Nature Boy
In July of 1999 a dam in upstate Maine was ordered destroyed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The hydroelectric Edwards Dam, on the Kennebec River was found guilty of inhibiting salmon in their urgent need to swim upstream to spawn. The benefit of clean, pollution free electrical energy was found to be less important than the inalienable rights of salmon to freely travel. In short, the welfare of the salmon, or, “nature”, was seen to be more important than people. The salmon are not to be fished, or farmed, or otherwise mistreated. Their existence justifies itself.
This weekend, a wasp flew into my apartment. I know how he got here: the metal screen door I have doesn’t match the door frame very closely at the top, and likely the wasp just buzzed in. I saw him when he was running himself into my living room wall over and over again, next to the floor lamp. He was flying around the room the way a little kid gets around a swimming pool - staying near the edges, and pushing off every few feet to get some momentum going. I grabbed a rolled up San Diego tribune classified supplement, and prepared to do battle. I knew from growing up in the deep South, wasp stings hurt like a sum-bitch - no reason to take chances. As I didn’t have any bug spray in the house (because I thought San Diego didn’t have insects. No, really.) I was forced to attack with mere paper. I cautiously approached the intruder. Swat! Wave! Jump! He wouldn’t land on something hard so I could squish him. Instead he flew right for me, then veered off at the last minute and headed into the dining room. I fanned him, blowing him into the kitchen. He made straight for the highest, darkest corner. In my apartment, that’s not very high or dark. I approached again, bludgeon ready. He darted into the kitchen window, which I quickly closed. So now, he was trapped between the screen and the glass, unable to get out. I watched for a bit, to make sure he didn’t have a tiny pair of wasp-sized bolt cutters, or a small and very complicated wasp-shotgun. No, he was just confused. My girlfriend asked me later why I didn’t open the screen and let him fly free - I pointed out that I lived on the second floor, and was she going to rent a ladder? He’s still there, half dead and probably very irritated with me right now.
I walk slowly down the trail towards the dam at Mission Trails Park. I can hear the duo before I see them.
“The difference between sale price and purchase price is my profit or loss…”
“I know!”
The pair of middle-aged men bicycle down the trail, specially designed bicycling clothes stretched across their pudgy bodies, helmets atop their graying heads. I move aside.
It seems like an oxymoron, interacting with nature when living in a city. I know that growing up, I always had the idea that nature was something that you traveled into, like a maze. Sure, there are trees, and vermin, and small furry creatures living in the trees, but that’s not really nature. If you want to see nature, you have to go a Park. Or a Preserve. Not in my back yard. Nature is what we eradicate when we build cities. Nature is the anti-city. Nature is good, and terrible in her vastness, and as unapproachable as a pillar of fire in the desert.
.
Last week, I was walking outside toward the alley behind my apartment complex at night. I was on my cell phone, talking to someone as I took a bag of trash out to the dumpster. I opened the ever-unlocked gate to the alley, and there it was. A large dark, furry shape. Bigger than a cat. Wrong shape for a dog. But it had a really big black and white tail - oh, crap. My redneck pattern recognition skills immediately snapped on, and I froze. It was a skunk, tail in the upright and locked position. An alert neighbor across the alley helpfully called ,”Hey, that’s a skunk!”. I didn’t breathe. It took off across the alley and ran under a parked car. Now, I live in what can charitably be called a concrete jungle. I live pretty close to the edge of a mountain, but when you look down, all you can see is yuppies buying Swedish furniture at IKEA and used cars for sale at Qualcomm. There’s nothing, well, natural about it at all. Yet, there it was. A skunk, living in my alley. How did it get there? What drew it to my gate? More immediately, when I walked to my car, was I going to get sprayed with stink-juice? I don’t know where the skunk finally went off to, but I haven’t seen him again. And that was another brush with nature in my own neighborhood.
REI is having a sale - Great Gear Deals! Up to 30% Off! For the uninformed, poor, or recreationally challenged, REI is Recreational Equipment, Inc. - the nation's largest consumer cooperative with more than 2.8 million members. They do a pretty good business around here, judging by the copious amount of spandex, neoprene, and impact resistant plastic I see adorning hikers, bikers, runners, and rock climbers at Mission Trails Regional Park. The only people I see at the park who aren’t outfitted in designer active-wear and protective equipment are the old people, slowly walking for no reason whatsoever. They haven’t gotten the memo yet: nature can only be experienced properly if you’ve purchased the right gear.
Nature has its own philosophical movement, its own art, its own music, its own writing. The concept of nature as “everything humans aren‘t” is old, traditional, venerated, and completely wrong. San Diego of course has nature - “Dude, you can totally go from the beach to, like, the mountains in 45 minutes”, was one of the first things I heard when I moved here. Sure, but in that 45 minutes, what is there? When you’re barreling up the 8 at 70 miles an hour, you’re passing the pigeons that are nesting in the overhang over my porch. They coo and flutter seemingly 24 hours a day, and leave little presents for me on my doorstep. They’re nature too. You’re passing the skunks in Normal Heights, and the squirrels in Balboa Park who have apparently organized into a cute street gang. But also, you’re passing us. Humanity. We are part of nature too, with out designer imported furniture, our Ugg boots, and our fossil-burning vehicles. We can’t afford to pretend that nature is a separate entity, that we can rope off and visit whenever we feel the need for a spiritual experience. We shouldn’t overlook the fact that nature is everything we use on a daily basis to change our lives. Oil, wood, cloth, metals, rubber…all these things make up the tools we’ve created to adapt to our world, the same way Native Americans used buffalo and more buffalo. (Jerky for dinner AGAIN?). And, we shouldn’t get so enamored with the idea of nature as the Not-Humanity that we forget that we’re animals too. Clever, upright, hairless, and social. The Indians weren’t more in tune with nature because they crapped outdoors - they just didn’t have piped water. They were just as human as us, and it’s time we started acting like it, and maybe learning how to better interact with what’s going on around us instead of treating it as a theme park. We aren’t going to the park kids, we are already there.
This weekend, a wasp flew into my apartment. I know how he got here: the metal screen door I have doesn’t match the door frame very closely at the top, and likely the wasp just buzzed in. I saw him when he was running himself into my living room wall over and over again, next to the floor lamp. He was flying around the room the way a little kid gets around a swimming pool - staying near the edges, and pushing off every few feet to get some momentum going. I grabbed a rolled up San Diego tribune classified supplement, and prepared to do battle. I knew from growing up in the deep South, wasp stings hurt like a sum-bitch - no reason to take chances. As I didn’t have any bug spray in the house (because I thought San Diego didn’t have insects. No, really.) I was forced to attack with mere paper. I cautiously approached the intruder. Swat! Wave! Jump! He wouldn’t land on something hard so I could squish him. Instead he flew right for me, then veered off at the last minute and headed into the dining room. I fanned him, blowing him into the kitchen. He made straight for the highest, darkest corner. In my apartment, that’s not very high or dark. I approached again, bludgeon ready. He darted into the kitchen window, which I quickly closed. So now, he was trapped between the screen and the glass, unable to get out. I watched for a bit, to make sure he didn’t have a tiny pair of wasp-sized bolt cutters, or a small and very complicated wasp-shotgun. No, he was just confused. My girlfriend asked me later why I didn’t open the screen and let him fly free - I pointed out that I lived on the second floor, and was she going to rent a ladder? He’s still there, half dead and probably very irritated with me right now.
I walk slowly down the trail towards the dam at Mission Trails Park. I can hear the duo before I see them.
“The difference between sale price and purchase price is my profit or loss…”
“I know!”
The pair of middle-aged men bicycle down the trail, specially designed bicycling clothes stretched across their pudgy bodies, helmets atop their graying heads. I move aside.
It seems like an oxymoron, interacting with nature when living in a city. I know that growing up, I always had the idea that nature was something that you traveled into, like a maze. Sure, there are trees, and vermin, and small furry creatures living in the trees, but that’s not really nature. If you want to see nature, you have to go a Park. Or a Preserve. Not in my back yard. Nature is what we eradicate when we build cities. Nature is the anti-city. Nature is good, and terrible in her vastness, and as unapproachable as a pillar of fire in the desert.
.
Last week, I was walking outside toward the alley behind my apartment complex at night. I was on my cell phone, talking to someone as I took a bag of trash out to the dumpster. I opened the ever-unlocked gate to the alley, and there it was. A large dark, furry shape. Bigger than a cat. Wrong shape for a dog. But it had a really big black and white tail - oh, crap. My redneck pattern recognition skills immediately snapped on, and I froze. It was a skunk, tail in the upright and locked position. An alert neighbor across the alley helpfully called ,”Hey, that’s a skunk!”. I didn’t breathe. It took off across the alley and ran under a parked car. Now, I live in what can charitably be called a concrete jungle. I live pretty close to the edge of a mountain, but when you look down, all you can see is yuppies buying Swedish furniture at IKEA and used cars for sale at Qualcomm. There’s nothing, well, natural about it at all. Yet, there it was. A skunk, living in my alley. How did it get there? What drew it to my gate? More immediately, when I walked to my car, was I going to get sprayed with stink-juice? I don’t know where the skunk finally went off to, but I haven’t seen him again. And that was another brush with nature in my own neighborhood.
REI is having a sale - Great Gear Deals! Up to 30% Off! For the uninformed, poor, or recreationally challenged, REI is Recreational Equipment, Inc. - the nation's largest consumer cooperative with more than 2.8 million members. They do a pretty good business around here, judging by the copious amount of spandex, neoprene, and impact resistant plastic I see adorning hikers, bikers, runners, and rock climbers at Mission Trails Regional Park. The only people I see at the park who aren’t outfitted in designer active-wear and protective equipment are the old people, slowly walking for no reason whatsoever. They haven’t gotten the memo yet: nature can only be experienced properly if you’ve purchased the right gear.
Nature has its own philosophical movement, its own art, its own music, its own writing. The concept of nature as “everything humans aren‘t” is old, traditional, venerated, and completely wrong. San Diego of course has nature - “Dude, you can totally go from the beach to, like, the mountains in 45 minutes”, was one of the first things I heard when I moved here. Sure, but in that 45 minutes, what is there? When you’re barreling up the 8 at 70 miles an hour, you’re passing the pigeons that are nesting in the overhang over my porch. They coo and flutter seemingly 24 hours a day, and leave little presents for me on my doorstep. They’re nature too. You’re passing the skunks in Normal Heights, and the squirrels in Balboa Park who have apparently organized into a cute street gang. But also, you’re passing us. Humanity. We are part of nature too, with out designer imported furniture, our Ugg boots, and our fossil-burning vehicles. We can’t afford to pretend that nature is a separate entity, that we can rope off and visit whenever we feel the need for a spiritual experience. We shouldn’t overlook the fact that nature is everything we use on a daily basis to change our lives. Oil, wood, cloth, metals, rubber…all these things make up the tools we’ve created to adapt to our world, the same way Native Americans used buffalo and more buffalo. (Jerky for dinner AGAIN?). And, we shouldn’t get so enamored with the idea of nature as the Not-Humanity that we forget that we’re animals too. Clever, upright, hairless, and social. The Indians weren’t more in tune with nature because they crapped outdoors - they just didn’t have piped water. They were just as human as us, and it’s time we started acting like it, and maybe learning how to better interact with what’s going on around us instead of treating it as a theme park. We aren’t going to the park kids, we are already there.
Sooooo... you spelled "dam" wrong in your very first sentence. And the best part was that I didn't even notice it--Mom did. We're sure it was just a typo, because you're probably so used to typing it with an "n" on the end. Good job. Mom's impressed.
Posted by
Hannah |
6:17 PM
Edited. Thanks.
Posted by
Aaron |
9:23 PM