Jack Burns Lives!

Look, Listen and Live

“Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.”-John Lennon

Here, in the middle of a busting at the seams metropolitan area of one million humans, scurrying around from their homes to their offices and back to their homes like wealth motivated little rodents, you often find other life forms. But you have to look. You have to pay close attention to your surroundings. You have to get off your cellphone, take off your headphones and be aware of your surroundings.

You have to have a sense of place. Of where you live and of what lives around you. Otherwise, you’re not living, you’re just existing in a technological trance. The hypnotized walking dead with minds full of nothing but mush.

Right outside my office window, about 40 yards from Interstate I-240, sits a Mourning dove on her nest. In a short, bizarrely pruned holly tree. The tree is cut and pruned like a like poodle, all the vegetation trimmed from its lower trunks and branches, forming an ’70′s era afro-like top. This work is carefully carried out by the landscaping crew, mostly underpaid Mexican labor hired by the landlord.

But as luck would have it, this particular dove found the place suitable, so I have the pleasure of watching it during its nesting season and not just the thousands of cars racing past, literally racing past, my window.

Interesting how these animals adapt and survive in our urban landscapes….

My hometown, by the way, is full of prolific pruners. Southerners have to prune everything. I suppose the behavior was brought over here from England or France, and Southerners apparently have mastered it. Everything is pruned, but the favorite thing to prune is apparently the Crape Myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica). Native to Asia, they’re everywhere in the South and in the spring, they’re all pruned down to the nub and shaped into little Edward Scissorhands sculptures, supposedly to force new growth and keep the plants from going dormant.

Well, let me tell you. I have one in my driveway that’s never been pruned, and it’s a blooming fool. I’ve allowed it to stay, because I don’t believe it’s considered an invasive species, and there’s so damn many of them around my community, getting rid of one ain’t gonna make a damn bit of difference. It’s twenty feet high and blooms from spring to fall. Sunday, Allison noticed a flock of Cedar Waxwing’s in the Crape Myrtle, about twelve altogether, just pecking away at the blooms and enjoying the safe height of the branches. It’s doubtful we would have enjoyed that visit had we been pruners.

But we’re not pruners. We’re more interested in creating comfortable habitat for the critters, growing some food and allowing some small trees to grow wild in the backyard. No, it doesn’t look like Augusta National, but nothing is supposed to look like that. I make concessions to the neighbors and maintain the front lawn (just weeds cut down to size), but prefer to let the back go wild. Make ‘em think we’re normal, at least till they get to the backyard and see all the wildness, including Tibetan prayer flags, a sure clue that we’re not like the other neighbors.

One thing I can say for sure about the inhabitants of Casa Burns. If the herd is going one way, we’re probably going the other way.

“Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am– a reluctant enthusiast…a part time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it is still there. So go out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains, and bag the peaks…. and I promise you this much: I promise you this one sweet victory over your enemies, over those deskbound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box… I promise you this: you will outlive the bastards.”-Edward Abbey

Comment from Sean - April 9, 2008 at 1:05 am

Solid post. Tibetan prayer flags? Really? How does one go about acquiring those. Just so you know my environmental film festival is this Friday and Saturday. I’ll let you know how it goes. – Sean