| This is a morning in mid-July. The weather has broken. Weeks of sweltering heat replaced with refreshing breezes that cause the leaves to dance, or cringe at their edges when the air is laced with aromas from the nearby sewage treatment plant. Perhaps a reminder that elimination is a necessary part of creation. I have the good fortune of not having any place in particular to be at an appointed time, so I chose to be here. Sitting at a bench in Lake Farm Park, near the tower that I used to visit, on occasion, when my children were young. Today, my oldest is nearly the age I was when I first visited this place. I think briefly about what has transpired over the past three or so decades, but a breeze whisks the past away leaving me to marvel at the sounds of birds that I do not see, the split-rail fence that encloses the parking lot that contains an empty car and my motorcycle shinning candy-apple red in the sunlight. A small black bird with fluorescent wings appears and hops curiously up to it with its head tilted to the side, then begins what looks like some kind of courting dance, then realizes the unlikeliness of the match and flies on. I wonder how many people have sat in this spot and what their stories were. I wonder where they are now, what their lives are like and if this place brought them peace or if they were here to escape the kind of intense pain that visits us all from time to time. I'm wearing a denim jacket so I don't feel the little feet, but I am compelled to look at my right arm to see a caterpillar making its way down my arm towards my hand. It is long, fat and fuzzy with spiked fur forming a ridge along its back like a Mohawk haircut. Why do we smash or spray some insects while we carefully pick up others and gently lay them on the ground? And it is not just a matter of whether they sting or bite. It is also connected to how we see or do not see their beauty or purpose. My guess is that we tend to see our fellow humans similarly and that our sight is colored by habits that may or may not contain significant elements of truth. The beauty of this place is that it is very near the hustle and bustle of the city. Sounds of the highway slip through cracks in the breeze every once in awhile. Nature is very close wherever you happen to be in this part of the country. Nature is ever-present everywhere if you get right down to it. It is just easier to see, feel, touch, hear and smell the more pleasant aspects of it in some places. This is such a place. I've worked at a lot of jobs in many different places, and most of them had something to do with trying to make someone's life a little better. I've patched leaking roofs on the homes of poor rural people living in dilapidated houses held together with prayers and memories of better times. I've worked with kids in East Harlem, New York and marveled at their guts years before the term "resilience" ook hold. And I've sought answers for my own life in different places and in different ways. It doesn't seem right that all the searching and all the effort would only turn up more questions. I feel a hole somewhere in the middle of me and don't know what to fill it with. I don't pretend to be unique in this regard, nor do I think that my emptiness is any deeper or more profound than the next person's. I know that I'll continue to seek out the things that leave me feeling full the way a mother's slow-cooked, carefully prepared meal satisfies in a way that fast food cannot even begin to touch. But I'm thinking about a bigger emptiness. A collective vacuum. A void that leaves far too many people with varying shades of brown skin in the nation's jails and prisons. A malaise that contributes to every conceivable negative indicator of well-being. The ultimate irony is that despite all manner of tactics, past and present, to erase us from the planet, we are still here. But we are only functioning at a fraction of our potential greatness, which is to say that humankind -- irrespective of color -- is only functioning at a fraction of our potential because if my power is thwarted, so is yours and the day of reckoning is closer than it might appear. It would be easy to make a relatively short list of missing pieces. Inequities lurk or jump out around every corner: Health care, disparities in income, physical health, mental health, infant mortality, housing, debt-to-income ratio, education and on and on. I'm trying to talk about something even larger though -- the void that only Nature can fill. The song of a bird that wakes you just before the Sun wakes up. The sound of lake waves lapping rocks along the shore. The sound of ice cracking on large bodies of water to signal the imminence of spring. The goose crap you tip-toe through in the park. The spider that wove an indescribably intricate web while you slept. The sound of the wind rustling the leaves of the lone tree outside the bedroom window of your apartment. The way the rhythm of your beating heart seems to be in synch with the croaking of the frog that you hear but don't see. These are the things we need to set our clocks to. We spring forward and fall back in setting our clocks at daylight saving time, but we forget that there is a more majestic, more natural, less mechanical, and more essential tuning that must take place every day, because Nature does not adjust to dates on a calendar. It just is. Every second. Every day. Every breath. And we are a part of it. To remember this may ease whatever feeling of loneliness we all feel from time to time whether we are in a cabin in an isolated part of the country or alone in a crowd of people. I've moved from the park and I'm sitting in my backyard at home now. I hear hundreds, or thousands or tens of thousands of crickets singing or rubbing their hind legs together or doing whatever they do to fill my void with sound and wonder. Maybe we all need a little mystery and outright awe in our lives. I imagine that taking anything for granted and assuming that we know anything for sure leaves the greatest void of all. Maybe Johnny needs to hear the sound of crickets above the din of traffic. Maybe he needs to notice how the world smells after a gentle all-night rain. Maybe he needs to sit on a clear spot of grass and let the earth replenish him when he is completely drained. These little practices will not feed his infant, pay the overdue rent, bring the utility bills up to date, shorten his brother's prison sentence or blunt the most painful and pointed parts of his childhood. But there is a chance, just a chance, that the respite will summon whatever beauty there is in his life -- past and present -- to take center stage and remind him that he deserves to feel good, that his heart is a good heart and that when Nature is your ally, you are never left to climb enormous and apparently unscalable mountains unassisted. Never. |
| Simple Things/Lang Kenneth Haynes Nature calls |
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