And the Tree Was Happy
This morning, it rains. I have an italian exam at 9am, and I have to walk through the rain to get there. Also, I wake up sick. I have to walk through the rain, sick, to get to my italian exam. Fantastic.
My morning trek through the borderline monsoon takes me through the Diag. Every weekday morning I walk through the Diag. Today, it’s not looking so great. The rain has flooded much of the grassy area, causing a minterature mudslide that has spilled over onto the walkway. I sidestep the puddles and mud.
People always talk about how much they love the Diag. It’s essentially the center of campus, and it’s filled with grassy area and trees perfect for hammocking. Nobody hammocks in the rain, though. Or in the snow. Or in the cold.
We only like nature when it’s convenient for us.
But is this even nature, really? I would have thought so, but Joy Williams would probably say otherwise. It’s man-made nature, she says in my head. A way for people to feel better about replacing all the actual nature with buildings and residences. That’s another thing—is it really nature if you’re surrounded on all sides by buildings and other man-made structures? We put all this here. The nature isn’t ‘natural.’
Even if this nature is just a facade, it still gives me terrible allergies. Several days ago, after about a week of cold, the temperature suddenly shot up again, if for a mere 48 hours. This, nonetheless, was enough time for everything to ‘rebloom,’ thus reactivating my seasonal allergies. I couldn’t get anything done. “Screw you, nature!” I yelled, as I blew my nose for the millionth time that day.
See what I mean? How am I supposed to appreciate nature when this is what nature does to me?
We only like nature if it doesn’t get in our way.
Why are we so entitled to think that if something in any way impedes our existence as human beings, we have a right to dismiss it entirely? Nature is one of the few things over which we have essentially no control. Thus, we have made great attempts to harness it, to box it in, to condense it into a tame, acceptable, convenient means of viewing for pleasure. This is what Williams is so blatantly calling attention to in One Acre: “Trees existed as dramatically trimmed accents, all dead wood removed. Trees not deemed perfectly sound by landscape professionals were felled, the palms favored were “specimen” ones” (110). This is essentially what the Diag represents: a grand attempt at taming nature and putting it on display as a showpiece for passers by. Looks at us, the University says, we love nature! We love it so much, we put it right smack dab in the middle of our campus!
Nature has a way of being, however, that provides a fatal flaw in the grand plan to put it on display: nature likes to grow. It likes to thrive, and expand, and soak up all the sunshine and creep onto sidewalks and reclaim its rightful place as the real master of this land. This was exactly the behavior that Williams was so dutifully trying to nurture and protect in her effervescent acre in Florida by building an industrial wall around her property: “Though the wall did not receive social approbation, its approval from an ecological point of view was resounding. The banyan, as though reassured by the audacious wall, flung down dozens of aerial roots. The understory flourished, the oaks soared, creating a great, grave canopy. Plantings that had seemed tentative when I bought them from botanical gardens years before took hold. The leaves and bark crumble built up, the ferns spread. It was odd. I fancied that I had made an inside for the outside to be safe in” (One Acre, 115). Though a beautiful, nobel, and awe-inspiring thing to do, preserving such wildness is largely impractical for areas through which commuters travel, for public spaces where events take place, for locations meant to serve as faces of a large public university, for places that require paid maintenance. Thus, nature must be tamed. Nature must be subdued to a point where it isn’t really nature anymore. Nature can be here, nature can stay—so long as it doesn’t interfere with our important human endeavors. Nature is beautiful, nature is luscious—until there’s a dandelion in the grass, or until some creature comes along and eats the flowers.
We like nature, so long as it’s not too nature-y.
I collect cans and bottles. I keep all my empties in a paper grocery bag in my room. Not because it’s environmentally responsible to make sure you know where your recycling is going, but for the 10 cent deposit. Once the container has been deposited, it’s out of my hands. I truly have no idea where the glass, the plastic, or the aluminum goes, and frankly, I don’t care. I got my 10 cents.
What if there was no deposit, though? I know only certain states have such a thing. What would I do with my coveted empty?
If it was available to me, I’d toss it in a recycling bin. But sometimes recycling isn’t always there: there is only a regular garbage can. Am I going to venture on an expedition to find a proper recycling receptacle? Or, God forbid, hold onto it until I naturally come across one? Or am I going to just toss it in the garbage and forgo the unnecessary inconvenience of trying to hunt down a means of proper disposal? I’m a busy person, and I have places to be. I have classes, meetings, events, lunch with my mom, coffee with my best friend, and the dining hall only serves breakfast until 11am.
We only like nature if we’re not in a hurry. And we’re always in a hurry.
This I think to myself as I pass by a waterlogged Bud Light can to my right on the edge of the walkway.
Throwing away a can instead of recycling it doesn’t seem like that big a deal. It doesn’t make a difference, not really. I don’t have the headspace to burden myself with worrying about the nuanced repercussions of my actions. I’m just one person, how could I possibly make a dent in the grand scheme of things?
Herein lies the problem. One person doesn’t make a difference. It’s when one has a whole army of people, a whole country of people, a whole planet of people operating under this assumption, that a problem starts to arise. One person doesn’t make a difference until everybody else thinks they also don’t make a difference. Then one is presented with an entire species of creatures acting on a totally individualistic level, thinking only of themselves and the insignificance of their own personal impact. It’s an easy trap to fall into, and a difficult habit to break. Even if you try to recycle as much as possible and turn off the lights when you leave the room, you still put gas in your car that you drive to work each day and live in a house powered by coal. Being 100% environmentally friendly, completely unproblematic, and indisputably impact conscious is a nearly impossible task. And once again, you’re just one person—you don’t even make a difference. So why even bother? Why even try?
We only like nature when it’s somebody else’s problem.
I continue to traverse the Diag. Passing through another area that serves as a hammocking hotspot, I recall something I noticed almost immediately upon arriving on campus: you can tell how popular a particular pair of trees is for hammocking by how little grass is left in the space in between. This is not something that I had considered before I noticed it on the Diag for the first time, but it makes perfect sense: the best and most consistently used spots, the tree pairs that have seen the most barefooted patrons, essentially have had the grass trampled away in between them. Now, it is just two trees and a patch of bare dirt—or on this rainy day, a slimy mud puddle.
I take a moment, attempting to make sense of this phenomenon. The ever-persistent Joy Williams butts her way into my psyche again, this time ruminating about the dismal state of the Everglades: “The Park, which millions of people visit and perceive to be the Everglades, makes up only 20 percent of the historic Glades and is but a pretty, fading afterimage of a once astounding ecosystem, the remaining 80 percent of which—drained, diked, and poisoned—has vanished beneath cities, canals, vast water impoundment areas, sugarcane fields, and tomato farms. Ninety percent of the wading bird population has disappeared in fifty years, and gradually (quickly) “one of the rarest places on earth” (as it is so frequently described) located conveniently (unfortunately) one hour from Miami, has become a horror show of extirpated species. On land, a water park with no water; at sea, a sick marine estuary turning into a murky, hyper-saline, superheated lagoon” (Neverglades, 68). This doomsday-esque description of the state of the famed Everglades gave me pause when I first read it, and it gives me pause now: is the overuse of particular patches of hammocking real estate comparable to the destruction of the Everglades, just on a microscopic scale? There is certainly the parallel of nature being compromised for human enjoyment, activity, and leisure; there is also the issue of people being largely oblivious to the destructiveness of their practices.
Such a comparison doesn’t seem quite right, though. The two situations don’t seem to draw enough of a parallel to really be evaluated against each other. I am brought back to a picture book which I have not considered in ages but which played an essential part in my early childhood: The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. Despite being simple enough for many a child to understand, the story about the giving and taking between a tree and a boy serves as a much more truthful example of the relationship between humankind and Mother Nature than any recounting of abysmal facts and statistics ever could. The message is simple: nature gives and gives and gives, with unconditional love and forgiveness. Humans take. This isn’t a doomed relationship, though, as Williams would have one believe. Recently, we have taken too much. We have polluted, bulldozed, abused, and molested. “Even the broken and maimed can be viewed positively in sunny, entertaining Florida” (Williams, Florida, 77). This is not the whole story, however. Not even close. There is hope and love to be had in humankind’s ever-evolving relationship with nature:
“And after a long time the boy came back again.
-“I am sorry, Boy, “said the tree, “but I have nothing left to give you — My apples are gone.”
-“My teeth are too weak for apple, “said the boy.
-“My branches are gone,” said the tree. “You cannot swing on them — ”
-“I am too old to swing on branches” said the boy.
-“My trunk is gone,” said the tree. “You cannot climb — ”
-“I am too tired to climb,” said the boy.
-“I am sorry” sighed the tree. “I wish that I could give you something. . . but I have nothing left. I am just an old stump. I am sorry…”
-“I don’t need very much now” said the boy. “just a quiet place to sit and rest. I am very tired”
-“Well” said the tree, straightening herself up as much as she could, “well, an old stump is good for sitting and resting. Come, Boy, sit down… and rest.”
And the tree was happy…
This is what human’s relationship with nature can—and should—be, and what it often is. This is what I believe is represented by the worn out patches of earth in between trees on the Diag, and where Williams and I differ. She speaks of humans as if we are aliens, an invasive species on this planet with an intent to colonize and destroy. But we are native to this Earth just as much as every other plant, animal, insect, organism, or natural body on this planet. We have been given a great deal more power than any other being on Earth, and we still have much to learn about how best to use it. But we can use it for good, for the protection and preservation of many a species, for the coexistence of us and every other beautiful thing on this earth. Humans and nature should not and will not exist in a state of constant friction; instead, we will learn to coexist, to help and to preserve one another, to allow each other to exist in a glorious flux of giving and receiving.
Although this state of being is much easier discussed than achieved (and quite a lot of thought for a rainy Tuesday morning), I still believe in its weight and meaning and its ability to be put into action.
Nature loves us unconditionally—we just need to learn to reciprocate the sentiment.