The Rhythms of Solitude and Conversation

I recently answered one of those items on a form that introduces you to a new place, giving you a chance to send a probe that may make a connection with someone. "Tell us something about yourself," it said. I answered that I liked solitude and conversation. I left it implied that I did not engage in both at the same time. I trust anyone who read it chose not to picture me sitting alone, captivated in scintillating conversation with myself. At least I hope no one did.  

And yet, solitude offers time for reflection, and unless we're not only meditating, but meditating very skillfully, we will entertain thoughts, some of them just intrusive, others connected to an effort to understand or express something that's important to us. We only seem clinically dangerous if we manifest a running vocalization of those thoughts. 

For me, being alone and being in the company of others weave a complementary fabric of life that suits my personality. I am an introvert, and though I like most people and treasure a few, social overload can deplete me. I restore my energy by saying no to the demands of interaction for a while. And it's only when I'm alone that I can reassure myself of my ability to live with myself without the need for constant distraction. 

Solitude releases the energy demanded when we focus on others, and gives us a chance to choose where to focus our own attention. Sitting on a log in a wooded area one day, I noticed red maple seedlings in profusion around me. One or two up to my ankle, another up to my waist, another at my shoulder. The large red maple that generated these seedlings shaded most of them, as did nearby oak and hickory trees. So the young trees had little or no chance of growing tall and mature. Nature is prodigal, making more than it needs, extravagantly covering the world with life. 

I thought of Loren Eiseley's wonderful essay "How Flowers Changed the World," one of the chapters in his Immense Journey. Eiseley points out the role of angiosperms--flowering plants--in spreading enough biomass on the earth to support large populations of warm-blooded animals, with their (our) high metabolic demands. So the maple saplings around me that day in the woods were part of this revolution in life, along with all the other hardwoods, the grass, wildflowers (including those we classify as "weeds"), and the crops we grow for food. 

It's hard to get a chain of associations like that, one starting from a close observation, then tied to reading also done in solitude, at a dinner party. 

On the other hand, it makes for a special kind of conversation, one in which people who are interested in you, your direct experiences, and what you make of them may find interesting. I like conversations that allow the weaving in of quiet, distinctive experience to enrich the knowing between and among people. Who are you, I ask my friends, including those I've known for a long time. They often ask me the same thing, and we enrich each other, along the way creating a rich texture in our relationships, a history of having shared the thoughts and feelings generated in our separate experience. I've had chances to tell people why I appreciate goldenrod, and some of them have listened without thinking me terribly idiosyncratic. 

Fine conversations, in turn, may feed the reveries of solitude. Taking a quiet walk, a memory of some powerful moment in talk that bound me to a friend brings pleasure, a moment to savor something in life that I've been granted. 

The inner life develops in solitude, but it also develops in interaction with others who share their inner lives. We're all richer for the rhythms of interaction that go on both within us and among us. 

Pleasures of the Watershed

The boundary of my backyard is a creek. It helps drain the watershed I live in, and though it's dry most of the summer and fall, it runs steadily, if slowly, through much of the winter and spring. I take pleasure in considering my little space on earth as a microcosmic watershed. 

Toward the south end of my property, there's a gentle bend in the stream where a tree leans over the creek at an angle of around 45 degrees.  The water that's run through the creek over the years of the tree's life has eroded the soil around its roots. The fate of the tree is a visible reminder of the way water slowly shapes and reshapes the land, carving out bits of it as the speed and volume of water dictate. There's no schedule for this construction project, and no goal. It's part of an immemorial process. 

It's January. Last week the temperature dropped low enough to freeze a lot of the water in the creek. I walked out one morning and considered the ice, the way one might stand in an art gallery and consider a series of paintings. I was taken by the variety of forms expressed in the ice. 

One shallow area was more strikingly crystalline than any other, a testament to the origin of the word "crystal" in the Greek word for ice: krustallos.  After this word was coined, someone noticed that the structure of quartz looked something like ice, and the meaning of "crystal" ramified in the direction of similarity, as many words do through their history. The ice crystals behind my house contained straight rods an inch or so long, pointing all around the compass, all held together in a matrix of less obviously patterned ice. 

In a deeper spot, the ice layer was thicker, and had a milky cast to it. This ice put a question into my mind: If I looked at it under magnification, would I see other patterns, other crystal structures? In yet another spot, ice was thin, the sandy bottom underneath it visible, and liquid water on top. This ice had a clarity that reflected the patterns of bare winter branches in the trees above it. 

Looking at the streambed over a distance, I saw a larger perspective, with all these variations in the icy mix. The ice in different shades of white. The water going from solid to liquid, released from its arrested movement by the day's warming. So much variety in the space of a few feet. 

The freeze only held the water for a short while. The water would flow down through Oliver Creek, on to the Loosahatchie River, then to the Mississippi, and out to the Gulf of Mexico, as it has done for many ages. 

The land I live on was once an enormous forest. Then, for a while, it was a plantation. Now it has a suburban character, at least on the surface. But the signs of its more permanent affiliations are here, perhaps most vividly in the creek. 

The poet and essayist Gary Snyder has thought seriously about the nature and value of watersheds. In an essay titled "Coming into the Watershed" he writes:

A watershed is a marvelous thing to consider: this process of rain falling, streams flowing, and oceans evaporating causes every molecule of water on earth to make the complete trip once every two million years. The surface is carved into watersheds--a kind of familial branching, a chart of relationship and a definition of place. The watershed is the first and last nation whose boundaries, though subtly shifting, are unarguable. . . . For the watershed, cities and dams are ephemeral and of no more account than a boulder that falls in the river or a landslide that temporarily alters the channel. The water will always be there, and it will always find its way down. 

So I have--as we all have--another way to think about where we live, one that represents a deeper substrate of our place on earth than does the political entity that collects taxes and provides streets and water mains and sewers. I live in Shelby County, Tennessee, in a town called Bartlett. But I also live in the Loosahatchie River watershed, and people a few miles to the south live in the Wolf River watershed. It's helpful and healthy for me to remember this. 

We are social creatures with a rich culture. But we are also creatures of nature, entirely dependent on, and embedded in, conditions set and provided by nature. Human preoccupations in Western history have frequently leaned toward our fascination with the institutions, ideas, and technologies we've created. And human culture is fascinating. But so is its natural foundation, beautiful in its stunning variety, and vital in its singular ability to nurture human culture. 

I can see it through the windows on the back of my house, and I can walk a few steps for a closer look. The little walks I take down to that creek help prevent me from taking a great gift for granted. 

 

Folly Marches On

"A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests.” So begins Barbara W. Tuchman's 1984 book The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam.

On January 14, 2009, Isabel Kershner, writing in The New York Times ("War on Hamas Saps Palestinian Leaders"), paints a picture of unintended but predictable consequences stemming from the devastating Israeli Defense Force (IDF) assault on Gaza. It seems that, contrary to Israel's hopes, Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian authority are losing influence among Palestinians, and Hamas is gaining support. 

Should anyone be surprised? Where is the historical evidence in the Mideast to suggest that desperate people can be thrashed into submission? The Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon in 1982 gave birth to Hezbollah. What was the net effect of that military operation on Israel's security?

“Folly, in one of its aspects, is the obstinate attachment to a disserviceable goal.” Tuchman again, page 96. Bludgeoning by whiz-bang military hardware, the "shock and awe" touted by the neoconservatives who shaped policy for Bush 43, often fails at its goal of making the enemy run for the exits. 

Military historians and strategists have long understood the concept of "asymmetric warfare," in which a force like the Palestinians, far weaker than its opponent in conventional military terms, applies strategies and tactics that allow it to keep fighting. The ragtag Continental Army of the American Revolution hid in the bushes and shot at the larger, better-equipped British forces as they marched in disciplined formation. The Viet Cong moved openly on the fields of battle, indistinguishable among their South Vietnamese countrymen. Iraqi "insurgents" have wreaked destruction with "improvised explosive devices" along the roads traveled by U. S. military vehicles. 

I'm not a pacifist, and I do not deny that Israel has often been under siege in its short national lifetime, beginning with its having to fight for its beginnings in 1948. But all the U. S.-supplied superior firepower of the Jewish state has failed to deliver the kind of security it undoubtedly wants. 

The hope for peace in the Mideast, always fragile, seems more elusive than it was a month ago. The world seems less safe. 

Tuchman once more: “If pursuing disadvantage after the disadvantage has become obvious is irrational, then rejection of reason is the prime characteristic of folly.” (380) The naivete of hard-liners is striking. When the U. S. Senate was considering the resolution to allow the Bush administration to attack Iraq, I wrote my senators suggesting that they read Tuchman's March of Folly. A quixotic gesture on my part, maybe--I don't think they read it. 

Escaped Beavers, Nuisance Deer, and Dying Wolves

As human numbers have grown over the millenia, we've worked tirelessly towards setting the messy house of nature in order. We are busy like the proverbially productive beaver, always thinking not what we can do for the tree, but what the tree can do for us. 

Last week the BBC reported that three beavers, members of a species hunted to extinction in Britain hundreds of years ago, escaped from a farm owned by a conservationist and wildlife photographer. The farm's owner, Derek Gow, is duly licensed by Natural England, a government agency, to keep beavers. He's been able to catch two of the fugitive aquatic rodents, both of which are females. The one still at large is a male, who may be out looking for a mate, or maybe even another mate. (See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/7805128.stm , "Escaped beaver fells river trees," 30 December 2008.) 

The runaway beaver "broke out" of his confines in October, but it seems that he's given away his hideout's rough location to observant individuals who noticed trees were being cut down by distinctive beaver tree-felling methods. The presumptuous creature has also apparently established a territory, and is going about the business of making nature's disorder into something he can better live with. 

But it's only a matter of time before The Authorities and Mr. Gow close in on the errant animal. Traps baited with the scent of his species' female will eventually stop him from acting out his grandiose fantasies of independent living according to his own instincts. He'll return to the fold at the farm where other "wildlife" continue to be conserved and preserved. 

I live in one of those neighborhoods that's close to a city's edge, one where all the trees weren't cut down to build the houses, so deer still roam freely in fairly large numbers. A recent homeowners' association newsletter carried a short article about the problem of the area being "plagued with deer. . . . [that] eat azaleas, excite dogs and run in front of cars." Since we're not allowed to hunt in our suburban city, we have few defenses against these pesky ruminants in our midst. Though some homeowners think they're "cute and interesting to watch" we are asked not to feed them, which "encourages them to stay in the neighborhood [and] interferes with the normal cycle of wildlife."

In my yard, they leave the azaleas alone and go after the hostas. It's also occurred to me that they were here before the cars and landscaping. And, a long time ago, we killed off their natural predators to make the world safe for our own ruminants. We're still doing that, too. 

But I guess trapping beavers and advising against feeding deer are an improvement from earlier times. And we've even given the wolf a chance in a few places, though not without an ongoing fight. The most moving and poignant expression I know of one person's awakening to the folly of human contempt for the wild is Aldo Leopold's short essay "Thinking Like a Mountain," collected in almost any available edition of his nature-writing classic A Sand County Almanac.

The story central to Leopold's essay is about killing a wolf and watching it die. He was young at the time, and would eventually be known not only as a writer but as the wildlife biologist who figured out that a top predator actually fulfilled an important function in an ecology. When he learned to "think like a mountain," he acquired a longer view of things. The mountain, Leopold understood, had been there long enough to watch what happens without wolves to thin the deer herds that ate the vegetation growing on the mountain. He writes:

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 the mountain. 

And, near his conclusion:

We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness. The deer strives with his supple legs, the cowman with trap and poison, the statesman with pen, the most of us with machines, votes, and dollars, but it all comes to the same thing: peace in our time. A measure of success in this is all well enough, and perhaps is a requisite to objective thinking, but too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run.

And now a lot of us strive for the dullness of safety from ravening deer and beaver. From concern for physical safety, we've moved to concern for a kind of safety that's about not having our landscape views disrupted, or our dollars-and-cents wealth compromised, as if that was really the only kind of meaningful wealth. 

Is there another way of knowing about wealth, or perhaps more properly, well-being, for those patient enough to listen? What knowledge was in the eyes of the dying wolf Leopold watched? Whatever it was, he was permanently changed by it.