Still the Same Hawk: Reflections on Nature and New York

Can You Eat in Soup?

Can You Eat in Soup? Nine Million Ways to Look at a Raccoon—and an Apple David Rosane The universe is made of stories, not of atoms. —muriel rukeyser My friend John Waldman has asked me the following question: ‘‘Does nature matter to New Yorkers?’’ I asked him, ‘‘Is the Pope Catholic?’’ My first premise: the world as we know it is going to hell in a handbasket . Our entire planet is in a state of overshoot. In one year we consume what the earth needs a year and three months to produce. To bring the world population to North American consumer levels would require four additional planets. My second premise, a quote from Canadian zoologist David Suzuki: ‘‘We are the environment, there is no distinction . . . just a big blob of water with enough organic thickener added so we don’t dribble away on the floor.’’ It follows that if we are to ‘‘protect’’ or ‘‘preserve’’ or ‘‘conserve’’ or ‘‘save’’ the environment we must also ‘‘save’’ ourselves—and a lot of water. By way of logic, saving nature becomes a humanitarian project. Ah, to save the world . . . Not only is this a radically Western idea, it is preposterous. We are the fruit of fifteen billion years of cosmic time; of slow, gradual increments in complexity; of four billion years of painstaking biological change. As a species we are way less than a million years old. Dust in the wind. Who are we to have the power to ‘‘save’’ the environment—or even ourselves? Do New Yorkers even matter to nature? PAGE 71 71 ................. 18313$ $CH8 09-07-12 13:55:03 PS 72 David Rosane The universe will go on, with or without us. As a species we will one day ‘‘be no longer’’; we may morph, evolve into something else, or go extinct. In any event, the ‘‘Anthropocene’’ will have come and gone. So will have industrial civilization. What’s left is our past, the present, and as much of the future as the future has in store for us. Protect nature? Why bother? Thank heaven for New Yorkers—they’ve actually helped me come up with a few possible answers. I’ll start with a recent college student of mine, Joshua, an orthodox Jew. Joshua was part of a typical multiethnic college classroom from Queens, including Latinos, African Americans, Asians. One day we were on a field trip to Inwood Park, on the northern tip of Manahatta, the ‘‘island of many hills,’’ as part of an urban nature course. We had hiked deep into the tall woods of ‘‘the Clove’’—a valley full of 120-foot-tall tulip trees and giant slabs of half-million-year-old schist, plus one Indian cave where the Lenne Lenape used to hang out. The park was blanketed with giant piles of fresh snow and I was showing the kids how to handfeed wild birds—chickadees and titmice and woodpeckers. The class was bursting with excitement. The birds, singing their heads off. Joshua happened to be staring at me—he looked a tad perplexed. A chickadee landed on his hand, took a peanut. ‘‘What’s up?’’ I asked. ‘‘Oh, I’m just wondering, professor, are you an ‘environmentalist’?’’ I sensed by his tone that Joshua had been taught to be wary—very wary—of tree-huggers. Weirdoes from the Left. At the same time, I could tell he liked me, that he loved the course—he could touch and feel and identify plants and animals for the first time. Everything I showed him inspired sheer gratitude. Every color, every taste or scent or nature-induced introspection was a revelation, and cause for celebration. Hence his dilemma. I tried reassuring him: ‘‘Joshua, I am not an environmentalist in the usual sense. That’s because I don’t believe we can ‘save’ the environment. My vocation is to reconnect you guys with nature, as best I can, while I can.’’ Joshua gave me the befuddled frown (the one with the open mouth and the nod). I continued, ‘‘Ok, take the fact that you and I are handfeeding wild chickadees. We’re totally entranced by these little guys, they weigh 10 grams and they have as rich an evolutionary history as ours, and we’re totally digging it. I live to share these interactions, this kind of ‘epiphany.’ That might make me more of a humanist than an environmentalist . A lot of enviros think humanity is a disease, a virus, something PAGE 72 ................. 18313$ $CH8...