The Long Hot Summer
My garden looks like a jungle and the harvest is what I’d call “decent.” Not what I wanted, but then again, the jury is still out. I say “jungle,” because the tomato plants are six feet tall. A little too leafy, though, and while there are dozens of tomatoes on the vine, they’re not ripening fast enough for my anxiously awaiting salad bowl and stomach. The cherry tomatoes are the exception. I’ve harvested hundreds of those little jewels along with about two dozen cucumbers. What a thrill it is to walk into the house with hands full of fresh produce!
The romaine lettuce harvest has been over for some time. It’s a cool weather plant, so when we started hitting the high eighties and nineties, the plants too a slumber. I’ve allowed them to go to seed.
The peppers, as expected, are loving the heat. I have more than I can possibly use.
Another 100 degree day forecasted for the lower Delta today, with humidity around 75%. Typical late summer, delta heat. Leave your seersucker trousers and starched white oxford cloth shirts in the closet. Take the straw boater if you must, but better yet, get a good Panama hat.
Even the nights are hot, although delightfully punctuated by the song of the cicadas, and the evening dance of lightening bugs. The garden orb weaving spider regularly harvests insects in her carefully made web, strategically positioned between the light adjacent to the back door and a old fence pole where the hummingbird feeders hang. Two brown bats circle above the chimney, helping keep the resident mosquito population at bay.
Sitting on the patio, I imagine I’m Ben Quick, in The Long Hot Summer, and sip on a mojito made with fresh mint from the garden. I think of what it must have been like to sit on the front porch of one of those big old plantation houses, staring down a row of oaks decorated with hanging Spanish moss. Of what it means to be a Southerner, to be connected to this bloody soil. A beautiful land marred by its proud but undeniably pestilent history. It’s a contemplative evening seemingly alone, as there are no humans, but very much not alone since I’m in a place full of all sorts of life.
The inside is quieter than outside. No sounds but the ceiling fan motor and an occasional bump caused by its uneven rotation. A candle burns on the coffee table. The stereo is tuned to NPR, and my faithful but increasingly lazy dog sleeps under a table covered with photos of my family. They’re all gone, visiting here and there, enjoying the last drops of affordable crude.
Finally, my mind, as it normally does, drifts West. I ponder a life along a stream in New Mexico, in the foothills of the Gila. Tomatoes are replaced by cacti. The cicada and orb weaving spider are replaced by the Collared lizard and the tarantula. There’s no humidity, only dry, bone searing heat. But as I grow older I realize, more and more, that us humans are connected to place, and that I am deeply connected to this place, the South. It’s hard to leave, but why? What keeps me here in this hotbed of Bible-thumping conservatism, racism and violence?
It’s home and has been home for at least five generations on both sides of the family. I know this place. I know the plants, the animals, the weather patterns, the streets, the trails, the sounds and smells. Nearly all of my memories are from here, and even if I left, I feel that it would never really let me go. It would always call me back, and I could never forget or ignore the sounds, the smells and the feel of this sensuous, steamy, beautiful place.
Death In The City
(originally published on my savethewetland.org site)
It’s gone.
That’s right. Gone. The wetland is gone.
A few trees remain, but the vast majority of the wetland is nothing but mud and the scraggy remains of the trees that once stood there. Also gone are the homes of various species that inhabited this place, gone forever so humans can once again blithely go about the business of making money, regardless of the cost.
Under the cover of darkness, in the wee hours of Saturday morning, a crew (terrorists) rolled in with their weapons of mass destruction and basically plowed the place under.
Imagine the scene.
Sleeping soundly, a mother Redwing blackbird is alerted by the sound of human voices. Suddenly there’s the roar of a big Cat, as in a Caterpillar Forest Machine, ripping through the wetland, snapping trees like toothpicks. The 68,000 pound behemoth slowly moves forward, crushing everything in its path, turtles, frogs, rodents, moving ever closer to the mother’s nest.
Panicked and terrified, she can do nothing but cover her babies with her wings and call out.
But to whom?
There’s no one there to help, to stop the vortex of death from moving ever closer until it finally envelops her home.
The nest falls and so do the young. They land, still alive, only to be crushed seconds later as the big Cat moves backward to adjust its trajectory.
The mother has flown to another tree where she waits and waits for a chance to find her young.
But they, and the wetland, are gone.
Standing outside of the newly erected fence, I survey the destruction. It’s eerily quiet. Raindrops fall on my shoulder and roll down my sleeve as I adjust my camera and try to focus. Both the lens and my mind. Traffic whizzes by and a Memphis police car slows as it passes me. The officer gives me a long glance and then turns away.
It looks like a bomb went off. It’s ugly, twisted and contorted. Seemingly devoid of life. Prominent and proudly displayed are a new fence with a sign that says
DANGER
CONSTRUCTION SITE
STAY OUT
No shit, Sherlock.
Further down the fence are more signs. One has an architect’s rendering of what the “new and improved” site will look like. Another lists the names of the responsible parties. Real, bona fide terrorists.
Too harsh? Ridiculous? Not really. People that destroy irreplaceable natural areas via duplicitous, often illegal, commingled arrangements between private enterprise and government are terrorists. They terrorize not only the voiceless, the non-humans that once called that place home, but also the citizens of the community. It’s senseless, unnecessary destruction for profit, where fat cat developers, financiers and select cadre of elite’s benefit at the expense of others.
Rich folks, preparing to get richer, even if it means destroying a non-replaceable, community resource. And of course there’s the politicians, striving daily to establish and cement (literally) their legacy.
You’ll get to see them after the project is completed. They’ll be standing there in all their glory, cutting ribbons, shaking hands and posing for the best camera angles while the media fawns over them.
I hope a flock of Redwing blackbirds flies over and drops a deserved dose of well placed excretions.
So, the wetland is gone. Maybe not forever, though, since the Mississippi might one day reclaim that spot. Perhaps our scar upon the land is only temporary and will be washed away and healed over time. Mother Nature bats last.
What next? The loss of the wetland should be an important lesson to others. Be vigilant. Wary. Know your bioregion and the areas at risk. Start working before the developers and politicos and be a voice for the voiceless. Perhaps through this loss other places can be saved.
The good news is the earth is on our side. One day soon, very soon, the single, crucial and irreplaceable element that makes all of this possible, cheap fossil fuel, will be a thing of the past. Humans will once again learn how to live in harmony with their surroundings or cease to live. We’ll relearn the critical lesson that we’re not the only species in the community, that we’re not ordained and “in charge,” with all other species relegated to some lower, less important position in our illusory hierarchy. The anthropocentric folly that makes this sort of thing possible.
The Message of Hope
So, in case you haven’t noticed, I’ve tried to spend more time on Abbey related topics or things related to the Southwest. Not totally, but it’s really why I created this blog, and it’s frankly more enjoyable.
More enjoyable that politics, certainly, except that our current national mess surely has us headed the right direction. Toward a collapse of the current oppressive system and the birth of something better. Or at least we can hope.
Recent news from Salon.com and Democracy Now illustrates my point and proves, once again, why you’re wasting your time counting on Washington to right the ship.
Enthralled by the “message of hope,” or “change?”
This is, of course, the oft repeated message of the Obama Campaign and the Democratic Party. It’s ambiguous and repeated over and over again like those corporate slogans that get burned into your brain, especially if you watch too much tee-vee or listen to bad radio.
The GOP wishes it could use it as well, but that would be too insulting to the dingleberry in the White House.
It’s ambiguous and for good reason, because the true platform of the DNC is not one of “change” but of continue course.
It’s corporate sounding because the entire Democratic Party has become a corporate controlled dead end. Just like the GOP.
Salon.com and Democracy Now recently released photos of the DNC convention handbag that will be given out to attendees. It’s pictured above. Of great interest is AT&T’s logo and the fact that Obama recently voted with conservatives to grant phone companies immunity from prosecution from wiretapping. Strangely similar to 2004, when Teddy Kennedy softened his stance on federal regulation of pharmaceuticals after the pharmaceutical industry was heavily recruited by Teddy to contribute big bucks at the last convention.
It’s as blatant and brazen as someone shagging your wife (in your bed) while you’re out working in the yard.
Most people falsely believe we have rigid laws restricting financial contributions to politicians from corporations. Thanks to a nice little exemption enacted by the Federal Election Commission, which incidentally is comprised of representatives from the two major parties, unlimited funds can be given to the host committee under the bogus pretense of “promoting the convention city.” And since the last national selection, corporations have given $1.1 billion to the conventions of both parties.
The end result? Corporate executives get almost unlimited access to politicians at every level. They have booths and lavish parties, and now they get to plaster their fucking names all over the tawdry cheap plastic shit at the giveaway table. (Coca-Cola is on the back of the bag, btw.) And in the case of the telecom legislation, telecom executives and lawyers more or less wrote the bill, while representatives from the ACLU were completely excluded.
How’s that for infiltration?
It’s complete rubbish and yet another example of how complete and invasive corporate influence is in the Federal government.
Had enough yet?
What’s it going to take, seeing Air Force One covered in corporate logos like something in NASCAR? Renaming of the Presidency? “The United States Presidency, Brought To You By Halliburton.”
Kick ‘em all out. Close the doors on Washington and get involved with your local Green Party. Local governance, local economies, local food and energy production. That’s the only message of hope.
Back to the trail and to the fire tower…over and out.
Diary of A Fire Lookout
Speaking of fire lookouts, the summer ‘08 edition of The Paris Review has an enjoyable piece written by Philip Connors titled “Diary of a Fire Lookout.” It’s his daily diary from a summer spent in a fire tower and cabin in The Gila National Forest in New Mexico.
Ever since I read Abbey’s Black Sun, my personal favorite Abbey work, I’ve been fascinated by fire lookouts and frequently dream about spending a summer in one, living like the bard.
It’s an interesting, short read, something I think Abbey fans will appreciate. Try to find it at the library, though. It’s $16 at the newsstand.
There’s a small section you can review on the website.
Cheers,
More Abbey Goodies
Thanks to Tom Keith for sending these photos and notes.
The images were produced by Tom and the photocopy (text document) is from one of Ed’s notebooks housed a the special collections department at The University of Arizona.
Pictured above (click for large resolution pic) is “Pair copulating on the left- female giving birth on right” and was from Abbey’s favorite panel.
Abbey’s notes on the Green Mask
Abbey loved rock art and frequently included his observations in his non-fiction. There are basically two types, petroglyphs and pictographs. Petroglyphs are carved or pecked into the surface, and pictographs are painted onto rock surfaces with natural pigments. Exact interpretation of these images is difficult, since the exact meaning cannot be proven, only assumed or extrapolated from ethnographic sources. The artist could have been recording a special event (the themes of sexual potency, eroticism, copulation, pregnancy and birth are abundant in Southwestern rock art), such as a ritual, a hunt or a battle, or even a natural event like a storm. Or, maybe the artist was simply saying “I was here.”
But the “why” is not nearly as important as the simple recognition that this is beautiful art. They’re valuable for their own sake.
More Ed From the Abbeyweb
photo credit: Joe C.
Joe and another Abbeywebber, Chuck, recently returned from a hiking excursion to Numa Ridge, the old observation tower that Ed manned back in the mid-70’s and wrote about in ‘77. He spent the summer there with Renée and seven volumes of Marcel Proust. Also present were Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, lingering thoughts (but no sightings) of Ursus horribilis, and countless hours of doing nothing but watching and enjoying the “solitary pleasures of philosophy, the furtive consolations of thought.”
“Wherever two human beings are alive, together and happy, there is the center of the world.” Edward Abbey, “Fire Lookout: Numa Ridge,” The Journey Home
Ed also briefly touched on some of his more important ideas in that essay. The notion that men and women are too often “trapped in the drudgery and tedium of meaningless jobs,” getting technology and industrialism back to some rational, “human scale” and therefore under control, the industrialization of our national parks, and one of my favorites, the need for another revolution.
“The Great Revolution was a failure, they say. All revolutions have been failures, they say. To which I reply: ‘All the more reason to make another one.’”
Joe and Chuck returned with not only an interesting story but some cool photos.
The current resident of the tower, who’s apparently been there for some time, offered to show them Ed’s old journal. Turns out it wasn’t the original, however, but a photocopy. The original is now under lock and key. According to Joe’s account, the original was stolen but fortunately recovered thanks to a responsible person that recovered it and returned it.
Good karma to that bloke.
The photo in this post is Joe’s and the others featuring some of Ed’s entries can be found here.
“God bless America-Let’s save some of It. Long live weeds and the wilderness yet.Edward Abbey, “Fire Lookout: Numa Ridge,” The Journey Home
In Search Of Everett Ruess
I’ve always had special admiration and a high degree of interest in Everett Ruess. Well known to most Edward Abbey fans and western wilderness lovers, Ruess is more interesting and inspirational than Christopher McCandless of Into the Wild fame. He was a true romantic, an artist, writer and wilderness wanderer, who spent most of his early adult years exploring the Southwest, until at age 20, he went into the Utah desert with two burros and never returned.
Edward Abbey beautifully remembered Ruess by penning a sonnet for him as an afterward in W.L. Rusho’s Everett Ruess, A Vagabond For Beauty:
A Sonnet for Everett Ruess
You walked into the radiance of death
through passageways of stillness, stone, and light,
gold coin of cottonwoods, the spangled shade,
cascading song of canyon wrens, the flight
of scarlet dragonflies at pools, the stain
of water on a curve of sand, the art
of roots that crack the monolith of time.
You knew the crazy lust to probe the heart
of that which has no heart that we could know,
toward the source, deep in the core, the maze,
the secret center where there are no bounds.
Hunter, brother, companion of our days:
that blessing which you hunted, hunted too,
what you were seeking, this is what found you.
Edward Abbey
Oracle, Arizona
1983
He’s back in the news this month, as what I would term an “enthusiast” claims to have found human remains in the area where Ruess supposedly disappeared in 1934.
The first story reported by the The San Juan record concerns a witness to an old murder, one of a young man supposedly matching Reuss’ description and having two mules.
But there’s now follow up story indicating the man was a 19th century Native American in his late 50’s to 60’s, and therefore not Reuss.
Good news, I say. Since Ruess spent a significant amount of time trying to escape civilization, finding his body strikes me as somehow “bringing him back” to what he was trying to leave behind. He’d surely be gathered up into a box and shipped to some cold, sterile lab, to be picked at, photographed and x-rayed. Is that what he’d want?
Ruess belongs to the canyonlands. To the land he loved, and there, he should rest in peace.
Abbey In National Geographic-1979
Monique from the Abbeyweb recently came across the July 1979 edition of National Geographic with an Ed Abbey article titled Guadalupe’s Trails in Summer. She was kind enough to send me some scanned images of the article which I’ve uploaded for your viewing pleasure.
It’s typical Abbey, full of interesting anecdotes, short but sufficient technical descriptions, imagery and the honest truth about man’s uneasy existence in the harsh land of West Texas. He was friendlier in this review than in his essay on Big Bend, and the end is vintage Abbey:
“This is a harsh, dry, bitter place, lonely as a dream. But I like it. I know that I could live here if I wanted to. If I had to.”
page one
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pages three and four
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