In The Nature Of Things: Language, Politics, and the Environment

2. Building Wilderness

Chapter 2 Building Wilderness Wade Sikorski Mortals dwell in leaving to the sun and moon theirjourney, thestars their courses, to the seasons their blessing and their inclemency, they do not turn night into day nor day into a harassed unrest. Mortals dwell in that they await the divinities as divinities. In hope they hold up to the divinities what is unhopedfor. They wait for intimations of their coming and do not mistake the signs of their absence. They do not make their gods for themselvesand do not worship idols. In the very depth of misfortune they wait for the weal that has been withdrawn. Martin Heidegger1 This quotation from Heidegger tells how dwelling lets the wildness of things be, how it leaves to the sun and the moon their journey, the stars their courses, the seasons their differences, and the gods their absence. Leaving things alone, dwelling does not impose any truth on the thing that is not its own, but lets the wild-erness of Being be. And it does this while it builds a world, while mortals, man and woman, draw things near to their life, handling them, dwelling amid them. Situated in time, life, and culture, dwelling builds wild-erness, an anarchic, centerless, and nonmetaphysical interpretation of the thing's thinging. Forgetting the authority of origins and the morality of transcendent and universal truth, dwelling cultivates difference, includes alterity, nurtures diversity, protects ambiguity, spares multiplicity, frees irony, and makes it possible to understand it all as the world's worlding. In the pasture behind my home there are still traces of how an earlier family tried to conquer the prairie, tame it, make it useful, and of the consequences they met when they failed. Just a ways down a creek full of cattails and reeds, an old farmhouse, faded gray and falling down, stands near a small pond and a dying tree. Beside it,barely visible through the growing grass, are the foundations of other buildings, a granary, a blacksmith's shed, a woodshed, and perhaps a barn. Further away, a line of rhubarb 24 Building Wilderness 25 plants still struggles against the prairie grass, probably near what used to be a garden. Further away still there is a shelter belt of aged and slowly dying cottonwood trees, maybe sixty feet tall. People used to live here, now the cattle have pushed into their old home, seeking shelter from the winter storms. They have stomped the floorboards into the ground and rubbed against the supporting braces, knocking down walls and leavingstrands of their hair on the nails that stick out. The brick chimney has collapsed, leaving a hole in the roof for the rain, the snow, and the wind to come in. Soon, the entire building will fall to the ground, leaving the cattle without a shelter. The soil around this old farm is sandy. In the 1930s, when the drought and the grasshoppers came, it blew. Badly. Where there was once wild and lush prairie, a home to buffalo, prairie dogs, coyotes, and Indians, shifting sand dunes grew, rolling and crashing like a storm-tossed sea behind the plow used to turn under the prairie. Now,the grass grows only in clumps almost a foot apart,so fragile thatyou can reach down and pull them up by the roots with one easy jerk. The thick, rich sod of the prairie has been replaced by scattered desert plants, cactus and yucca. Only in the past few years have some of the worst blowouts grassed over enough to stop the blowing. Now, depleted, exhausted, this old farm is a winter pasture for our cattle; the people who lived here have left, probably for the city. There are manyold farms like this on my family's ranch in southeastern Montana. We remember them by the names we call places—theChapman place, the Morton place, the Pepper place, the Blazer place, the Sawyer place, the Harrisplace, theJones place,the Hough place, the Frankieplace, and the home place. And perhaps there are a few places whose names we have forgotten.Allof them were farms and homes that my family took over when the land would no longer support them. When I was a little boy, we had one of the largest ranches in Fallon County. Now,though we have sold none of our land and have even bought some, most of our neighbors are bigger than we are. Perhaps one day,following this "natural" progression, it all will simplybecome the Sikorskiplace...