I’ve been told that I’ve lost my pith, that my writing has
gone soft—“who cares” now that I’ve gone “naturalist.” I
thought maybe the shift was for the best, that expanding beyond the world
of activists, picketing about pesticides, telling horror stories about
Frankenfish deformities and brainless babies would enrich what I had to
offer with my writing, but even Joel, who started me on this whole path
towards relationship with the natural world, is bored.
“You can only look at so many flowers, Lené,” he says
to me as another essay gets scrapped for being a botany photo album of
words.
Yes, I can see that describing the natural world could get dull for the
reader, considering that most readers have never seen a Lady’s Slipper,
an Indian Cucumber Root, a three inch tadpole, or the teeth marks of a
resident beaver. And, it’s not like the people who actually are interested
have enough power to save this stuff.
My stories aren’t gory, scary, or adventurous. I haven’t almost
died—I came closer on a roller coaster. I haven’t almost drowned,
though I’ve dreamed it many times. I’ve never dumped the canoe,
run into a bear, had to eat bugs or hunt wild rabbits. I’m just an
everyday person who likes to look at buds and flowers.
These days, I like to write about what the world looks like. Four years
ago, I hadn’t met a firefly, heard of mayflies, or known the name
of a wildflower other than bluebonnets. Can you guess where I’m from?
I had no idea, or real desire to know, what a beaver lodge looked like,
where a chipmunk lived, what moose ate, or how chickadees stayed warm in
the winter.
I’m learning about these things, and they are exciting to me, but
I can’t seem to make them interesting. So, I’m going to try
what I used to do best—bother the bored. You’re bound to be
offended—don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Kids scooping up frogs in nets at a semi-remote swamp offend me. Even worse
than them scooping and squeezing and dropping and tromping is that their
teacher wants to take pictures of the torment. You cannot convince me that
this activity is teaching children respect for the environment, for creatures,
or for the natural world. They might like frogs more after their hands
get covered in slime, and they meet the creatures I knew as tadpoles, eye
to eye, but you know what, they’re going to be the ones
dissecting them,
not protecting them. We don’t protect by destroying. And if you think
the kids only disturbed a few frogs, ask the birds that I didn’t
hear that day I walked at Kettle Pond.
What about those fishermen who stick wads of tangled line in shrubs? While
some might find it quite harmless—“what’s a little polyethylene
anyway?” and “You can hardly see it because it’s clear”—well,
I vote that we make those people unwrap the limp rotting bodies of loons
and herons who get tangled and slowly die. How about that for pith?
Snowmobiles. Don’t even get me started. Talk about exhaust. I have
only two words for those machines that whine in the woods, crush creatures
by compacting snow, and make my eyes burn more on a winter day in the middle
of Vermont’s second largest state forest than they do when I’m
walking the streets of Seattle.
Beer. Some people might say I just need to have one, but I’ll tell
you, since Kettle’s popularity as a “recreational” destination
has picked up, that’s the trash I find: left over remnants of beer.
Beer, fishing line, and wet socks. Oh, and I can’t forget the fireworks.
Yes, don’t you think it’s a brilliant idea to go to the middle
of the woods, where the only sounds you’ll hear are wind, water slapping
the rocky shore, and loons yodeling into the sunset, to blast off fireworks?
I mean really, Mother Nature needs a new attitude—or at least a party.
I guess that’s why someone brought a Mylar balloon to Kettle last
year and accidentally released it into a tree. It’s still caught
in the branches, shining, making me glad it’s not hazardous waste.
Releasing. Humans are accident prone. I don’t know about wildlife.
I haven’t seen a chipmunk trip or a fish stub its fin, but we, humans,
are accidents waiting to happen. Makes me think Santa Cruz, CA got one
thing right. They designated themselves as a Nuclear Free Zone. Of course,
if North Korea releases a nuclear weapon our way, I doubt Santa Cruz will
protected just because its free-loving, VW-van living, dreadlock wearing,
surf town society posted a few signs along the highway about its status
on nuclear weapons and waste.
You think Nevada could try that? They’re needing something to speak
to the Bush administration besides scientists paid to say dumping nuclear
waste at Yucca Mountain is a good idea. The world has too many of those “political” scientists.
Just think—our fish might not be transsexual if we didn’t have
so many of those.
Oh, you haven’t heard? Yeah, go online to www.dogpile.com. It’s
the best metasearch engine on the web. Type in potomac+fish+sex (be sure
to hit “yes” when it asks if you want to screen out adult sites).
I’ll bet you ten bucks the first thing that comes up says, “Male
fish producing eggs in Potomac River.” It’s no joke. You don’t
believe me? Here, I’ll
give you the link:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/11/1103_041103_potomac_fish.html
I know what you’re thinking—you’re going to die from
something, whether it’s Nutrasweet, Chem-Lawn, Marlboro, or a Mack
truck, you’re gonna go, so why worry about it. Until now, I never
thought the Mack truck sounded humane, but I’ll take splat over cancer
any day.
I can’t blame anyone for lacking motivation. I mean, when it comes
down to thinking about the environment, it’s way too complicated.
Try light bulbs for example. Easy answer, right? Switch to fluorescents.
You can change them less often (meaning you can watch more Pamela Anderson—or
is she out these days?) You can get big smiles from environmentalists,
and that counts. Who wants to deal with a front yard full of picketing
humans dressed up like Shamu? Get those 15,000 hour bulbs now!
Don’t let anyone convince you differently. Just because fluorescent
bulbs have to be disposed of as hazardous waste, which disposing of will
take more time than changing incandescents, you’ll still be coming
out ahead. Who needs loons anyway? They just howl all night, look like
penguins when they get upset and do that flapping thing, and get in the
way of motorboats. If we weren’t wasting our efforts protecting loon
habitat, there would be fewer water skiers on that favorite pond of yours,
because they’d be able to spread out.
Loons and light bulbs—you’re not making the connection? Mercury
concentrates in the brains of loons, causing them to forget how to fly,
feed, migrate (think mad hatter gone fowl). Oh, you’ve heard that
already. You’re not getting the whole light bulb/mercury connection:
I see. It must be because you’ve learned that power plants are the
main source of mercury pollution, and that using fluorescents would cut
back on that acrid air floating over to New England from the Great Lakes.
Well, how’s this for a wake up call? Those handy dandy, energy saving,
environmentally friendly, shamu-taming, fluorescent bulbs are made with
mercury.
The National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) estimates that
only 20% of used fluorescent lamps are recycled—the rest are discarded
with ordinary municipal waste. NEMA estimated that in 2004, 680 million
lamps containing 13 tons of mercury entered the US waste stream.
Oh fishermen, wake up and listen to this: one ton of mercury is sufficient
to contaminate over 1.3 billion 3-pound fish to the point that they are
unsafe to eat; 13 tons were released last year by light bulbs alone.
If you can’t deal with the whole mercury thing, try ethanol. Corn
burns cleaner than fuel right? Right. But guess what has to be burned at
the factory that makes the ethanol? Fossil fuels. Some experts say more
fossil fuels are used in the production of ethanol than are saved by using
it.
Are you getting any sense as to why I’ve turned to wildflowers? Being
an environmentalist was just too complicated. While some people can maneuver
through the basic dilemmas like “paper or plastic” when they
go grocery shopping, I just can’t. I can’t stand there and
say that cutting down trees is better than killing people in factories
with endocrine disruptors. They are both renewable resources, after all.
I couldn’t argue that eating meat was bad for the environment when
I thought about all of the fossil fuels used to ship soymilk and vegetables
from the other side of the world to my local Vermont vegetarians. By the
way, I’d like to recommend the red peppers from Iran and the grapes
from Africa.
I know that cows eat a zillion pounds of grain for each one-pound of steak
they make. Yes, and the water they consume! We’ll be dry in no time,
especially if golf courses stay legal. I don’t think too many vegans
golf though, so they could probably feel good about standing by the whole
cow/water consumption argument as long as they don’t live in Arizona
or wear cotton. What I really want to know is how many vegans live near
or work in vinyl plants.
I think I’ll have another cup of fair trade coffee and try not to
think for five minutes. Maybe I’ll sauté up some of those
organic chicken sausages that cost more than a buck a piece—the ones
I bought with money my mom gave me from market-trading cattle (the kind
they raise in feedlots).
What are you having for dinner? Oh, fish tonight. Good thing you can’t
taste the caffeine Starbucks is injecting into our wildlife via urine.
Maybe a scientist could help the water treatment plants figure out how
to filter out our addictions along with our birth control pills. I’m
sure no one’s testing for Viagra.
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to Issue 6 |
