Animals as Transports into Lifeworlds
In the Green Scheme of Things
Jenny Hill
I sat upon a firm but forgiving wooden bench. The sun warmed my cheek, as I shyly turned away from her glow. The sound of Max Richter’s Vivaldi Spring Remastered danced through my ears. I sat there completely still, staring at the open field in front of me. Taking in the smell of the rich green grass. Admiring the strength of the trees encompassing the belly of the field. Sketchpad and pen in hand wondering if anyone else had ever sat here and thought so in depth about this field, about its place in this world, its rights? It was in that moment that I sat there questioning what the fields relationship should be to us humans that you appeared.
Just like that you decided to say hello. Making a place for yourself on my blank white page. Giving it more life and color then I could ever muster with my pen. As I sat there completely still just looking at you, feeling lucky to have you as company, I realized that I must not just question what my relationship to the field was. For you were also a part of the field. How bizarre it is to think that despite your beautiful red color and rumored luck that no human beyond me even sees you. For a person 5 feet away simply sees a girl staring intently at her page. From across the field all that can be seen is the silhouette of a human form sitting on a bench. I continued to think about how I too became invisible as the perspective was taken farther and farther away. In the end we are both part of a green blob that from afar is recognized as our home. In that way we are not all the different. Just two invisible pieces of a greater whole. Yet there I sat looking at you as you looked back at me, neither of us invisible in that moment. Then just as soon as you had appeared you fluttered off, invisible to me again as you rejoined the green blob you call home; the field.
Perhaps it is true that our right to that land is as equal as yours. That it is ours to develop and mold. Yet, why does that always mean we have to take a home away from you? If I can sit on that bench and do my work in your presence, can’t everyone else? My relationship with you may not be direct or largely beneficial, but don’t we all deserve the chance to have a relationship at all? To not build up walls to divide us from you. To be a part of this otherness we call nature. I asked myself why we tear down the meadows where the bees once pollinated, just to build a classroom where I learn about pollinating bees through photos in a book? Or why we debate the future development of a pipeline on a natural reserve in a building in Washington, D.C. rather than out in that reserve? And to think all this perspective, all this curiosity came from you. A lucky ladybug who chose to join me just briefly. I can’t help but wonder who else you could help question their relationship with nature if we just gave you the chance.
As I returned to my sketchpad and pen, I thought of you. How can we develop or protect this field, so we can both continue to call it home? Perhaps it was not seeing this field as a blank canvas for us to draw upon, but instead realizing the pieces were already there. As I looked again at the trees I realized the foundation was already there for the addition of swings with an attached desk. That the canopy provided the shade we needed to create outdoor classroom spaces. That the sun that I shyly turned away from was providing any energy one could need. All the parts were there, it just took you, my lucky lady bug, to see them. And with that, I finally put pen to paper and began designing.
Fireflies in the Anthropocene
Peter Schlachte
The fireflies rise like hot air balloons, winking out and in with a curious anti-gravity, they rise, rise, rise. Midnight underneath the swollen trunks—mimic the movement of the fireflies, you have traced the trail under heated sun, now moonlit, trace it again. Trip on a root; hear the sounds of the forest silence themselves as you skid steps, swear under your breath. Until they return—the needy howl of a raccoon and its movement through the bush, the buzz of summer-drunk bugs that do not sleep on humid nights, your own footsteps resuming on the dirt. Now upon the clearing: the pond, its reeds speared into the still water’s bank. There is a half-moon hanging low; see its light mirrored in the pond. Throw a stick and hear it plop and watch the moon break into ripples until it is all still again. Until it is all whole again. All around you—the air is alive. And the fireflies rise like hot air balloons, winking out and in with a curious anti-gravity, they rise, rise, rise. Catch one in your cupped palms; its light snuffs out—
Gone.
Most evenings this past summer, I would take a walk as the day’s stifling humidity waned to a more comfortable temperature. As the sun lowered, the fireflies would appear. I was fascinated by them—the grace with which they floated, the manner in which they would seamlessly disappear and reappear, as if passing behind some veil and then returning from it again. In California, where I grew up, we had no fireflies and so I had never considered them; I had never even seen them. On those walks, however, I became obsessed with the desire to catch one of the bugs, as I imagined young children would do with their young friends on summer nights while they dodged their parents and responsibilities.
One night, later than usual—it was already dark—I went for a longer walk out towards the pond sitting close within the edges of the forest. Guided by the half-moon, I stumbled through the trail and was standing beside the pond when a firefly blazed directly in front of my face. I caught the bug and its blaze died and when I looked into my cupped hands, I realized that the bug was immobile—it had died too. I had somehow killed it.
In Rachel Carson’s The Sea Around Us, she describes the beauty and the staggering power of the ocean—its inscrutable nature. On a far more limited scale, I felt the same sense of wonder when watching the fireflies. Carson’s epiphanies, however, regarded nature’s power over humanity, whereas standing at the edge of the pond, my own epiphany regarded the opposite—how easily I had killed the firefly without even intending to.
Certainly, there are aspects of nature that pulse with an overwhelming power. The ocean is one such aspect, and we have seen another with the influx of aggressive storms throughout hurricane season. But the fireflies, and many other aspects of nature, are far more delicate and malleable to human action. Following the death of the firefly, I struggled with this more than I ever had—what is the human’s role in shaping the environment? I was unsure if my killing of the firefly was emblematic of humanity’s ability to destroy so much of what is beautiful about earth, or if it was a natural interaction between two beings that are equally a part of the environment.
Throughout the remainder of the summer, my walks would often be consumed by this dilemma. I was reminded of it every time that I saw a floating firefly, every time that I restrained myself from attempting to catch another one and maybe harming or killing it. As time has gone on, I have begun to understand the answer to my question as an intricate combination of both options: humans have undeniably impacted the natural world in detrimental manners, but it is still crucial for us to understand ourselves as being within nature and interconnected with it, rather than existing in some Cartesian duality of oppositional natural and human spheres.
This understanding, while not necessarily positive, carries with it a certain beauty and a certain wonder. The natural world—at the risk of anthropomorphizing it and being reductionist—continues to accept humanity despite all of the negative and harmful actions that we have done to it. The only way in which we will be able to reduce the harm that we have done, and reverse it, is to shift our ideology—to deeply understand ourselves as being interlocked with the beauty and the power and sometimes the delicacy of the natural world.
The summer has since passed and the fireflies have disappeared beyond their veil until summer returns again. I still imagine them rising and I now understand that even in their delicacy, the fireflies have power—a bug so seemingly insignificant that has helped to reshape my ideologies and my connection to the natural world. And in my mind, the fireflies rise like hot air balloons, winking out and in with a curious anti-gravity, they rise, rise, rise.
Lessons in Humility from The Alaskan Pacific
Lilly Sheppard
There is truly no better lesson in humility than experiencing a near death experience. I am not talking about almost getting hit by a car while staring at your phone, or some serious medical emergency. While those experiences are terrifying in their own right, there is nothing like being exposed to the sheer emotion of almost dying due to an encounter in the natural world.
Most near death experiences in Alaska involve people coming face to face with a ferocious bear, or perhaps getting lost deep in the forest while hiking. My experience, however, took a different form. It was my first day of sea-kayaking in the Alaskan Pacific, and by first day I mean I had never sea-kayaked a day in my life despite growing up in an ocean town. The first couple hours flew by without any issues, and I even was keeping pace with some of the group’s more seasoned kayakers. We pulled off to a small cove for a snack and to regroup, and that is when the entire tone of the voyage changed. Our guides had tuned into the weather report, and much to their dismay a massive storm was about to strike. We could not simply stop, as we were surrounded by small barrier islands that would not be enough to sustain us during the storm. Our only option was to paddle for ten more miles until we reached Mink Island, which would be a better place for us to hunker down during the storm.
I thought to myself “how difficult could this be really?”. I would later curse myself for questioning nature and its capabilities. I can only express what happened next as an out of body experience, because I have never experienced anything like it before, and I am not sure I will ever experience anything like it again. I got into the front seat of my double kayak with my boat buddy and started to paddle. At first the wind did not seem too bad, and I just continued on my way. Suddenly, the sea transformed in front of my eyes. While it had once been calm and almost lake-like, the ocean had become a swirling abyss which I could no longer glide over with ease. Every muscle in my body was thrusting the paddle into the water, while I clenched my jaw in an effort to put all of my focus into paddling. Just as I thought the situation could not get any worse, the rain began. This was not a drizzle, or a few sprinkles of rain, but instead what fell began to feel like hail. Each drop of rain that fell felt like the plumpest and most water logged rain drop to have ever fallen on my skin.
I turned my attention back to the sea, as white caps had started to form on the surface of the water. To make matters worse, I realized that my boat had fallen in last place and was now about a fourth of a mile from the rest of the group. My boat partner and I were basically totally alone in the middle of this storm with only each other and a simple fiberglass kayak. This moment is when I realized the gravity of the situation. I turned to my boat partner and started to shriek with panic. What if we never made it out? What if we never caught up to the group? I knew if I kept questioning what was going on that I would never make it out alive. I decided that I had to let nature take its course, quite literally. I closed my eyes and exerted more energy and power into my paddles, but it still felt like I was going nowhere. The wind began to gust against us and the white caps kept rolling into our kayak, as we took on more and more water. The kayak, which had once felt safe and sturdy, now felt like no match for what we were up against.
Nothing could truly prepare me for this moment alone, but what was to come was much more terrifying. I turned to my boat partner to check in on the situation, but she did not answer. Instead, her face was lit with sheer horror, as she pointed to a rock by the shore. There, not 15 feet from me, was a sea lion the size of a school bus. My face was suddenly riddled with the same fear that had creeped unto my boat buddy’s face. I closed my eyes and continued, stroke after stroke, trying to calm the water beneath me. I began searching for any semblance of motivation. I could not think of a thing. My boat buddy knew I was struggling, so she turned to me and said “but Lilly, you’re in the waters of the Alaskan Pacific, do you know how few people have done this in the entire world?” I realized how right she was in her question, as Prince William Sound is not exactly the habitable place in the world. I started to understand what a unique sensation I was undergoing at that specific point in time. How many people have sea kayaked 90 mile of Prince William Sound in 6 days? How many of those people have done it while twenty-knot winds were gusting in their face? I cannot say exact numbers, but I can argue that I am one of the few lucky people in the world to have experienced this ecosystem in its rawest and most powerful form.
I gained more from that day than just a sense of gratitude. I learned that nature is a force to be reckoned with. The sheer force that nature can bring down in a single moment is awe inspiring, core shaking and an experience I suggest that every single human being should have in their lifetime. The experience from that day certainly shaped who I am, but it also shaped the way I see the natural world. The capacity and capabilities of nature are incomprehensible to us mere humans. That day I learned that the best kind of humility a human can experience is when they are put in the midst of a force of nature. I have never felt more helpless, more shaken to my core, or more human. It is inherent to human nature to believe that we humans can control the forces that be, but that simply is not true.
I certainly felt depth and wonder from nature during my adventure on the Alaska Pacific, but it also sparked my curiosity about the power behind nature. I feel like this is a concept that we are only reminded of when there is some sort of natural disaster, such as a hurricane or a flood. That day on the water, I felt like I was no match for what nature had in store. I relate this feeling to how a community must feel after their area has been damaged by some sort of force of nature. Why is it that we humans only think of nature when it is getting in the way of what we have created, despite nature pre-dating us by billions of years? My curiosity that drives this question has only continued, especially into the fall of 2017 as hurricane after hurricane pounded my home state of Florida. The wonder of nature is something indescribable, but the fact that humans try to tame nature is incomprehensible.