Thoreau wrote in his journal on Nov. 16, 1850: “I love nature, I love the landscape, because it is so sincere.”
As I sat at my desk one day this November looking over my familiar landscape, my eye caught the skeleton of a dying maple in the distance. It is one which, over the years I took many photographs of, since like every New Englander I am unable to resist the autumn magic of turning leaves.
Now there is only a skeleton standing against the hills. Its message, were it able to speak our tongue, would undoubtedly speak of its death as the inevitable natural end of its life cycle. There would be no underlying angst, no hint of deception or pretension in its words. The tree has no need to cloak the fact of its annihilation or express any lingering hope of immortality. Or of finding any mystical meaning in its demise. It is utterly sincere.
Whereas I look for signs of some significance beyond the ordained return to dust and to the molecules floating in the universe. These days I grieve, not only in anticipation of my own and my loved ones’ deaths, but for the irreversible decline of the ice caps, the plight of starving bears and birds and refugees. I lament the growing divisions between people driven by hatred and fear instigated by overpopulation and worse, by the relentless greed of those who wield such enormous power over the rest of us.
Still I think, but there is beauty. I witness empathy daily. Don’t these things signify there will be some sort of redemption for all the suffering? Though reason tells me that that is as likely as the stars suddenly spewing mercy upon us all.
I was raised without any conventional religion. I never heard words promising forgiveness for my sins. Nor heard hymns sung promising that once we crossed that river, heaven awaits. Instead I sought comfort, an antidote to reality, on my own.
My mother’s hero was Emerson so I did hear about the concept of compensation as a child. It implied to me then that there is a kind of balance or justice to be found in the world: Each person is compensated in like manner for that which he or she has contributed. By extrapolation I surmised this meant that suffering would be met, eventually, with some reward for endurance. Some meaning. Some revelation.
It is this habit of thought that lingers. Some universal tit for tat. Like a medieval witch I find myself steeping brews of newts and adders’ forks to soothe my doubts and fears about the future of creation, especially in the dark of night. Is it impossible for most human minds to relinquish the hope that, in some unimaginable way, better times will come?
When our brains evolved consciousness, hope seems to have been born beside its ominous partner, the knowledge of death. I can never be as sincere as the dying maple. Wishing will not make it so. Yet I do not think of death and dying every minute of the day despite absolutely believing the science that says global warming is at the tipping point of no return. That this era of earth’s history is over. There is a stubborn little voice inside my head that frequently whispers, “It can’t be so!” The voice grows louder when I watch the otters gambol in my favorite swamp or when I hear the raven squawk a greeting as I step outside to retrieve the Recorder from the driveway. The best explanation I have found for this dichotomy between knowledge and denial is in E.O. Wilson’s book, “On Human Nature.” He ends the book with this dialogue from Aeschylus;
Prometheus: “I caused mortals to cease foreseeing doom.”
Chorus: ”What cure did you provide them against that sickness?”
Prometheus replies: “I placed in them blind hopes.”
Let us give thanks for that gift. It enables us to endure the terrors and, at the same time, believe in the possibility of goodness and beauty.
Margot Fleck lives in Northfield.