death may be disturbing, most of us can make our peace with the idea of a gentle demise in old age. Being violently transformed into food—being the grouse struck down by the owl—is a less appetizing prospect.
As a boy, I read stories about human encounters with grizzly bears, encounters that didn’t always end so well for the human. And I occasionally took out the bundled python skin my father kept in the closet: an oddity he had inherited from some great-aunt who had traveled overseas. I would take it out and unfurl it, fold by fold, until I had the entire skin—some twelve to fifteen inches wide and twenty-plus feet long—stretched out on the ground. The desiccated skull, still attached, smelled faintly of stale decay. I was fascinated by the sheer size of the thing. I knew that snakes this large could eat pigs. Why not a small boy?
Such events are, of course, exceedingly rare, even in grizzly or python country. Growing up in New England, long ago swept clear of wolves and cougars, I never feared that an animal would try to eat me. I never even glimpsed what such a threat might feel like, until one night well into my third decade.
The scream came at midnight.
Cath and I, still living at Bird Cottage among New York’s Finger Lakes, were getting ready to move to Vermont. We had pitched a tent behind our friend Dierdre’s house, not far from Syracuse. Her front yard along a main road was a perfect location for the garage sale we’d be having in the morning, jettisoning cargo in preparation for the move. We would have slept inside like regular houseguests, but Dierdre had cats and I—still vegan and still seriously allergic to them—preferred not to wake up bleary eyed and wheezy. Besides, Cath and I liked camping out. It would be fun.
“Keep the woodchucks out of my garden, will you?” said Dierdre, as we headed out back to sleep. “I’ve been having trouble with them.” I didn’t mention my track record in that department: the woodchuck at Bird Cottage staring
Are not both extremes rooted in the illusion that we are separate from nature, in what environmental historian William Cronon has called “a dualistic vision in which the human is entirely outside the natural”? If we imagine ourselves as essentially separate from nature—perhaps as the unseen evil presence of man in Bambi —how can we possibly imagine a place for ourselves within it?
When we do think of humans as part of nature, we usually imagine ourselves standing at its pinnacle. As the T-shirt states, “I Didn’t Claw My Way to the Top of the Food Chain to Eat Vegetables.”
It’s quite a fantasy, this linear food chain with Homo sapiens at its apex. It neatly avoids the cyclical truth of our own mortality, glossing over the fate we share with the large carnivores, which are, as environmental scholar Paul Shepard once wrote, inevitably “pursued by microbes, fungi, and plant roots.” Maybe the T-shirt should read, “I Clawed and Clawed But Couldn’t Escape the Food Web—Soon I’ll Be Feeding Vegetables.”
There’s beauty here, when you stop to think about it. If I am buried in a plain pine box, the nutrients of my body will return to the earth. Of the water molecules that reside within my veins and arteries when I die, perhaps some will be drawn up into a growing tree. Perhaps some will find their way up into clouds, come down in a spring rain, and course through brooks where trout feed and spawn. Of the calcium atoms in my shoulder blades, perhaps a few will end up in the leg of a frog or in a falcon’s wing. Inevitable reincarnation.
Picturing ourselves in league with the large carnivores—or with the owl who plucks the grouse from the air and who must, in the end, return to the forest floor—has its comforts. Though death may be disturbing, most of us can make our peace with the idea of a gentle demise in old age. Being violently transformed into food—being the grouse struck down by the owl—is a less appetizing prospect.
As a boy, I read stories about human encounters with grizzly bears, encounters that didn’t always end so well for the human. And I occasionally took out the bundled python skin my father kept in the closet: an oddity he had inherited from some great-aunt who had traveled overseas. I would take it out and unfurl it, fold by fold, until I had the entire skin—some twelve to fifteen inches wide and twenty-plus feet long—stretched out on the ground. The desiccated skull, still attached, smelled faintly of stale decay. I was fascinated by the sheer size of the thing. I knew that snakes this large could eat pigs. Why not a small boy?
Such events are, of course, exceedingly rare, even in grizzly or python country. Growing up in New England, long ago swept clear of wolves and cougars, I never feared that an animal would try to eat me. I never even glimpsed what such a threat might feel like, until one night well into my third decade.
The scream came at midnight.
Cath and I, still living at Bird Cottage among New York’s Finger Lakes, were getting ready to move to Vermont. We had pitched a tent behind our friend Dierdre’s house, not far from Syracuse. Her front yard along a main road was a perfect location for the garage sale we’d be having in the morning, jettisoning cargo in preparation for the move. We would have slept inside like regular houseguests, but Dierdre had cats and I—still vegan and still seriously allergic to them—preferred not to wake up bleary eyed and wheezy. Besides, Cath and I liked camping out. It would be fun.
“Keep the woodchucks out of my garden, will you?” said Dierdre, as we headed out back to sleep. “I’ve been having trouble with them.” I didn’t mention my track record in that department: the woodchuck at Bird Cottage staring
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