Response 6: Walking Through Oliver's Delicate Forest

            When I read Mary Oliver’s collection of poetry and essays, Blue Iris, I felt as if I was walking through the forest with her, or along the beach, and stopping to look at all the flowers and trees and animals that we happen across.  Her approach to writing nature poems, it seems, is a coveted ritual in which she takes a walk through the forest, sees something beautiful, and then spends the rest of the walk musing over that experience.  You can feel the rhythm of her walking in many of the poems she writes; in “Morning Glories,” “The Sunflowers,” and “Goldenrod,” the stanzas are separated to even look like she is climbing somewhere.  They are short, breathy lines, and you feel like she is writing them as she walks, perhaps back to her house after having seen the sunflowers in the field.

            She has a deep connection with a natural world that resonates in her poetry, making her work unique and identifiable.  Many of her poems are in the first person, and reflect on her physical interactions with the plants and the trees.  Toward the end of the book, she focuses on mortality, often thinking about death as she lies in the grass.  In “White Flowers,” she reminded me a lot of Emily Dickinson, when she writes, “Never in my life / had I felt myself so near / that porous line / where my own body was done with / and the roots and the stems and the flowers / began” (51.)

            One of my favorite poems was “Some Questions You Might Ask” because it addresses a subject matter I think about a lot, and she addresses it in the same delicate way she does with all her poems.

 

Is the soul solid, like iron?

Or is it tender and breakable, like

the wings of a moth in the beak of an owl?

Who has it, and who doesn't?

I keep looking around me.

The face of the moose is as sad

as the face of Jesus.

The swan opens her white wings slowly.

In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness.

One question leads to another.

Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg?

Like the eye of a hummingbird?

Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop?

Why should I have it, and not the anteater

who loves her children?

Why should I have it, and not the camel?

Come to think of it, what about maple trees?

What about the blue iris?

What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight?

What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves?

What about the grass?

 

            This poem is so beautiful to me because it finds a way to approach a topic that is so difficult to address.  Questions are the only way we can talk about animals’ souls and whether or not creatures besides humans feel.  Oliver’s imagery is graceful, subtle, yet so suggestive.  “The swan opens her white wings slowly.”  The majority of the poem is questions, because as I said, we can only ask questions.  What is the soul?  Who has it?  What right do we have to say that animals don’t have it?  “Why should I have it, and not the anteater?”  Oliver doesn’t answer the questions.  She can’t.  But the only lines that aren’t questions in the poem suggest to the reader, without threatening, that we need to think beyond what we know.  “I keep looking around me. / The face of the moose is as sad / as the face of Jesus.”  “The swan opens her white wings slowly.”  “In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness.”  Oliver discovers something in the actions of these animals, their intricate movements, their love.  How can we say that they don’t have a soul?  If it is human compassion that we are using as an excuse to distinguish ourselves from other species, then should that not be all the more reason to look for similarities between us?  At the end of the poem, she extends the question to everything on the earth – the stones, the leaves, the lemons.  This poem is about selflessness, about respect.  It’s ok to form opinions, to decide what you think has a soul and what doesn’t.  But first, isn’t it important to ask these questions?  Isn’t it your responsibility to ask these questions, to really think about it?

            Oliver’s poetry is relaxing in its transcendental quality.  When reading it, I feel detached from society, wholly immersed in her setting, the forest, the walks she takes, her mind.  She is distinct from society when she is in this element.  She frees the raccoon from the trap and then runs like the raccoon, touching the touch-me-nots.  “oh, life flew around us, everywhere.”  When she recalls her younger years, camping in Ohio with her friend in “A Blessing,” she is separate from the strip-mined forests.  She is of the first-growth forest.  At Blackwater, she lies in the grass and becomes one with the earth, feeling the roots almost take hold of her.  To read Mary Oliver is to participate in this relationship with nature.  I could not help but feel a part of this connection when I walked with her through the forests of Blue Iris.  It was tranquil, peaceful, delicate.  I wanted to cry, almost, upon reading of the baby skunk.  I think all of Oliver’s poems will echo with me for a long while.  In my mind, her footsteps patting lightly on leaves are a comforting and familiar sound.

Vista 5

It’s 8pm on Tuesday night, and because of a massive overwhelming never-ending flood of work I’ve had this week, I haven’t had a chance to come to my nature spot until now.  OK, maybe I could’ve come earlier today, but I secretly wanted to visit the grassy hill at night, because I feel like every week I end up going at the same time, which is getting boring.

  I immediately regret this decision.  It’s FREEZING.  My hands are shaking as I’m typing and this entry is going to take twice as long to write because I have to go back and correct half the words because they’re not even English, they’re icicle language or something.

            This is the first time I’ve seen my place in the dark.  Thankfully it’s not pitch black.  There are lights that illuminate the pathways and the tree-house stairway.  In fact, it’s interesting because I can see the stairway more clearly now than I can during the day.  It really does twist around like a snake.  There’s fencing on the sides, should someone fall, and thick black shiny railings for those who need to steady themselves.

            I haven’t been here in two weeks, and the leaves really have changed since my last visit.  While some are still green, many are bright orange, the tips blending to squash yellow. They are the colors of autumn apples, and especially right now, in the dark, this whole place reminds me of trick-or-treating on Halloween night as a child.  And I’m very scared. 

Every night I face the dilemma of whether or not I want to walk to class, knowing that it will be dark by the time I have to walk home.  This neighborhood is very safe, but still, it’s always worrisome to be walking home alone in the dark.  I can’t believe that soon the clocks will change and I’ll be walking to and from class in the pitch black.

            Someone just walked by.  OH MAN.  “What is this crazy girl doing?” she’s thinking.  I look insane.  And I’m the one who’s scared?  I’m crouching against the side of the hill with my laptop on my knees, wearing a big furry Russian bomber hat typing in the dark. Sketchy sketchy.  She’s just walking to class probably.

            Not a star in the sky.  What is it about Pittsburgh?  Rain every morning, cloudy every afternoon.  I have a feeling the winter is not going to be to my liking.  The grass beside me is shivering.  No, it’s not the wind, I swear.

A DEER.  Oh my god.  Two deer just walked by.  They saw me, stopped quick, then darted into the woods.  If that’s not some sort of sign, I don’t know what is.  My first Pittsburgh deer.  I would not see that in the daytime.  That made this frozen night escapade worth it.

I’m noticing now that language is sporadic when you’re in a situation like this.  I don’t have the patience or the facility to use long sweeping prose.  My hands are shivering and I feel like if I don’t write as quickly as possible my joints will freeze up.  But seeing the deer, characters that I’ve paid so much attention to in my writing over the last few weeks, really is an interesting coincidence.  “I have not seen a deer the entire time I’ve lived in Pittsburgh,” I said in my last place blog.  It inspired my midterm piece.  The deer are letting me know that they’re here.  Not even in Schenley Park, but right here, where I frequent every day, so close to where I live!

Response 5: Wildflower Garden of Eden

 

            I finally got out of the city.  No more sirens, no more lawnmowers, no more gridded streets – only rolling hills, leaves bursting into fiery reds, oranges, sharp cold autumn air.  I finally got outside.  Some days, it kills me to say it, I won’t leave my apartment until the sun is already setting.  Or worse yet, on the bad days when I have so much work for classes, I won’t even leave my apartment at all.  Ken Lamberton wishes he could reach through the window of his cell to touch the saguaro cacti that grows in the free open air.  I have the ability to leave my apartment, to go see those two squirrels who all day long, run up and down the stairs of the fire escape outside my back window.  But no.  One more page, I tell myself.  It’s a self-imposed prison.

            Eden Hall Farm was open, free, and so much fun.  Mostly, I was happy that I had to be there.  Normally, on Sunday morning I would wake up and start doing work.  This was a welcome alternative.  For me, farms are idyllic, an alternate reality, somewhere I’ll escape to when I’m done with this current lifestyle.  I do admit, my experience on farms is somewhat limited.  I’m not from a farming community, though I’m very jealous of anyone who was raised in that tradition.  The word “farm” has two associations for me.  “Old McDonald” farms – I think of the animals.  These are the farms I don’t know much about.  But anytime I visit one (this past summer I went to the Hancock Shaker Village in Massachusetts,) whoever is with me has to literally tear me away from the animals, or else there’s a chance I’d crawl into their pens, curl up in a heap of muddy hay, and live out the rest of my days as a trowel-feeder.

            The other type of farm, the one I’m more familiar with, is the kind I spent two months living on in Costa Rica.  “Arbofilia,” it was called.  A tree farm, aimed at regenerative, sustainable farming of the rainforests.  We grew saplings in rows, quite like crop-farming you’d see here, then we’d strap on our machetes, dig the saplings up, climb a mountain, and replant them in the remotest areas of the peak.  Thousands, we must’ve planted.  Who knew how many actually took root?  We were trying to recreate something that had been lost, do something that had been undone.  There was once a paradise on this planet, a garden of beautiful trees and flowers.  It had been logged, destroyed.  As we climbed the steep cliffs, falling, cutting open our legs, insects attacking us, I realized that our efforts proved that the paradise was still there – our caring enough to replant these tiny little saplings – wasn’t that something?

            We want the rainforests to regenerate so our world can become sustainable.  I think of organic farms as sustainable establishments.  In the same way that religious people are looking forward to salvation, I fantasize about abandoning my current lifestyle and moving to a farm, where everything is self-sustaining, clean, and organic.  When I think of “gardens” I automatically think about Eden, Adam and Eve’s utopia.  What did they do all day?  In Milton they tended to the plants, made love, lived peacefully.  That is, until the fall.  I guess I consider gardening and farming a very paradisiacal concept.  It’s essential to living harmoniously with the earth (if it’s done in a responsible way – maybe eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is like clear-cutting?)

            I read what I just wrote – fantasy – and I think that while the idea of a garden being a utopic alternative to my current life is a little fantastical, I don’t think living on a farm is a an outrageous idea.  What was most interesting to me about our trip to Eden Hall farm was how much we accomplished in only one hour.  My parents raised me in the suburbs, and even though my mother loves her garden, she for some reason never taught me anything about how to grow plants.  I guess I was too busy digging up all the bugs in the dirt to be bothered to put anything green into it.  But I am sure I could learn the intricacies.  Maybe if I’d been raised on a farm I’d feel differently, but after our trip, I was ready to move.  But then again, I’ve been ready for a while.  If only I could leave my apartment.  

Vista 4

I had a bit of a collision with a black squirrel on my way over here just now.  It was one of those awkward encounters when you think the other creature is going to the left, so you compensate by going to the left as well, but no, he goes right, so there’s a strange little shuffle, an apologetic smile, and you both laugh and go on your way.  The squirrel was totally in his own world.  He was so busy foraging for autumn nuts, he didn’t see me – human – directly in front of him.  Or perhaps he’s a campus squirrel and is so accustomed to close encounters to college students that nearly running into me just now was party of his everyday routine.

As I sit here in the grass looking out over the city, I think about the animals that we form relationships with wherever we dwell.  There are undoubtedly less animals living in cities than in forests, but the ones that do, we notice, we may bond with, we form relationships.

I have not seen a deer the whole time I’ve lived in Pittsburgh.  I’m sure they’re here – in Schenley Park, munching on any and all plants they deem edible.  At home in Connecticut, deer are everywhere.  Driving at night, when two glowing marbles appear off the side of the road, you slow to a stop.  When the deer has successfully skitted across, legs flailed out in all directions, you don’t go.  You wait, because you know there are at least four more waiting in the brush, about to dart in front of your car.  In my backyard and throughout our property, deer had regular trails that they traversed every morning.  My brother and I would go through the woods in the spring with hedge-clippers and cut back the trails, so we too could follow them.  We’d hike along the trails throughout the summer and pick wild raspberries that grew on long prickery vines.  When we came inside with a basket full of berries, my mother would rinse us off and check us from head to toe, because Lyme Disease isn’t as fun.

This past summer, I was standing out on my front porch when three deer that were feeding on brush meandered onto my lawn.  I decided I would stay incredibly still, in fact not move from the position that I was in at that very moment, and see what happened.  The deer didn’t notice me at first, but one of them, a doe with scars all along her side, sensed something.  She kept looking up mid-chew, staring in my direction.  I stared directly at her; I wanted her to know I was alive.  The other deer moved along the lawn, fully-absorbed with their meal.  She walked toward me, small steps, until she was only feet from the porch.  My heart pounded.  Was it possible she would charge the porch?  She wasn’t the healthiest of them, after all.  The other deer made their way over to my mother’s garden and commenced chomping on her tulips.  This is the point when my mother would appreciate me breaking free from my statue pose, stomping my feet, and making banshee noises to make them stop (and also feel guilty – I get the feeling my mother always tries to make the deer feel guilty when they eat her flowers.)  But I didn’t.  This moment was too precious.  My deer walked closer yet.  Suddenly, as if nature had reclaimed her, she bent down and resumed eating grass.  Animal.  She was an animal.  But a moment later she was looking up again, straight into my eyes.  I heard the bending and breaking of a stalk – one of my mother’s plants, and I felt guilty.  I became a banshee.  “All right, that’s enough!” I yelled.  The two deer, who I realized had no clue I was there, went into a frenzy.  Running faster than they should have, their hooves scratched across the driveway, and the two deer slipped and fell on the pavement.  But my deer remained still, unaffected by the screaming.  She gave me a last bewildered glance, then, as if she felt the need to prove to the others she was not human, still animal, not anything more than deer, she trotted into the woods and rejoined her frightened companions.  I stayed on the porch a little longer and saw the two times my deer came back to the lawn by herself, looking toward the porch to confirm that what she had seen there had been real: a living creature, a human, who meant no harm, who did not disturb them, who looked her in the eye, who said, “It’s ok.  I just want to let you know, it’s ok.”

Deer are animals of my home.  In Pittsburgh I am forming relationships with new animals.  Every night at 9:45, as I walk home from school, there is a gigantic slug that crosses the sidewalk by my apartment.  I know exactly where he will be, and I look for him.  Watch out, I think as I approach the one piece of concrete slab, I would never want to step on him.  Sidewalk Slug.  This is something I wouldn’t see at home.

Response 4: Junkyard Legacy

I have never read anything like Janisse Ray’s Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, and I don’t think I’ll ever read anything like it again.  A personal memoir of a childhood lived on a junkyard in rural Georgia, a moving piece of environmental writing in support of the longleaf pine forest and their apocalyptic destruction, and a commentary on society’s alienation from nature, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood is brutally honest.  Ray writes of her family and their “legacy of ruination,” seeking to expunge a history of environmental destruction through the therapy of memoir and the revelation of beauty in nature. It creeps into dark memories of a broken family, confronts you with the heartbreaking truth of birds whose calls will never sing in the upcoming spring – for they are extinct – and very subtly pokes you with the idea that all our actions teeter a delicate scale, whose balance is essential to harmony. 

I see many similarities between Ray’s writing and the other authors we’ve read in this class.  Memoir is obviously a hugely important aspect in Ray’s book, and just as in Nancy Gift’s book, I was much more sympathetic to Ray’s environmental cause to save the longleaf pine forests because I felt a strong emotional connection to her family history and the personal significance the forests had in her life.  Ray channels a bit of Abbey too, in a chilled-out non-threatening way.  Abbey, when he’s not on his rants in Desert Solitaire, is illustrating for his reader what exactly is worth saving about the parks in the desert, which was crucial for me, as I’ve never had the privilege of traveling out there.  I was absolutely blown away by Abbey’s language, and Ray manages to evoke equally as vivid images of the longleaf pine forest, an even greater feat, as these forests don’t exist anymore.  Many of her descriptions of old-growth forests are how she imagined they must’ve looked by the way explorers described them in letters.  She then goes on to give the facts – .01% of old-growth longleaf pine forests exist today.  The rest were destroyed by loggers.

The beauty of the forests is irrelevant, though, in comparison to the crucial role the trees play in the longleaf pine forest ecosystem.  Ray brilliantly interweaves the narrative of her life growing up in the junkyard with chapters detailing different species of animals and how their existence is drastically affected by the absence of longleaf pines.  The reader begins to understand how crucial every detail in an ecosystem is, all the while bonding with Ray’s family through her personal narrative and gaining insight into the ecosystem of her people.  To a reader outside the realm of nature and environmental writing, the two narratives may come across as fragmented and separate.  I thought they connected beautifully because both were inextricably linked.  Ray’s family includes a history of mental illness.  Ray fears she too will become mentally ill – that she is endangered.  The mental illness that plagued her family created an isolation from their surroundings, which came from a fear of the wilderness that was implanted in Ray’s father by her grandfather.  Ray writes, “So much for tradition.  So much for a long line of outdoorspeople.  So much for the woods.  What my grandfather planted in my father was a crazy fear and mistrust of being lost in a wilderness alone.  If there ever was a wilderness misunderstood, insanity is it” (97.)  For the Ray family, the wilderness has become a place of brokenness, of sickness, of misunderstanding.  And like the forests that their ancestors chopped, endangering the species which once thrived there, Ray’s family is living in a tainted environment, surviving barely, as do the animals in those forests.  Ray, fearing she will follow the footsteps of her father and grandfather, seeks to go back to nature, to find peace with the longleaf pine forest, to rebirth it and therefore connect her family again with nature.  She writes, “I search for vital knowledge of the land that my father could not teach me, as he was not taught, and guidance to know and honor it, as he was not guided, as if this will shield me from the errancies of the mind, or bring me back from that dark territory should I happen to wander there.  I search as if there were a peace to be found” (97.)

Ray utilizes motifs of the animals that live in the longleaf pine forest and has them appear in both stories to strengthen the ties between the two narratives.  In the junkyard, Ray tells of a time when a boy who lived near them viciously killed a turtle.  Ray and her two brothers, who witnessed the act, were beaten by their father for not stopping the boy.  Later in the book, we find out that the gopher tortoise is one of the most important creatures in the longleaf pine forest, its burrow providing a refuge to over two hundred species when the forest catches fire.   Ray also tells in the junkyard narrative how whenever someone saw a snake, they’d kill it.  “Snakes were the lowliest of creatures, condemned by God to a life spent belly to ground.  One unlucky enough to reveal itself was a dead snake – nobody cared whether it was venomous or not.  If a snake crossed the road, you ran it over, pulling back and forth until it was unmistakably dead” (179.)  Later, in a chapter called “Indigo Snake,” Ray refers to this type of snake as “the most beautiful thing you’d ever want to see” (188.)  Endangered now because it takes refuge in gopher tortoise burrows, I still couldn’t help but think how many were killed by the people Ray were describing.  Ray makes a conscious choice to tell stories about snakes and turtles because she is trying to associate the junkyard with ruination.  Her people, whether they knew it or not, like her logger ancestors, were contributing to the destruction of their natural surroundings, and as a result, they were destroying themselves.  The junkyard is a mess of broken glass, jagged metal, exposed pipes, which will be stepped on.  As Ray goes out to repopulate the longleaf pine forests and retouch her roots with her surroundings, so she also hopes to rebirth the junkyard.  In the final chapter, “Second Coming,” she writes of the junkyard as she has of the longleaf pine forest, with statistics about its ecosystem, its promising future.  “Eighty to 95 percent of the metals of vehicles of that era are recyclable, but what do you do with the gas tanks?” (268)  It seems this will be her next endeavor.  Because after all, the junkyard is nature too.

 

Vista 3

            It is 5:30pm, September 24.  The clouds hang over the city today like a warning.  I stand – I cannot sit – and watch over the village of Shadyside, my new home.  All is still, but by no means silent.  Shrill sirens whine on and on, finding no relief in their distress call.  The rapping of a helicopter somewhere above me, out of my sight, echoes in my ear.  The birds are quiet today.  Are they aware they are being spoken for?

            The effect of the G-20 in Pittsburgh is almost fantastical.  Like a giant sifter, the city has been separated.  Some are hiding, fearful of the sudden surge of protestors and potential dangers, while others, inspired by the opportunity of place and time, are stepping up and supporting their beliefs in radical ways.  Before, most were indistinguishable, a community.  Now, there are labels.  “Protestors.”  “Anarchists.”

            As anxious as I am knowing that the neighborhood I am watching from upon this cliff is currently being vandalized (my friend just called me and told me there was a tank with one hundred SWAT marching past her apartment in Friendship,) I am comforted by the rain.  Today is the third wet day in a row, and the moisture has extracted various scents from the grass and dirt, the leaves that are starting to die.  As if the rain coaxes these fragrances from its earthly counterparts, their scents come forth and fill the air with such pungency and sweetness, letting us know the two elements have merged.  I close my eyes and try to close my ears – only breathe in the different aromas.  Something smells like ginger, only sweeter and rotting.  Another whiff is a fruity manure.  Not far from me, I see some smashed berries on the pathway.

            I decide to sit down.  The grass is damp, and I’ll deal with getting my skirt a little wet because today, of all days, it doesn’t seem to matter much.  Within a minute I find myself combing my fingers through the wet blades and tearing them up in quick little strokes, something I always do when I’m nervous.  I immediately make myself stop.  Why would I ever do that?

            I wonder if I should have picked a spot more hidden, more in the woods, where I might be able to escape this anxiety that I’m feeling today.  I walk down the sidewalks and I’m afraid that there will be police with guns.  I don’t like police.  Never have.  In a forest, I could hide under a tree trunk and get lost in the intricate patterns of a spider web.  But it wouldn’t be a forest; it would be a park.  And today I would still hear the pulsing of the helicopter, the blaring sirens.  Below me, the tree-house staircase winds its way down to some unknown wooded place unfamiliar to me.  I could go to Costa Rica, that amazing jungle, my own paradise.  There would be no helicopters; the G-20 would never host a summit there.

            

Response 3: Stomping on Pretty Flowers; Damn You, Environmentalists

“…Nature’s polluted,

There’s man in every secret corner of her

Doing damned, wicked deeds” (165.)

In our nature and environmental writing class, we are advised to steer clear of charged environmental issues.  There is nothing more off-putting than a writer who is actually trying to get a point across about the environment, especially right now, when we’re all so busy more important things, like Facebook and our investments.

            I can appreciate this class’ purpose to have its students form an intimate bond with the natural world and explore that relationship through writing.  I think it’s beautiful.  The poetry and art that has come out of

 this connection between man and nature is more special than any other.

            But what if we do have something more provocative to comment on about the current (or past) situations of humans and their relationship with nature.  Should we muffle it?  Where else are we to write about it?  In my other courses, writing fiction and non-fiction, I always focus our little hundred word story assignments on some environmental issue.  This works without coming across as an “angry environmentalist” because there are characters that convey the emotions, speak the dialogue, portray the sentiments through my subtle imagery.  But I should think it would be here in my nature and environmental writing class where I can directly speak of such environmental causes of which I am passionate.

We are reading Edward Abbey in this class, and he is the master of such writing.  In Desert Solitaire, Abbey employs beautiful prose with sprawling descriptive language to show us the desert that stretches around him in every direction.  Reading the poetry he uses to show us his vision of the desert is left me in awe – it was simply so vividly and sublimely magnificent.  In the first chapter, Abbey describes a sunrise: “Suddenly it comes, the flaming globe, blazing on the pinnacles and minarets and balanced rocks, on the canyon walls and through the windows in the sandstone fins.  We greet each other, sun and I, across the black void of ninety-three million miles.  The snow glitters between us, acres of diamonds almost painful to look at” (6.)

But then Abbey will shift to a different voice completely – one that lets us know he is not just a romantic; he has strict beliefs about how the wilderness should be treated and how we humans are ruining it more and more.  Abbey is an environmentalist, and spares no space in his book sharing his opinion on how to improve our nation’s environmental procedures.

Abbey has strong ideas about our national parks, which I very much agree with.  He believes that in order to preserve our wilderness from further erosion, no new roads should ever be built through the parks, and all motorized vehicles should be forbidden.  In response to the complaints Abbey foresees, that “they can’t see enough without their automobiles to bear them swiftly through the parks,” Abbey retaliates, “A man on foot, on horseback, or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles” (54.)  Like Abbey, I think that people have been separated from their natural surroundings to the point that they don’t even realize there is a difference between seeing a forest on foot from seeing it through the glass window of an SUV.  Abbey believes, “…[W]ilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread.  A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself”(169.)  His beliefs about the roads and motorized vehicles is important in regards to the human spirit and its necessary interaction with the environment, but not only that – for the preservation of the ecosystems, the roads and vehicles have to stop.

So, without scaring us, Edward Abbey manages to reveal to us his environmental “agenda” by alternating it with poetic imagery of the natural landscape.  This juxtaposition is important because the more we get of Abbey’s criticism, the more we feel the beautiful scenes he’s painting are precious, threatened, retreating before our very eyes.

Nobody likes an angry environmentalist who hammers hard truths at him: You are depleting the ozone!  You are raising the global temperature!  You are eliminating important species!  You are dooming the planet!  But when this information is conveyed in a meaningful way, translated through art, is that so harsh? so painful?

Westport, my hometown in Connecticut, is a beautiful beachside town with a strong sense of community.  Because of its close proximity to New York City, Westport’s citizens tend to think of themselves as very liberal – they prioritize the arts in their school budget, and they love their farmers’ markets.  They also pride themselves on living in the first town in the eastern United States to ban the distribution of plastic bags at stores.

The town is indeed idyllic.  With rolling acres of forest, dark nights where you can stand outside and feel the presence of nothing but cricket song, yet to know that you are nestled tightly within a community – it is calming.

My favorite place is Burying Hill Beach, a small private beach that I much prefer over the packed, stroller-ridden, kiddy-fun in the sun (still private,) Compo Beach.  There is a tidal creek that runs next to the beach, and I always go straight to it, for that is where everything is to be seen. 

It’s one of those scorching days in late July, where the sky is a vivid robin’s egg blue.  Far away at the horizon, clouds are forming soft peaks like marshmallow fluff, foreshadowing a late afternoon storm.  I wade out into the shallow water of the creek, which shimmers against the sunlight when the breeze strokes its surface, ever so gently.  The water is warm, and I can see clearly through to the bottom.  There are mollusks and bright green seaweed that I always mistake for some mystery creature, as it lurks toward me with a sudden surge of the current.  I stand still and let my bare feet sink into the warm sand, which gets comfortable in the crevices between my toes.  With my hands on my hips I raise my chin to the sun and let its warmth beat down on my face.  This is my beach, my creek.  Nobody feels the way I do when they come here.  I remain still so that whatever is swimming or crawling about below the surface of the water will become accustomed to my presence.  Soon, I feel little nips on my ankles – minnows testing out my skin to see if it’s palatable.  I don’t shake them away.  Snails crawl across my feet, their slimy bodies suctioned to my body.  I giggle and squat down to get a better look at these molluscan pioneers.

The tide is going out and the water that was trickling out of the channel begins to gain power.  Within an hour, it is surging out toward the Long Island Sound with enormous force and my minnow friends can no longer keep themselves from being carried outward to deeper waters.  I turn toward away from the Sound toward the mouth of the creek, feeling the water push against my legs, white-water cascading around my knees.  A plastic bottle floats by me, faster than I can reach and grab it.  Moments later, a plastic bag on the other side of me.  As the tide goes out, it’s as if someone is emptying the trash from the inland marsh into the polluted Sound.  I start to get a knack for seeing the trash before the pieces rush past me, and I seize as many as I can, tossing them onto the beach so I can dispose of them properly.

            I traipse over to the garbage can, arms filled with disgusting briny garbage, and I get interested looks from fellow Westporters retrieving their beach chairs from the trunks of their BMWs.  Why don’t you go grab your reusable canvas bags and make a couple trips back and forth from the creek to the garbage cans?  I don’t say that.  Instead I stare uncertainly at the garbage cans into which I’ve disposed the salty trash, realizing it’s no better off in there than it was in the ocean.

            Westport is so proud of its plastic bag ordinance, but I still see plastic bags in the grocery stores.  I see those plastic bags that you put produce in before you weigh it.  Are those not plastic bags?  What about plastic in general?  Since Connecticut is working on a state-wide ban on plastic bag, maybe Westport, if it’s so “eco-friendly” should be taking the next step and working toward minimizing as many plastic product as they can.  And while they’re at it, they can improve their recycling routine, which is one of the worst I’ve ever seen.  I’m tired of seeing the plastic bottle graveyards, disgusting evidence of a society that doesn’t know how to recycle or convert to reusable bottles.  Ever in the area?  Go to the Green’s Farms Train Station on New Creek Road, and walk along the side of the creek I’m describing here.  If you take a garbage bag with you, you’ll easily fill it with plastic products in five minutes.  Careful thought, you might hurt yourself trying to carry it on your own.  Westport, you try.  Try harder.  Recycle more plastic, use less plastic. 

Will we get there?  Edward Abbey believes that “Wilderness preservation, like a hundred other good causes, will be forgotten under the overwhelming pressure of a struggle for mere survival and sanity in a completely urbanized, completely industrialized, ever more crowded environment” (52.)  Written in 1968, Abbey could not see that the two, wilderness preservation and survival are inextricably linked; if we hope to survive as a species, we must appreciate that our pollution is destroying the natural world, without which we choke, we die.