Back to the Garden

Not long ago I had the opportunity to visit my former home of New York City, and I found myself wandering around my old neighborhood of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. There is a park in Bay Ridge that runs along the west side of the neighborhood with a fantastic view of New York Harbor, Staten Island, and New Jersey beyond the bay. I went for a lunchtime stroll in this park and found myself in a lovely little spot called the Narrows Botanical Garden. The garden is small, volunteer run space within the park, nestled up against the busy Belt Parkway. I had walked though this garden many times when I lived in Bay Ridge, but had forgotten all about its existence until this moment.

The garden consists mostly of pretty ornamental plants and trees in lovingly cared-for arrangements, but it also contains a small native plant garden. When I lived in New York, I was far too immersed in the urban grit and grime to care much about native plants, but now that I have fully embraced my inner West Coast tree-hugger, I was very excited to see a native garden here. Of course, being very early spring in New York, there wasn’t much for obvious plant life beyond the empty branches of dormant, deciduous trees and shrubs. Still, the canopy of branches created an atmosphere of solitude that shielded me from the noises of the city all around.

Kingdom Animalia, on the other hand, was out in full force. Sparrows perched on the branches and sang while robins fluttered about and dug in the dry foliage looking for worms. Squirrels skittered about through the undergrowth, and small turtles floated about in a little pond. The scene was a beautiful, peaceful contrast to the busy freeway right next door. Sure, not all of these were native birds or critters, but the exuberance of life was clearly evident in this place.

I reflected on the fact that I never felt very connected with nature when I lived in New York, and I can imagine that the sentiment is probably widely shared among city-dwellers. Yet here, all sorts of life abounded, right in the midst of all of the chaos, seemingly indifferent to being surrounded by the largest mass of industrialized humanity in the United States. It made me wonder what exactly we are seeking when we go looking for “nature.”

For most people, the word “nature” carries with it a connotation of wilderness untouched by human hands. Never mind the fact that only a small percentage of us actually get to experience such places at all, much less on a regular basis. We think of nature as something that exists somewhere else, somewhere other than the “human world” where we live and move and have our being.

I see this all the time in my native Southern California. We are blessed here to be surrounded by large, beautiful open spaces that often surround our communities, especially here in San Diego County. But I have found that few people pay much attention to our vibrant native shrublands. Even our language reinforces this sense of value.  These lands are just “brush”, waiting to be devoured in firestorms, without much other use. Real “nature” is considered more appropriate to places like the Sierras, where the beauty is more obvious to the casual observer, at least based on a preconditioned sense of beauty.

Is our concept of nature is based on some sort of platonic ideal, a vision of some sort of Edenic paradise that is very difficult, if not impossible, to find? I’m not sure, but I’m not sure if the cultural approach to natural beauty is much of a help. Art that is inspired by nature, whether visual or literary, usually attempts to present pristine, unspoiled wilderness in reverent tones. We see or read about majestic places: deep forests, cascading waterfalls, snow-capped mountain precipices. We hear the words of wise wilderness mystics like John Muir, using almost-Biblical language to describe the sacred cathedrals of nature. There is nothing wrong about how these things stir our souls, but do they create a dichotomy between nature that is “out there” and the world that is all around us?

My fear is that, in seeking some sort of ideal of nature that is separate from the world of our actual daily experience, we place ourselves in a context for life that is outside of the natural world. And as any ecologist will tell you, this is a dangerous place to live because it doesn’t actually exist. We are no more separate or unconnected from our bioregions than the creatures of the garden, except that we erect cities around us to try to live in denial of this fact. But we can only live in such denial for so long before the consequences will catch up with us.

As naturalist and writer Robert Michael Pyle said so well, “What is the extinction of a condor to a child who has never seen a wren?” If we lack the ability to see the natural world around us, it is doubtful that our worldview will be affected enough to really care about the rest of the wild places of the world. This is not to say that pure wild places are not valuable, or that we should not be working as hard as we can to preserve them. We just need to recognize the sacredness of these everyday places of life and beauty, as much if not more than the lofty cathedrals of unspoiled wilderness. The wild should not be confined to only the places we decide, and our imaginations must certainly follow the same path.

So I want to thank people such as the volunteers who keep special places like the Narrows Botanical Garden preserved in the midst of our crowded urban environments. Let’s all do what we can to notice the life that is all around us, and to begin to realize that we don’t always have to travel far into the wilderness to experience a connection to nature.  

Genealogy of thought - Skateboarding

I cannot discuss the formation of my worldview without talking about skateboarding. This might seem like a strange thing to say. After all, I am speaking about an activity that involves rolling around on a wooden toy. However, the fact that I am still skateboarding as I near age forty bears witness to the importance it has had in my life. This idle pursuit has formed me as an individual in many ways.

As I look back, I can’t quite pin down the moment that I realized that I didn’t really fit in. From an early age I was a very happy, well-adjusted child that got along well with everyone. I had a vivid imagination and loved to read and write. This led to a lot of favorable treatment from teachers, but as I got older it brought about a certain amount of scorn from my peers. Also for whatever reason, I always found myself in closest kinship with other kids that didn’t really fit into the mainstream very well. I suppose that my gift and my burden has been to be a fan of the underdog in most situations.

What does this have to do with skateboarding? As it turns out, quite a bit. You see, I tried to go with the typical young male route of acceptance through physical prowess, particularly in sports. I was a pretty good basketball and volleyball player, having experienced a fairly early growth spurt in height. But much to my chagrin, I also happened to attend middle and high schools that prided themselves on turning out sports champions. I found that I had neither the talent nor the desire to excel at even the baseline level for my hometown. Not to mention, I had a pretty big issue with jocks and the alpha male mentality that pervaded the jock culture. So I was doomed, it seemed, to nerd-dom and obscurity.

This was until skateboarding came along. I had actually begun skateboarding much earlier, in the mid-80’s heyday of the sport when I was about eight years old or so. But I never took it very seriously, and for the most part just rolled around on my driveway when I got bored of doing other things. My sophomore year in high school, however, I discovered skateboarding all over again. I happened to start flipping through a skate magazine at my orthodontist’s office while waiting for an appointment. What I found in those pages changed the course of my life.

This was the early 90’s, and skateboarding was going through a serious transitional moment in its history. The glory days of the 80’s, with neon-clad half-pipe contests and prime-time media exposure, were coming to a close. Skateboarding was moving back to its birthplace in the streets, and its subversive nature was being highlighted in more subtle ways. This transition also led to an explosion of creativity among the vanguards of the movement that spilled over into visual arts, music, and more. I was instantly captivated by what seemed to be an all-encompassing lifestyle, and exercise in personal freedom and carefree expression. This was as far from the jock realms of “sport” as anything could be.

But more than anything else, skateboarding changed the way that I looked at the world.

You see, in street skateboarding, the entire built environment is there to be exploited for purposes of movement and expression. Street skaters grind on ledges and curbs, ollie down sets of stairs, and carve surf-like turns on concrete banks. Just as skaters in the 70’s turned empty pools into never-breaking waves, street skaters find purpose in things that were never intended to facilitate skateboarding.

This approach changes the way you look at everything. I found that my vision of reality had been forever altered. The smallest details became apparent, hidden in plain sight among the monotonous suburban landscapes. The telltale signs of waxed curbs (for easier sliding) stood out like hobo signs or tribal boundary markers. They spoke a language to those willing and able to read it, and created a sense of invisible community even when no one else was around. You knew that this was a legitimate skate spot, and that others of your tribe had been there before. The blinders of normalcy fell from my eyes like scales, and I found myself deep in the study of curb cuts and slight concrete inclines that flashed by the bus window on the way to school.

The culture that surrounded skateboarding also provided me with a place to call home. In the pages of skate magazines and in skate videos, I found like-minded weirdos with incredible taste in music. I was inspired by the art of  brilliant, creative folks such as Mark Gonzales and Neil Blender. I first learned about existentialist philosophy from reading an interview with Rodney Mullen. The aesthetic touched every corner of life. It was about the actual act of skateboarding first, but it was also about so much more than that.

Little did I realize it then, but this gift of vision that skateboarding gave me would not go away. Even more, it would adapt, in time, to a way of seeing not just places but people also, a keen eye for the ignored and the forgotten ones who remained invisible to the eyes of the comfortable and conventional. I call this a blessing and a curse, because like all great gifts it brought with it a great sense of responsibility. Once exposed, I could never be the same.

I recently had the privilege of writing an article for the Luchaskate zine where I tried to explain the connection, for me, between skateboarding and religion. This might seem like an odd and possibly mutually exclusive pairing, but for me they have been complimentary threads that have woven themselves together continually in my life. You could say that my theology has been deeply influenced by skateboarding, probably more so than theology influencing skateboarding. This angle of vision, this desire to see the hidden and tiny things, has never left. Through the pain and pleasure and ridiculousness of it all, I cannot imagine life without it. 

Genealogy of thought - Introduction

One of the best things about being inspired to write again is the opportunity to dig into my own thought process. All of us are thinking all of the time, yet seldom do we actually take the time to reflect on where those thoughts and ideas are coming from. Writing works like a flashlight in a cave. It brings to light those things that are there, but not visible without some outside source of illumination.

I’m the type of person who thinks about “big” things primarily, and I have lots of ideas about the way that things work and how they fit together. This isn’t to say that my thoughts are more profound than other peoples’, just that I have a different area of focus. If you’re looking at the detailed subject of a picture, I’m probably more interested in the blurred background. I’m always on the hunt for the context of the text.

As a fan of Nietzsche, I like to look into the genealogy of my ideas.  I felt that it would be valuable to examine the history of my worldview, and where I came to the place that I am today. By acknowledging the pieces that formed the puzzle, I can get a better idea of where I am going. This isn’t an exercise in navel-gazing. I want to truly understand and appreciate the various influences that have led me here, and see what I can do to take what they have given me and move it along in my own particular way. Isn’t that what all of us are trying to do?

My history of thought is a peculiar one, because it is shaped in large part by forces that seem to be opposed. I have been influenced in equal parts by spirituality and skepticism, tradition and radicalism. I frequently struggle to understand how the pieces fit together, and whether they should fit at all. But I remain convinced that they do and that they should.

My worldview is influenced most significantly by what you might call the punk rock ethos. By this, I mean not just the music and fashion particular to a certain counterculture movement that began in the late 1970’s. I mean the whole aesthetic and ethic that came out of this era and continues to influence life and culture today. But punk is, of course, just an example or manifestation of a movement that has existed for as long as there have been mass societies.

This movement has gone by many names over the course of history. In any society where a certain culture dominates and enforces norms, there will be those who feel they do not connect, in large part, with those norms. In our modern-day society this displacement is largely symbolic and emotional, but in the past it has resulted in actual physical ostracizing of the people in question.  The various movements have shared a common view from the outside.

It is for this reason that I can find, for example, a kind of kindred spirit between monastic movements in the early Christian church and punk rock in the 1970’s and 80’s. There is a spirit of resistance and removal. The goal is to resist the powers that be, and a removal of oneself from their influence. This movement is usually communal, and it is almost always viewed with great negativity by the segments of society that benefit most from the status quo.

There is also a belief common to these movements that another way of living is possible. In other words, the status quo as given is neither inevitable nor eternal. This requires a type of imagination, to see possibilities of things before they exist. Often this imagination comes to life in art forms and language that challenge the powers and are met with disdain by the majority of the society. But the goal of such acts of speech and art is to, in the words of Dorothy Day, “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

So this is the starting place for a lot of my thinking. I am operating from an interpretive stance that takes mistrust of power structures as a given, and looks to possibility as a paradigm. In the next series of posts, I plan to explore some of the specific influences and manifestations of this paradigm and how they continue to inspire and challenge me. 

Moving through places

I’ve always had an obsession with places. Ever since I was a kid, I have loved spending hours upon hours staring at maps, recalling places that I have been and imagining places unseen. I pride myself on having an impeccable sense of direction, and I can usually find my way to my destination wherever I am. Something about places intrigues me – not just the physical geography or the man-made overlay, but what has been described as the “psychogeography” of places. Every place has its own unique feeling, its own unique spirit. We cannot simply pass through places without being affected by them, and in turn affecting them with our presence as well.

So it’s not a stretch to imagine that one of my favorite pastimes is travel. I love to travel, but for different reasons than most. I travel to accumulate places. I am a collector of places, of impressions of places. Sometimes this passion can reach the point of addiction, where I am always longing to visit someplace new or somewhere that I have not been in a long while.

My connection to places is often tied very closely to my means of traveling to and through them. I think that this goes back to a childhood spent exploring my hometown by means of foot, bike, and skateboard. Travel by car, at least in the US, disconnects us from place much more than it connects us. Car travel is concerned first and foremost with efficiency above aesthetics or any other aspect of experience. Freeways seldom travel through places with deep meaning and history, or even through places with nice views. To truly experience place, one must travel by much slower, simpler, and less efficient means.

Walking, biking, and skateboarding allow a person to interact and react to the landscape. Instead of being sheltered behind glass and steel, I am open to the elements in all of their fury and beauty. I can notice the small and insignificant elements that make up the reality of a place. I can interact with people I see along the way, even if it’s just with a quick moment of eye contact or a simple head nod. In a spiritual sort of sense, I can become one with the place through which I travel.

My goal is to explore the power, beauty, and meaning of place and the means we use to move through it. Places are never static. Motion is a fundamental property of matter. The connection between places and movement is essential – if places are not alive with motion, they are not really alive at all. Even seemingly still places like the heart of the desert are teeming with motion, if one only takes the time to look and listen closely. I want to find the movement in the heart of places, whether in built-up places or natural ones. I want to challenge the tired dichotomy between journey and destination, since they are both one and the same. 

Translating the language of the natural world

One subject you will certainly see discussed with frequency in this blog is environmental ethics. I define this rather broadly. My sense of "ethics" is mostly philosophical more than specifically policy-oriented. I would describe my view of environmental ethics as the ways in which human beings relate to and interact with nature, both for good and for ill, and the values that drive these interactions. There is a sort of aesthetics embedded in this as well. This hearkens back to the adage about only being able to save the things that we love and know.

I was struck by a recent article by Will Falk on "The Language of Pinyon-Juniper Trees." In this article, the author expresses the conundrum of seeking to inspire the protection of nature through writing, when the act of writing itself seems to carry a sort of anthropocentric bias. He says,

"In my efforts to write about the ecological importance of pinyon-juniper forests, I made a mistake. I immersed myself in human voices. Too many of the human voices I heard were interested in valuing pinyon-juniper forests only in human terms. Too often, I found forests’ value measured as a function of the benefit forests bring to humans."

This struck a chord with me, because I struggle with balancing my desire to write on behalf of the natural world with the understanding that I understand very little of its internal language and logic. As a human being in the modern world, I find myself many steps removed from the innate ability to hear and appreciate this language in its pure form. Without a constant conscious effort, I find that most of my supposed understanding is filtered through an ingrained system of value that places human beings (and even more so, technological products of human beings) above all else in the chain of being.


Gary Snyder refers to the need for a "new nature poetics" that goes beyond utilitarianism, sentimentality, and romanticism when it comes to nature. This approach is marked by humility and accepts wildness as a primary value of all living things. It requires a shift from product (the obsession of analysis and technology) to process. It understands that wild nature may appear as chaos and cacophony, but within this chaos is a system of harmony and balance.


What, then, is the role of the nature writer in contributing to an environmental aesthetic and ethic? I think that our role is to be one of a faithful translator. A translator seeks primarily to listen and to hear rather than to be heard. A translator understands that the ultimate goal is to stay as faithful as possible to the sense and intention of the original language. And most of all, a translator does not assume to be able to find parallels from the original language in their own system of values and understanding. They seek to let the text (in this case, the natural world) speak for itself.


In the human world, I recognize that I inhabit a social and cultural space of privilege as a white male. I don't claim to try to speak for those from oppressed classes and demographics. But I do try to listen as well as I can, and communicate faithfully what I am hearing so that understanding can be achieved and steps made toward justice. Hopefully from our place of supposed "human privilege", we can do the same in our approach to the non-human world.

Solstice

(a poem for winter, maybe a bit late)

From the North the cold storms roll in
like bad news over troubled grey waters
And paces quicken with quickly quaking leaves
that turn and twist and break
free of brittle branches with winds
from other places,
not sun-drenched olive hills but
eternal night soaked barren tundra expanses
and their companion seas of violet fury
never calmly caressed to glassy sleep
by drifting desert breezes
So this pleasant postcard backyard view
Becomes our inevitable nemesis
Pounding at the gates in king tides
The land may know no seasons but
the sea, it feels them all

Welcome

Does the world need another blog? I suppose that the answer is probably "no". A better question might be, do I need another blog? In that case, I would have to say "yes". And so I welcome you to this, the latest incarnation of the ongoing experiment in writing that I have been carrying on for many years.

I have observed that during some of the most fruitful and challenging times of my life, I have maintained a blog. It has now been many years since I have done so, but the times remain no less challenging. So I return happily to the discipline in hopes that it can serve as a sort of cauldron for the many ideas and potential projects stewing there in my mind.

Like most blogs, this one is a reflection of my personal interests and passions. I seek to explore the meaning and significance of place, the relationship of humans and nature, and the intersections of spirituality with all of these things. I am also always looking for ways to speak up for those whose voices are not often heard in the mainstream. So think of this as a journal of a life lived on the edge of the normal.

If you're reading this blog you probably already know me, but perhaps you do not yet know me well. Hopefully over time I can introduce you to myself through my writing. I am often short on words in the moment, but in writing I discover what is buried beneath and ignored even by me. In any event, I am glad to have you along for the moments that you are here. Your comments and communication are always welcomed and appreciated.