Acts of creation
are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent
this restriction if they know how. To plant a pine, for example, one need be
neither god nor poet; one need only own a shovel. By virtue of this curious
loophole in the rules, any clodhopper may say: Let there be a tree - and there
will be one.”
And from
Carson - in her "postscript to the day" written to Dorothy Freeman, about her
last day in Maine - is about Monarchs.
But
most of all I shall remember the monarchs, that unhurried westward drift of one
small winged form after another, each drawn by some invisible force. We talked
a little about their migration, their life history. Did they return? We thought
not; for most, at least, this was the closing journey of their lives.
But it
occurred to me this afternoon, remembering, that it had been a happy spectacle,
that we had felt no sadness when we spoke of the fact that there would be no
return. And rightly – for when any living thing has come to the end of its life
cycle we accept that end as natural.
For
the Monarch, that cycle is measured in a known span of months. For ourselves,
the measure is something else, the span of which we cannot know. But the
thought is the same: when that intangible cycle has run its course it is a
natural and not unhappy thing that a life comes to an end.
That is what those brightly fluttering bits of life taught me this morning. I found a deep happiness in it – so I hope, may you. Thank you for this morning.
The letter can be found in Linda Lear's biography of Carson, Witness for Nature, or at:
A former student sent me this:
ReplyDelete"Fisherman, hunters, woodchoppers, and others, spending their lives in the fields and woods, in a peculiar sense a part of Nature themselves, are often in a more favorable mood for observing her, in the intervals of their pursuits, than philosophers or poets even, who approach her with expectation." (Thoreau)
And not necessarily a quote directly about nature per say, but one from one of our living greats of ecology, F.S. Chapin III, "There is still a lot of good ecology to be done with a shovel."
Thanks Todd!