ENVIRONMENT "In wildness is the preservation of the earth."

This is a famous quote of Thoreau, who lived in a cabin on a pond in New England for a year, sometimes visiting town to have dinner at his mother's house, and was accorded honor and reputation for writing a book about it.  Recently a friend sent me a short article by a psychotherapist, George Sciple, about the importance of being in nature.  It stimulated me to think about my own experiences and what they mean.

He begins with:  “Many times in wilderness I have found myself in touch with processes through which I am actualized, I am filled with joy and peace and fullness.” The essay is a meditation on the impact of his experiences  in the natural world.  Throughout my life, I have also sought experiences in the natural world and wanted to compare with him.  Sciple emphasizes wilderness as not the world of persons,  but for me it is nature less modified by humans. Much wilderness in the US was already occupied by native people in ways that did not entirely disrupt the natural patterns.  Sciple calls this neutrality, the natural world does not engage him. He is being present without the need to attend to the expectations of others, but this is balanced by the need to attend to the risks and dangers of nature.  Sciple wonders why he doesn't persist in being in the natural world, his commitment to civilized society, and the fear of risk is important. Primitive cultures engage with the benefits and risks of the world around them, addressing the fears.  For him, the enormity of the natural world creates this neutrality, illustrated by a story of encountering a thunderstorm without protection, and experiencing its power.  Nature produces intense sensory experiences, and people are often unprepared when they live sequestered from it.  (People might prepare for the enormity and not be surprised or overwhelmed, as in “natural disasters”.)  His second principle is dealing without meta, i.e. abstraction, and he contrasts his use of abstraction when dealing with the unexpected intimacy of a friend with attending to the danger of dealing with a coiled snake.  Nature encourages relying on primary sensory communication. His third principle is ecotone, the boundary between eco-zones which humans often disregard, creating environments that block out nature.  This is closely related to the fourth principle congruence,  alignment with nature, whatever that means, which “increases the experience of self”.  Or maybe this isn’t congruence, but awe, and spiritual awareness.  This short essay,  written in 1988, anticipates our confused and changing interest in nature.  Item: more and more automobile ads show FWD vehicles, jeeps and trucks, crashing over natural roads to distant places.  Item: national parks are now often surrounded by gated expensive subdivisions to allow certain people to have a home near the “natural beauty”.  Jackson Hole and Bozeman are now areas of intense development.  Item: the attendance at national parks is so intense that vehicle traffic and parking must be restricted by reserved admission.  

It is useful to distinguish between people who live in the natural world,  and people who come to visit the natural world from the “developed world”.  His essay, and my experiences, are about people who periodically “escape” the developed world seeking an experience in the natural one.  We often bring food,  protection, and other devices to guide and “enhance” our experience of nature,  and we observe the dramatic differences, the recognition of ecotone, as he described.  People who live in regions with limited development must cope with the environmental dangers— weather, animals, water, and food, etc.  These are about daily survival, not special opportunities for awe and personal development.

Is it possible to blend the two worlds?  Can humans live protected lives that do not completely block nature?  Historically,  the very wealthy isolated property from the use of others as “hunting preserves” or other preservation of natural resources.  This was also done with redwood preserves. Parks, forests, and garden areas now provide managed and designed interactions with plants,  and sometimes animals as well.  But the boundary between these “natural regions” and the rest of the environment must be managed, and their desirability attracts the increase of human populations.  Plans like “30 percent protected in 30 years” seem to address the idea of protecting regions, but the problem with these plans is that no one tells the plants, the animals, or the weather.  People build small cattle ranches and are ravaged by wolves finding a new food source.  They plant food crops which are invaded by “weeds” and insects that use the fertilizer and water unless poisons are used.  Tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes and floods do not avoid designated human habitats. 

Creating a balance between nature and human development cannot be done by specifying rigid boundaries.  The only solution is an ecologic balance of human and other life into an integrated ecosystem in which selected parts do not destroy the others.  This is a disappointing answer.  Do humans need to give up developments in food, communication, housing, etc. in order to live ecologically?  I do not think we must give up all, but it will be necessary to revise and design the human footprint to accomodate.  Is this possible?  Is it possible politically?  Anybody got a crystal ball?

Stalking The "Snow Leopard"

 The Snow Leopard is a memoir-nature study written by Peter Mathiessen, published in 1978, based on his journey with George Schaller to regions of the Himalayas, and won the National Book Award that year.  (I chose to re-read it this week for personal reasons.)  Mathiessen grew up in a wealthy family in NY/ CT, founded the Paris Review in 1953 (as a cover, it turns out, for being a CIA spy), and went on to write a series of major works about other cultures that emphasize Nature and conservation.   The book weaves together several threads: a) It is a detailed description of the walk up a trail in Nepal to a region around the Crystal Monastery where Schaller wished to study blue sheep, and Mathiessen wanted to view the rare snow leopard.  Detailed comments about the bird, animal, and plant life are included along with descriptions of the mountain scenery.  b) It is a survey of the evolution of Buddhism and its development in Tibet, along with cultural details of the peoples and regions he traveled through.  c) It describes his experience with psychedelic experiments and his study of zen over the past few years.  d) And it is a memoir of the death of his wife,  a year before,  his struggles with her loss, with death, and the feelings about separation from their 8 yo son while on this trip.  He was invited to go on the trip by Schaller,  a noted field biologist, whom he had met only once a year before. There was no compelling reason why he would accept the offer,  which suggests that it was part of some personal transition he wished to accomplish.

In the context of the 1970s,  the book champions going on exotic journeys,  psychedelics,  meditation and eastern culture (the phase of Alan Watts), and the "personal journalism" of Hunter Thompson and Joan Didion, among others,  though the discussion of his wife's death is very different from their styles. It was well received critically,  popular among a certain group as part of the literature of the 70s and 80s that responded to the 1960s by withdrawing from political engagement.  From the perspective of the 2020s, another theme emerges.  Throughout the book M. and Schaller bitterly complain about the unreliability and laziness of the the porter's hired to carry their gear on the trip.  As in safari's in Africa (Kilimanjaro) and other regions,  the Europeans invariably depend on the local natives, their knowledge, and their physical strength, to accomplish the journeys.  Edmund Hillary was honored as the first to climb Mt. Everest, long before his co-climber Tenzing Norgay was recognized.  And the many sherpas and porters involved were never mentioned.  This is one more memoir of self preoccupied Europeans venturing out of their comfort zone, using natives to aide them in their journey, and complaining all the while that the natives do not perform to their satisfaction. From this perspective,  The Snow Leopard tells a different story of Europeans, who believe their intrusion into other regions of the world are associated with special privileges,  and local natives should feel honored to be selected for these journeys.  The journeys often lead to exploitation or outright confiscation of the lands.  Climbing Mt Everest has now become a symbol of fitness adventure that the path is clogged with climbers, and many deaths needlessly occur.  Schaller is described as a socially isolated man obsessed with his minor concerns about details of field biology.  He is more at home in the wild,  and eventually formed a foundation to protect wild felines.  Schaller scheduled this particular trip at an unfavorable season in the Himalayas supposedly to observe the mating rituals of the sheep for evidence of whether they were more goat-like or sheep-like.  (Today this issue would be answered by genetic analysis.) His Sherpas and porters must have thought him crazy to schedule the trip at such a time in the start of Himalayan winter.  

The Snow Leopard is a charming relic.  It's description of a walk in the Himalayas, and the villages traversed is a unique pilgrimage.  Its obsession with a minor European objective completely ignores the message of non-attachment of Zen.  Its sensitivity to local natives while berating the natives that supported the trip illustrates the confused ambivalence of the European adventurers.