Okay, I know that this will sound like bragging and that everyone
in the Midwest and on the East Coast will get angry with me but it’s my blog so
I’m just going to say it: one of my biggest problems right now is that it is
just too nice outside to get any work done. It is January and in the 70s with
bright sun, blue sky, and a slight breeze. It is absolutely the perfect day.
And there are just magnificent climbing trees everywhere around me. I actually
just sat in a tree for almost two hours. It was fantastic and I didn’t want to
move. It’s one of those days where I don’t really want to swim or hike or bike
or do anything, I just want to be outside. Feel the breeze and the sun
and the bark of the tree, listen to the birds and watch them go about their
business without racing around trying to see and identify as many as possible.
Just be with nature for a while.
Of course, thoughts inevitably pop up that get in the way of
that kind of serenity. Today as I was lounging in my tree I kept thinking about
this sign that I saw a couple of days ago:
That sign just makes me so angry. It was at a park, too.
Along a “hiking and biking trail” which was actually a wide cement path through
a decent oak mot but close enough to the main road that you could always hear
traffic. At one point there was a break in the trees and about twenty feet away
was a golf course. The smallest amount of nature possible wedged into some
suburban sprawl and they still put up signs to “Beware”. Why is everyone so
afraid of nature?
Now, don’t get me wrong. I understand that plenty of things
in the natural world are dangerous and should be respected. If there had been
an educational sign informing visitors about the existence of snakes in the
area and maybe explaining which species could be found here or simply telling
people how to identify venomous snakes, that would have been fine.
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| In case you didn’t know, snakes that are venomous generally have a head that is distinct from and wider than their bodies, whereas harmless snakes usually do not. (http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/gaston/Pests/reptiles/venompix.htm) |
Recently I had to promise my mother that I would try not to
get bitten by a venomous snake (I don’t mean to pick on you, Mom!). I don’t blame her for being worried. I do have the biologist
reaction when I see a snake (Ooh! Cool! Lemme see!) rather than the normal
reaction (Aaah! Run away!). But even as someone who spends more time than most
out in places where Scary Nature
lives it’s still fairly low on the list of things that will likely kill me.
It’s probably going to be heart disease, cancer, or a car accident. But I
constantly eat fried food, drive my car, and, I don’t know, live in the world
(pretty much everything gives you cancer these days). People seem so much more
unnerved by the possibility of death by animal attack than any of those far
more likely scenarios. Everyone told me I would get killed by a venomous animal
in Australia. Yesterday I showed a friend this photo:
And he responded “Ah! Kill it!” I know he was mostly joking,
but seriously? It’s a pretty small gator, and it was pretty skinny. It didn’t
even open its eyes when I got close enough to take this picture. Pretty much
every other gator I’ve seen has splashed abruptly into the water before I got
nearly this close. The snakes at the refuge, too, were much more interested in
getting away from me than in trying to attack. I barely got a look at the rattlesnake;
I heard it rattling as it disappeared deeper into a brush pile. Obviously there
are some more aggressive creatures out there, but by and large they would rather
run (or slither) away than attack you.
So why is everyone so freaked out by them? I think it’s the
uncontrollable aspect. People like to think that in laying down concrete over
half the country and walling out the nature, clearcutting unsightly natives and
planting swaths of safe, boring, completely useless turf grass that they’ve
controlled their environment. There are designated “natural spaces” that people
like to view from the comfort of their air conditioned cars (no one is ever too
hot or too cold anymore, why would you allow yourself to be uncomfortable?) but
the thought of interacting too closely with anything wild or uncontrollable is
terrifying.
Also it’s gross. Nature smells funny and is dirty and it’s
not sterile like everything should be. Growing up I used to go on
long walks in the nearby nature center with my parents and my dad and I would
pick up feathers to bring home and make quills. I love finding feathers. But
once in high school I was walking with a group of friends and found a beautiful
one. I picked it up and jokingly stroked a friend’s face with it and everyone I
was with was horrified. “Don’t you know that feathers carry disease?!” I was embarrassed and even
though I was pretty sure they were all wrong I didn’t really know how to argue
the point. Even years later after being told by an ornithologist that my dad
and I were right, I still hesitate for half a second before picking one up.
I am still fighting other aspects of this. Wandering through
the woods today I spotted my new favorite climbing tree with a nice wide branch
to recline on and I hesitated before hoisting myself up. “I’m wearing shorts, I
might scrape my legs, it might be dirty (I’ve noticed raccoons like to poop on
all the best sitting spots on trees. It’s really annoying), maybe I should just
go sit on a nice man-made bench". But then I decided, “Fuck it! I want to sit in
that tree!” And I did scrape my leg. It stung a little for about two seconds. And
it wasn’t completely comfortable, like a couch up there. But it was better than
comfortable. It was wonderful. I would be there now if I didn’t want to get all
this off my chest.
I want to say it was perfect but I won’t because I think
that’s sort of the root of this whole issue. Society is obsessed with attaining
and maintaining perfection and nature is imperfect – asymmetrical (often, but
not always), in flux, complicated, dangerous, messy. We fight so hard against
it. But you can’t keep things from getting dirty. You can’t keep things from
getting chipped or scratched. “Puppies turn into dogs, who get old and die!”
And people do, too. Our culture tries hard to fight, deny, and avoid it, but
you can’t. The best you can do is take a few precautions – get insurance, wear
boots, don’t poke the snake – and then embrace whatever happens. The alternative is essentially making a cage for yourself to keep the unpredictable things out.
