Thomas
Berry
Robert Burns
AnnieDillard
D H Lawrence
Aldo Leopold
John Muir
Brian
Swimme
Henry David Thoreau
William
Wordsworth
Val
Plumwood
[link,
together with a quote
from John Muir]
Thomas
Berry
The Great Work (Bell
Tower, 1999), pp. 12-13.
The house, not yet finished, was
situated on a slight incline.
Down below was a small creek and there across the creek was a meadow.
It was an
early afternoon in late May when I first wandered down the incline,
crossed the
creek, and looked out over the scene.
The field was covered with white lilies rising above the thick grass. A
magic
moment, this experience gave to my life something that seems to explain
my
thinking at a more profound level than almost any other experience I
can
remember. It was not only the lilies. It was the singing of the
crickets and the
woodlands in the distance and the clouds in a clear sky. It was not
something
conscious that happened just then. I went on about my life as any young
person
might do.
Perhaps it was not simply this moment that made such a deep impression
upon me.
Perhaps it was a sensitivity that was developed throughout my
childhood. Yet as
the years pass this moment returns to me, and whenever I think about my
basic
life attitude and the whole trend of my mind and the causes to which I
have
given my efforts, I seem to come back to this moment and the impact it
has had
on my feeling for what is real and worthwhile in life.
This early experience, it seems, has become normative for me throughout
the
entire range of my thinking. Whatever preserves and enhances this
meadow in the
natural cycles of its transformation is good; whatever opposes this
meadow or
negates it is not good. My life orientation is that simple. It is also
that
pervasive. It applies in economics and political orientation as well as
in
education and religion.
Robert
Burns
On a Mouse, on Turning her up in her Nest, with the
Plough.
Duncan Wu. Romanticism: An Anthology (Blackwell,
1998), p.133.
Wee,
sleeket, cowran, tim'rous beastie,
Oh what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee
Wi' murd'ring pattle!
I'm
truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor earth-born companion
An' fellow mortal!
I
doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then! Poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen-icker in a thrave'"
'S a sma' request:
I'11 get a blessin wi' the lave,''
An' never miss't!
Thy
wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
It's silly wa's the win's are strewin!
An' naething, now, to big a new ane
0' foggage green!
An' bleak December's winds ensuin,
Baith snell an' keen!
Thou
saw the fields laid bare an' wast,
An' weary winter comin fast,
An' cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell;
Till crash! the cruel coulter passed
Out through thy cell.
That
wee-bit heap o' leaves an' stibble
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou's turned out, for a' thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter's sleety dribble,
An' cranreuch cauld!
But
mousie, thou art no thy-lane
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain
For promised joy!
Still,
thou art blessed compared wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e'e
On prospects drear!
An' forward, though I canna see,
I guess an' fear!
Annie
Dillard
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (HarperPerennial,
1988), pp. 5-8, extracts.
A couple of summers ago I was walking
along the edge of the
island to see what I could see in the water, and mainly to scare frogs.
Frogs
have an inelegant way of taking off from invisible positions on the
bank just
ahead of your feet, in dire panic, emitting a froggy
‘Yike!’ and splashing
into the water. At the end of the island I noticed a small green frog.
He was
exactly half in and half out of the water, and he didn’t jump.
He didn’t jump; I crept closer. At last I knelt on the
island’s winter
killed grass, staring at the frog in the creek just four feet away. He
was a
very small frog with wide, dull eyes. And just as I looked at him, he
slowly
crumpled and began to sag. The spirit vanished from his eyes as if
snuffed. His
skin emptied and drooped. I watched the taught, glistening skin on his
shoulders
ruck, and rumple; it was a monstrous and terrible thing. I gaped
bewildered,
appalled. An oval shadow hung in the water behind the drained frog;
then the
shadow glided away.
I had read about the giant water bug, but never seen one. It is an
enormous,
heavy-bodied brown beetle. It eats insects, tadpoles, fish, and frogs.
Its
grasping forelegs are mighty and hooked inward. It seizes its victims
with these
legs, hugs it tight and takes one bite. Through the puncture it shoots
the
poisons that dissolve the victim’s body - all but the skin -
and through it
the giant water bug sucks out the victim’s body. I had been
kneeling on the
island grass, I stood up and brushed my knees. I couldn’t
catch my breath.
That it’s rough out there and chancy is no surprise. Every
live creature is a
survivor on a kind of emergency bivouac. But we are also created. In
the Koran,
Allah asks, ‘The heaven and the earth and all in between,
thinkest thou I made
them in jest?. It’s a good question. What do we think of the
created universe,
spanning an unthinkable void with an unthinkable profusion of forms? If
the
giant water bug was not made in jest, was it then made in earnest?
‘God is
subtle’, Einstein said. ‘but not
malicious.’
Again Einstein said that ‘nature conceals her mystery by
means of her
essential grandeur, not by her cunning.’
Cruelty is a mystery, and the waste of pain. But if we describe a world
to
compass these things, a world that is a long, brute game, then we bump
against
another mystery: the inrush of power and light, the canary that sings
on the
skull. Unless all ages and races of men have been deluded by the same
mass
hypnotist, there seems to be such a thing as beauty, a grace wholly
gratuitous.
About five years ago I saw a mockingbird make a straight vertical
descent from
the roof of a four story building. It was an act as careless and
spontaneous as
the curl of a stem or the kindling of a star.
The mockingbird took a single step into the air and dropped. His wings
were
still, folded against his sides. Just a breath before he would have
been dashed
to the ground, he unfurled his wings with exact deliberate care,
revealing the
broad white bars of white, spread his elegant tail, and so floated onto
the
grass. The fact of his free fall was like the old philosophical
conundrum about
the tree that falls in the forest. The answer must be, I think, that
beauty and
grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we
can do is
try to be there.
D.H.Lawrence
St.Mawr.
(Penguin Books, 1950), p.65. [Louise
addressing her mother:]
“There's
something else for me, mother. There's
something else even that loves me and wants
me. I can't tell
you what it is. It's a
spirit. And it's here, on this ranch. It's
here, in this landscape. It's something more real to me than men are, and it soothes me,
and it holds me up. I
don't know what it is, definitely. It's something wild,
that will hurt
me sometimes and
will wear me down
sometimes. I know it. But it's
something big, bigger than men, bigger than people, bigger than religion. It's
something to do with wild
America. And it's something to do
with me. It's a mission, if you like. I am imbecile enough for that! -
But it's my mission to keep myself for the
spirit that is wild, and had waited so long here: even waited for
such
as me. Now I've come I Now I'm here. Now I am where
I want to be: with the spirit that wants me. — And that's how it is. And neither Rico
nor Phoenix nor
anybody else really matters to me. They are in the
world's back-yard.
And I am here,
right deep in America,
where
there's a wild spirit wants me, a
wild spirit more than men. And it doesn't want to save me either. It
needs me.
It craves for me. And to it, my sex is deep and sacred, deeper than I
am, with
a deep nature aware deep down of my
sex. It saves me from cheapness, mother. And even you could never do
that for me.”
Mrs
Witt rose to her feet, and
stood looking far, far away, at the
turquoise ridge of mountains half sunk under the horizon.
“How
much did you say you paid for Las Chivas?” she asked.
“Twelve
hundred dollars,” said Lou, surprised.
“Then
I call it cheap,
considering all there is to it: even the name.”
Aldo
Leopold
A Sand County Almanac (OUP, 1949), pp. 129-132
A deep chesty bawl echoes from rimrock
to rimrock, rolls down the mountain,
and fades into the far blackness of the night. It is an outburst of
wild defiant
sorrow, and of con- tempt for all the adversities of the world.
Every living thing (and perhaps many a dead one as well) pays heed to
that call.
To the deer it is a reminder of the way of all flesh, to the pine a
forecast of
midnight scuffles and of blood upon the snow, to the coyote a promise
of
gleanings to come, to the cowman a threat of red ink at the bank, to
the hunter
a challenge of fang against bullet. Yet behind these obvious and
immediate hopes
and fears there lies a deeper meaning, known only to the mountain
itself. Only
the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of
a wolf.
Those unable to decipher the hidden meaning know nevertheless that it
is there,
for it is felt in all wolf country, and distinguishes that country from
all
other land. It tingles in the spine of all who hear wolves by night, or
who scan
their tracks by day. Even without sight or sound of wolf, it is
implicit in a
hundred small events: the midnight whinny of a pack horse, the rattle
of rolling
rocks, the bound of a fleeing deer, the way shadows lie under the
spruces. Only
the ineducable tyro can fail to sense the presence or absence of
wolves, or the
fact that mountains have a secret opinion about them.
My own conviction on this score dates from the day I saw a wolf die. We
were
eating lunch on a high rimrock, at the foot of which a turbulent river
elbowed
its way. We saw what we thought was a doe fording the torrent, her
breast awash
in white water. When she climbed the bank toward us and shook out her
tail, we
realized our error: it was a wolf. A half-dozen others, evidently grown
pups,
sprang from the willows and all joined in a welcoming melee of wagging
tails and
playful maulings. What was literally a pile of wolves writhed and
tumbled in the
center of an open fiat at the foot of our rimrock.
In those days we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf.
In a
second we were pumping lead into the pack, but with more excitement
than
accuracy: how to aim a steep downhill shot is always confusing. When
our rifles
were empty, the old wolf was down, and a pup was dragging a leg into
impassable
slide-rocks.
We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in
her eyes.
I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something
new to me
in those eyes- something known only to her and to the mountain. I was
young
then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves
meant more
deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after
seeing the green
fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with
such a
view.
Since then I have lived to see state after state extirpate its wolves.
I have
watched the face of many a newly wolfless mountain, and seen the
south-facing
slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails. I have seen every edible
bush and
seedling browsed, first to anaemic desuetude, and then to death. I have
seen
every edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddlehorn. Such a
mountain
looks as if someone had given God a new pruning shears, and forbidden
Him all
other exercise. In the end the starved bones of the hoped- for deer
herd, dead
of its own too-much, bleach with the bones of the dead sage, or molder
under the
high-lined junipers.
I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its
wolves, so
does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer. And perhaps with
better cause,
for while a buck pulled down by wolves can be replaced in two or three
years, a
range pulled down by too many deer may fail of replacement in as many
decades
John
Muir
Gifford, Terry. (Ed.) John Muir. His Life
and Letters and Other
Writings (Bâton Wicks, 1996), pp 70-71.
I set off on the first of my long lonely
excursions, botanising
in glorious freedom around the Great Lakes and wandering through
innumerable
tamarac and arbor-vitae swamps, and forests of maple, basswood, ash,
elm,
balsam, fir, pine, spruce, hemlock, rejoicing in their bound wealth and
strength
and beauty, climbing the trees, revelling in their flowers and fruit
like bees
in beds of goldenrods, glorying in the fresh cool beauty and charm, of
the bog
and meadow heathworts, grasses, carices, ferns, mosses, liverworts
displayed in
boundless profusion.
The rarest and most beautiful of the flowering plants I discovered on
this first
grand excursion was Calypso borealis (the Hider of the North). I had
been
fording streams more and more difficult to cross and wading bogs and
swamps that
seemed more and more extensive and more difficult to force
one’s way through.
Entering one of these great tamarac and arbor-vitae swamps one morning,
holding
a general though very crooked course by compass, struggling through
tangled
drooping branches and over and under broad heaps of fallen trees, I
began to
fear that I would not be able to reach dry ground before dark, and
therefore
would have to pass the night in the swamp...
But when the sun was getting low and everything seemed most bewildering
and
discouraging, I found beautiful Calypso on the mossy bank of a stream,
growing
not in the ground but on a bed of yellow mosses in which its small
white bulb
had found a soft nest and from which its one leaf and one newer sprung.
The
flower was white and made the impression of the utmost simple purity
like a
snowflower. No other bloom was near it, for the bog a short distance
below the
surface was still frozen, and the water was ice cold. It seemed the
most
spiritual of all the flower people I had ever met. I sat down beside it
and
fairly cried for joy.
It seems wonderful that so frail and lowly a plant has such power over
human
hearts. This Calypso meeting happened some forty-five years ago, and it
was more
memorable and impressive than any of my meetings with human beings
excepting,
perhaps, Emerson and one or two others...
How long I sat beside Calypso I don’t know. Hunger and
weariness vanished, and
only after the sun was low in the west I plashed on through the swamp,
strong
and exhilarated as if never more to feel any mortal care.
Brian
Swimme
Fangs and Feasts.(Interchange, Summer 1998).
I am at a futurist conference in Brazil.
Although I am as
concerned as anyone about the future of the world, what's really on my
mind this
morning is my own personal future. We are leaving tomorrow for a
week-long trek
in the rainforest, and I have a growing anxiety about the snakes I
might meet
out there.
How are humans to relate to wild animals? How are we to understand
them? To
engage with them? As our boat glides up the Amazon River, I have a lot
of time
to ponder such questions. With dolphins leaping out of the river and
brilliant
green parrots screaming out of the trees, there are many extraordinary
occasions
for reflecting on wildlife.
Our first human response, beginning over 50,000 years ago, was to adore
animals.
The snake was dangerous certainly, would kill you perhaps, but the
snake was
also thought to be divine, a central piece in the cosmological meaning
of the
world. The snake should be revered and worshipped. Of course, there are
still
some people who remain convinced that the proper relationship of humans
to
animals is a worshipful one, but such people are fast disappearing, for
another
way of dealing with animals has appeared in human history, and this way
has come
to dominate.
The guide motions to me. I have been dragging my hand in the river
water and he
wants me to stop. At least I think he does; we don't share a language
so it is
all gestures. We drift slowly through the trees. The swollen river has
flooded
the surrounding forest, so we make our way through the trees by boat.
One of the
branches sweeps into the boat, and as it moves towards my face, I see a
piece of
its bark move. Squinting, concentrating on this spot, I suddenly
realize that I
am breathing on a spider as large as the entire palm of my hand. With
rapid
feathery movements, it rushes at me, then stops. I am dumb, transfixed.
As we
move further on, I see that the tree is swarming with them; they are
trapped by
the rising waters - creatures angry, desperate, bursting with agitation.
Free of the tree branches, the guide smiles at me. He shrugs his
shoulders as if
to say, "I tried to warn you." My skin is as agitated as if the
spiders are now swarming over me. I don't know what the guide sees in
my face,
but he quickly looks away. I look back at the tree, trying to
understand.
Something has awakened. I don't know what - a horror, a thrill, a
terror, a
vitality. I was close enough to see the eyes of the spider. I felt I
could see
the spider taking me in with its eyes. God takes a seat behind me in
the boat.
"The spiders wanted to eat you. If even one of them had bitten you, you
would have become fatally sick. Your guide would have thrown you into
the river
and fled."
"He would have taken me to a hospital."
"He would have fled for his life"
"He’s not stupid. If he tried to save you the spiders would
have gotten
him too."
"You sound disappointed."
"I'm of mixed feelings. How terrible would it be to have you
eliminated?
You who are so critical of your ancestors for enslaving plants and
animals, how
are you different? Their activities pale compared to yours. They worked
clumsily
with whole creatures, but you dig your fingers into the genetic
treasures
themselves so that you can control life's essence directly. When will
you be
satisfied? When the whole world is in your image ?"
The boat hits ground. We step immediately into an all-enveloping
wilderness, one
that surrounds me with a totality that I have previously felt only in
the
presence of the night sky. Our guide walks to a particular tree, steps
back, and
slices into it with his machete. In the wound a line of white fluid
bubbles
forth. Using mime, he indicates that this in the poison the local
people use for
the points of arrows. Nearby is a plant with large spikes coming off
its stalk.
He plucks one, squeezes it to its tip, and shows me an oozing milky
fluid. He
points back to the poisonous tree and I interpret it as a warning: if I
trip and
fall into one of these thorny plants, I will have some major health
challenges
out here a thousand miles from any hospital. I am amazed by the
poisons, but I
am even more astounded by this man. He leads the way through such
dangers
wearing nothing but shorts. He has even taken off his shoes. In this
vulnerable
condition he enters the forest.
We come upon a tree that ignites a unique response from the guide: he
shrieks,
throws his machete to one side, and scrambles up the tree. After much
rustling
of branches, his smiling face emerges from the leaves near the top and
he tosses
something to me - a yellow globular object. When it hits my hands I
find myself
thinking a strange thought: I am holding the Amazon.
I marvel at this oblong yellow object. I'm supposed to eat it. He is
watching
me, and in this moment I realise something that is utterly obvious, so
obvious
it has escaped my attention all my life.
For decades I have been eating things that appear to have been
manufactured in
the back rooms of Safeways. You go through those swinging doors next to
the milk
cartons and come upon stacks of yellow cereal boxes, and crate upon
crate of
precisely constructed tomatoes. It seems they are all assembled in the
back
rooms of grocery stores, or built by agri-businesses that replace soil
with
carpets of plastic-coated nutrients, or made in factories that
manufacture a
strange synthetic stuff capable of maintaining human life at some
minimal level.
But what I now hold in my hands has been created by the Amazon River
and by the
rainforest, by its trees and monkeys and soils and snakes and wind and
fish. I
hold a yellow globular object that baffles me, one that sits nameless
in my
palm, outside my language, outside my understanding. No government body
has
examined it. No corporate manager has shaped its marketability. No
haulage
firm's cost-efficient network has transported it. No advertiser has
debased it
with a media campaign. It sits inside a mystery as palpable as its
sun-yellow
color.
I tear the skin off and sink my teeth into its living yellow flesh. An
animal
that has been grown by communities of life very far from here now
meshes mouth
and teeth with the Amazon rainforest. How marvellous, this tingling in
my
throat. How marvellous, these tears welling in my eyes. When my mouth
mates with
this gift, something awakens in me. That which is wild has awakened
that which
is wild.
I moan a remembering. Has my life been dedicated to constructing
full-body snake
suits? Have all my efforts been to shield myself from these depths? Has
my
education, my training, my professional goals - have all these been in
service
of the agenda to defang the terrible beauty of the world? I who have
been so
terrified of becoming food for the forest come to see a simple truth -
that all
existence concerns eating and being eaten, and that this applies on
more than
the simplistic, literal level.
One bite of the Amazon rainforest and I am changed. A new urge
constellates my
life, something difficult to understand, difficult to articulate, a
prayer
surfacing in a dream. In each instant the universe swells into being
and is as
suddenly consumed - horrible, sublime mystery.
Let me learn to become as wild as the pungent taste of this sparkling
yellow mystery
let me learn to be fed by and to feed the wilderness at the core of the
universe. Let me live to assist in the work of bestowing upon future
generations
this wilderness which alone can awaken our true nature.
Henry
David Thoreau
Maine Woods (LINK)
On the summit of Mount Ktaadn.
The mountain seemed a vast aggregation of loose rocks, as if some time
it had
rained rocks, and they lay as they fell on the mountain sides, nowhere
fairly at
rest, but leaning on each other, all rocking-stones, with cavities
between, but
scarcely any soil or smoother shelf. They were the raw materials of a
planet
dropped from an unseen quarry, which the vast chemistry of nature would
anon
work up, or work down, into the smiling and verdant plains and valleys
of earth.
This was an undone extremity of the globe... Some part of the beholder,
even
some vital part, seems to escape through the loose grating of his ribs
as he
ascends. He is more alone than you can imagine. There is less of
substantial
thought and fair understanding in him, than in the plains where men
inhabit. His
reason is dispersed and shadowy, more thin and subtle, like the air.
Vast,
Titanic, inhuman Nature has got him at disadvantage, caught him alone,
and
pilfers him of some of his divine faculty. She does not smile on him as
in the
plains. She seems to say sternly, why came ye here before your time?
This ground
is not prepared for you. Is it not enough that I smile in the valleys?
I have
never made this soil for thy feet, this air for thy breathing, these
rocks for
thy neighbors. I cannot pity nor fondle thee here, but forever
relentlessly
drive thee hence to where I am kind. Why seek me where I have not
called thee,
and then complain because you find me but a stepmother? Shouldst thou
freeze or
starve, or shudder thy life away, here is no shrine, nor altar, nor any
access
to my ear. .
And yet we have not seen pure Nature, unless we have seen her thus vast
and
drear and inhuman, though in the midst of cities. Nature was here
something
savage and awful, though beautiful. I looked with awe at the ground I
trod on,
to see what the Powers had made there, the form and fashion and
material of
their work. This was that Earth of which we have heard, made out of
Chaos and
Old Night. Here was no man's garden, but the unhandselled globe... It
was
Matter, vast, terrific, – not his Mother Earth that we have
heard of, not for
him to tread on, or be buried in, – no, it were being too
familiar even to let
his bones lie there, – the home, this, of Necessity and Fate.
There was there
felt the presence of a force not bound to be kind to man... I stand in
awe of my
body, this matter to which I am bound has become so strange to me...
What is
this Titan that has possession of me? Talk of mysteries! –
Think of our life
in nature, – daily to be shown matter, to come in contact
with it, – rocks,
trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the
common sense!
Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?
William
Wordsworth
Prelude, Book1.
Duncan Wu. Romanticism: An Anthology (Blackwell,
1994), pp 292-294.
One evening (surely I was led by her)
I went alone into a shepherd's boat,
A skiff that to a willow-tree was tied
Within a rocky cave, its usual home:
'Twas by the shores of Patterdale, a vale
Wherein I was a stranger, thither come
A schoolboy-traveller at the holidays:
Forth rambled from the village inn alone
No sooner had I sight of this small skiff,
Discovered thus by unexpected chance,
Than I unloosed her tether and embarked.
The moon was up, the lake was shining clear
Among the hoary mountains; from the shore
I pushed, and struck the oars, and struck again
In cadence, and my little boat moved on
Even like a man who walks with stately step
Though bent on speed. It was an act of stealth
And troubled pleasure; nor without the voice
Of mountain-echoes did my boat move on,
Leaving behind her still on either side
Small circles glittering idly in the moon
Until they melted all into one track
Of sparkling light.
A rocky steep up rose
Above the cavern of the willow-tree,
And now, as suited one who proudly rowed
With his best skill, I fixed a steady view
Upon the top of that same craggy ridge,
The bound of the horizon, for behind
Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky.
She was an elfin pinnace; lustily
I dipped my oars into the silent lake,
And as I rose upon the stroke my boat
Went heaving through the water like a swan -
When, from behind that craggy steep (till then
The bound of the horizon), a huge cliff,
As if with voluntary power instinct,
Upreared its head. I struck and struck again,
And growing still in stature, the huge cliff
Rose up between me and the stars, and still,
With measured motion, like a living thing
Strode after me. With trembling hands I turned
And through the silent water stole my way
Back to the cavern of the willow-tree.
There in her mooring-place I left my bark,
And through the meadows homeward went with grave
And serious thoughts; and after I had seen
That spectacle, for many days my brain
Worked with a dim and undetermined sense
Of unknown modes of being. In my thoughts
There was a darkness - call it solitude
Or blank desertion; no familiar shapes
Of hourly objects, images of trees,
Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields,
But huge and mighty forms that do not live
Like living men moved slowly through my mind
By day, and were the trouble of my dreams.
Wisdom and spirit of the universe,
Thou soul that art the eternity of thought,
That givest to forms and images a breath
And everlasting motion! - not in vain,
By day or star-light thus from my first dawn
Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me
The passions that build up our human soul,
Not with the mean and vulgar works of man,
But with high objects, with enduring things,
With life and nature, purifying thus
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying by such discipline
Both pain and fear, until we recognize
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.
Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me
With stinted kindness. In November days
When vapours rolling down the valleys made
A lonely scene more lonesome, among woods
At noon, and mid the calm of summer nights
When by the margin of the trembling lake
Beneath the gloomy hills I homeward went
In solitude, such intercourse was mine.
'Twas mine among the fields both day and night,
And by the waters all the summer long.
Val
Plumwood's encounter with a
crocodile is available in an article called Being Prey.
The
whole
article can be downloaded as a .doc file
John
Muir also
recounts an encounter with an alligator and, although it was much less
traumatic, he expresses similar views to those of Val Plumwood:
It is
from Chapter 5 of A
Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf and is available
at:
www.sierraclub.org.john_muir_exhibit
Arrived
at a place on the margin of a stagnant pool where an alligator had
been rolling and sunning himself. "See," said a man who lived here,
"see, what a track that is! He must have been a mighty big fellow.
Alligators wallow like hogs and like to lie in the sun. I 'd like a
shot at that
fellow." Here followed a long recital of bloody combats with the scaly
enemy, in many of which he had, of course, taken an important part.
Alligators
are said to be extremely fond of negroes and dogs, and naturally the
dogs and
negroes are afraid of them.
Another
man that I met to-day pointed to a shallow, grassy pond before his
door.
"There," said he, "I once had a tough fight with an alligator. He
caught my dog. I heard him howling, and as he was one of my best
hunters I tried
hard to save him. The water was only about knee-deep and I ran up to
the
alligator. It was only a small one about four feet long, and was having
trouble
in its efforts to drown the dog in the shallow water. I scared him and
made him
let go his hold, but before the poor crippled dog could reach the
shore, he was
caught again, and when I went at the alligator with a knife, it seized
my arm.
If it had been a little stronger it might have eaten me instead of my
dog."
I never
in all my travels saw more than one, though they are said to be
abundant
in most of the swamps, and frequently attain a length of nine or ten
feet. It is
reported, also, that they are very savage, oftentimes attacking men in
boats.
These independent inhabitants of the sluggish waters of this low coast
cannot be
called the friends of man, though I heard of one big fellow that was
caught
young and was partially civilized and made to work in harness.
Many good
people believe that alligators were created by the Devil, thus
accounting for their all-consuming appetite and ugliness. But doubtless
these
creatures are happy and fill the place assigned them by the great
Creator of us
all. Fierce and cruel they appear to us, but beautiful in the eyes of
God. They,
also, are his children, for He hears their cries, cares for them
tenderly, and
provides their daily bread.
The
antipathies existing in the Lord's great animal family must be wisely
planned, like balanced repulsion and attraction in the mineral kingdom.
How
narrow we selfish, conceited creatures are in our sympathies! how blind
to the
rights of all the rest of creation! With what dismal irreverence we
speak of our
fellow mortals! Though alligators, snakes, etc., naturally repel us,
they are
not mysterious evils. They dwell happily in these flowery wilds, are
part of
God's family, unfallen, undepraved, and cared for with the same species
of
tenderness and love as is bestowed on angels in heaven or saints on
earth.
I think
that most of the antipathies which haunt and terrify us are morbid
productions of ignorance and weakness. I have better thoughts of those
alligators now that I have seen them at home. Honorable representatives
of the
great saurians of an older creation, may you long enjoy your lilies and
rushes,
and be blessed now and then with a mouthful of terror-stricken man by
way of
dainty!
