GETTING "BACK TO NATURE"

I have  been on an "intellectual journey" which I cannot recommend.  I am blogging it here, in case anyone is interested.

When we moved to California, one of the attractions was the proximity of many  beautiful natural landscapes.  I had visited  before and seen a few sights,  which,  along with Sierra Club photo books, only whetted my appetite.  After settling in, we visited many of the places,  enjoyed the views, and I was stimulated to understand more about what I was seeing.

This led to an effort to become an amateur "naturalist".  I read about the geology examples of dramatic local scenery.  I read about, and went to observe, the Fault, and its cousins,  as well as feeling their grunts from time to time.

I tried to get familiar with, and identify, the odd local plants I had never seen in the East,  (some of which were not native, after all),  animals that chose to show themselves, on land and water, and a profusion of birds,   especially shore birds.  There are few places in the US or world,  where you can drive less than two hours to the ocean, the desert, and mountains 8-12000 feet.  For a neophyte naturalist it is truly overwhelming,  but fun.

 Soon I was learning that trees are not "things" but complex communities in which the members communicate and interact.  And there are even unitary communities, like the aspens' "Pando".

And I read books by naturalists like Childs, who gave a dramatic description of going through the local desert, and the effects of water and its absence.  He also wrote about the native people who inhabited and survived in these locations long before John Muir and other Europeans were extolling their beauty.  (Once in Bryce looking at the formations,  another tourist, struck with the beauty, said "I wonder who was the first person to discover this place." To which I answered, "It wasn't a white person.")

You cannot be overwhelmed by the beauty for long before you notice that there are a lot of other people at many of these lovely places.  And you notice that some of the areas around the parks are relatively natural forests, or desert lands,  but  human development is encroaching  everywhere. 

So, of course,  I began to think about how humans are altering the climate,  creating extinctions,  causing the dolphins to come onshore to die---the whole anthropocene mess-- surveyed by Kolbert.  Her book is sensationalist which fits with its mission of advocacy,  but it is also disconnected and seems to lack a core.

This led me to a "real biologist's view" Dunn's NATURAL HISTORY OF THE FUTURE.  (In case you are wondering, I have not written this blog to encourage anyone to read these books.)  Dunn surveys many examples of natural and urban organisms who are "evolving" in dramatic ways,  often only observable in complex studies.  There are "islands" of rats in urban parks,  and the collapse of bee colonies,  and many other examples (not all of them depressing).

When I step back to look at my journey,  I realize that the natural beauty of these places in our world has not gone away,  but my vision of them has changed.  My mind imagines the intricate interdependence of species  and environment (even when I can't see them, or understand the processes).  How easy it is to alter and disrupt the relationships, with the good intention of growing more food,  or eradicating malaria, or some other human  outcome. 

I see the beauty but I also see and feel the ways in which that world and my world are not connected.  And I wonder what to do about it,  and doubt that it is simply about protesting, or driving an electric vehicle.  

If we end up in Mad Max's world,  it will eventually be taken over by insects and microbes.  

But Bryce will still be there with its beautiful formations.