Lives Of Quiet Desperation
“Sitting on a rock for the noon radio check, halfway down the South Fork, I feel no questions, no troubles, just a great oneness with all welling up inside me. This moment is all that is, all that ever will be. Memories can never equal the experience, and at best we can only attempt to visualize the future. The best we can do is absorb the most possible from Great Moments Like These.”-former NPS park ranger Randy Morgenson, from The Last Season by Eric Blehm
Ah, another morning in the southern Delta. The robin are the early birds today, their voices rising slightly before the cardinals. My chipmunk friends are scurrying about stashing food, as I enjoy my imported coffee from South America. A local production problem I have yet to solve….
Cloudy skies and a few drops of rain greet us with promises of bright sunshine and clear skies for the balance of the weekend and a respite from the nightmarish business world of proposals, presentations, marketing and service calls. I’ve engineered and support a highly sophisticated network that links thousands of people to information they deem critical; however, I feel my accomplishment, if you can call it that, pales in comparison to the brilliant engineering of a spider web, a bird’s nest or the network of tunnels and escape routes developed by my chipmunk friends.
I closely watch the honeybees working amongst the blooming clover, marvel at the agility of Eastern squirrels scampering up the pine trees, and I’m left convinced that my sophisticated network is nothing compared to what happens everyday in the natural world. It’s simply amazing and worthy of our most passionate defense.
This is where man should be. Not in towering edifices filled with cubicles and desks, giant prisons where desperate workers march to the beat of capital and production. Yet, there they sit, cowering in their little work groups, always cognizant of downsizing, replacement or dismissal, the resultant lack of income and insurance and a way to take care of their families.
As Thoreau said, “The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.”
It’s my belief that most men just go along with the ride, miserable, yet seemingly unable to do anything to change their fortune. They just put their heads down and blithely report, everyday, day in and day out, pretending to enjoy the game while silently loathing their lot.
Thanks to an abundance of cheap fossil fuel, the world of glass, concrete and capital marches onward, slowly but surely eating up more and more of the natural world. It’s the BLOB described by Edward Abbey in The Journey Home. Today, the headline in my local paper reads “Cut The Trees, Says Split Board,” referring to a planning commission decision to allow 462 trees to be destroyed in order to make room for dozens of 8,000 square foot homes that suck energy like a giant vacuums.
What can be done? Remain vigilant. Resist and refuse to participate. Live as light as possible and hope others take notice. Try to practice the “Leave No Trace” wilderness ethic in our daily lives, at least to the greatest degree possible.
…as the bulldozer creeps closer, the mother robin becomes more agitated, but there is nothing she can do. Her young, still featherless, are unable to move on their own, but too large to be moved by their mother. Finally, the giant machine strikes the tree with a jarring thud, violently shaking the nest. The mother remains until a second, more forceful strike, partially uproots the tree and causes it to tilt. She remains over her young, which are scared and still. The third blow is decisive as the great oak begins its plunge to nothingness, taking the young robin’s with it.
As the bulldozer grinds and pushes the tree forward into a pile of other trees, the mother lights upon a branch searching for her offspring, but they’ve been ground under, crushed under the immense weight of wood, dirt and steel. Her home and offspring destroyed for what some call “progress….”
Others call it by its correct name, terrorism.