If we view a place as sacred,
we treat it differently.
It has taken me to wilds north and south, from a rocky beach on the southern tip of Africa, watching the Indian and Atlantic oceans crash into each other from a moonlit beach of Tsitsikama National Park to watching polar bears wait patiently for sea ice to form in Hudson Bay one snowy October; from wondering what kind of song a grizzly bear resident of Denali National Park would like to hear before she and I met on a ridge, to the wilds of post-Glasnost Moscow when Soviet citizens --for the first time since the Tsar had been overthrown -- gathered to learn in mutual horror what environmental disasters had befallen their beautiful country during the long course of the secrecy that accompanied the decades of Communism. From watching a female cheetah reprimand her attention deficient cubs during a hunting lesson in the Kalahari National Park to finding spoor and track of a wolf in the northern Rockies, early proof of her return from the brink of extinction to a not-yet-forgiving ancestral territory in Montana. Neither I nor the biologist I accompanied yet knew she lay dead on the highway beyond and her young were trying to survive it alone.
Why did I begin this journey as a "Lorax"? Did I ever know how much it would break my heart and leave me breathless (if not sometimes speechless) at the same time?
The simple answer is "because I was compelled to." Since Dr. Seuss' memorable character "The Lorax" left each of us to do the work of caring for this Earth, and to tell the stories of the unique awe this Earth holds in the universe, I felt obligated, inspired, and frankly, an urging, passionate need to answer the Lorax's call of, "Unless. . . , " on behalf of this beautiful habitat, this sacred garden -- Earth -- which our species is lucky enough to call home.
Because, as my father has said so many times:
"If you can't create it, don't destroy it."
My journey thus far has informed me that this is more than a mere philosophy. It is a way of living. And it is a heart-based paradigm change to which our species needs desperately to warm if not actually evolve into the wisdom inherent in it.
As one of my mentors, Ian Player, advised:
"If you want to change the future of mankind, you must begin with the heart."
Seeing every inch of our home Earth as the original model for the Garden of Eden -- as a reminder of the place in revealing symbolism, meaning and life before memory had a human face-- presupposes there is something larger, a more important law than those made by and for the human species. It supposes we are part of the habitat of Earth, surviving by living-- yes even nurtured -- within its folds, not a foreign invader. It presupposes our species is not more important than all of it -- and certainly not outside its effects, as any natural event we humans call "disaster" shows us. Seeing the natural world that provides everything our species needs to not only survive but thrive as "sacred" is a holy way to see our habitat Earth. That this global habitat supports such myriad life forms, despite how hard we work it, pollute it, cut it down, dig it up and pave it over, is even more amazing.
If you can't create it, don't destroy it begets a natural corollary:
"If you can't fix it, don't break it."
How can we fix something we don't truly understand? We pull it apart piece by piece, but are stymied still by the intricate workings of it as a whole.
The Earth, and its complexity, is still full of unknowns to our species, and like the primates we are, we keep experimenting.
Unfortunately like weekend mechanics, we "adjust" one small thing -- remove too much of the Amazon forests or further destroy the temperate rain forests of the Pacific Coast, destroy a species, add a notch too much smoke into the atmosphere, drain one small tributary of one small watershed and, "Oops," something goes seriously wrong a decade or two later.
Eventually we'll get it right -- well maybe. But no doubt when we are finished with it, there will be parts left over that we need and don't know how they got there, and we will leave a path of destruction from our failures as we try. We are engaged in an Earth-DIY Makeover job (see for example a chapter of Jerome K. Jerome's classic Three Men on a Bummel entitled "The Makeover" for an entertaining symbolic look at how we are living on Earth) and it is unlikely this tragic sitcom can run a second season without our species finally learning some humility.
Why does this matter? Because on these journeys I've always come back to the same question and have yet to hear a logical answer:
What is the future of a species fouls its own nest to the point of destruction and disease?
What kind of species willingly destroys its own habitat -- on purpose?
Those species we see around us that behave in this fashion we deem "pest" species. Over-populating, using resources to the point of habitat destruction, living in ways the habitat can't sustain more than a few generations. . . at least lemmings have the decency to throw themselves into the ocean when faced with such failures as a species; deer populations rise, then face grueling conditions of starvation winters and disease as natural processes bring their numbers back down to sustainable levels. And what is our future as we flail to survive in an increasingly hostile environment that borders on the definition of habitat failure in so many parts of the Earth?
What folly:
We live in houses that destroy the farmland that we need to feed ourselves and our billions of neighbors.
If we don't feed all of our species, refugees will come knocking on our doors to get food in a land-war that made-for-TV couldn't even imagine -- the kind of fights for land, territory, resources our species has fought for millennia, but not with a population this large, weapons so devastating, and an Earth so small. As any food importing nation can tell you, being at the mercy of the goodwill of others, as a beggar on the street, is not a survival strategy.
In our disassociation between our actions, beliefs and the reality of our habitat, we choose to live blindly, putting faith in "I'll worry about it tomorrow" and a technological big brother, rather than listening to the very uneasy whisper within.
That whisper is the voice of survival -- the gentle urgings to evolve again -- and nags us each time a natural event (oh, yes, from our species view, a "disaster") hits.
Don't you feel it? A tsunami, earthquake, volcano, drought, flood or purely withering summer occurs and something deep inside lurches, just a little.
Although in the U.S. as in other nations who can, we retreat into our four walls where technology moderates the extremes of climate, provides shelter, and our stores of food stockpiled sooth us, the lurch still raises an unsettling "What if?" in our cellular memory. We remember the urge to move on to better territory, to evolve our ways to survive. The primitive cellular memory to evolve that has allowed our species to flourish to pest stage is hard to ignore.
All of my journeys through pristine wilderness and threatened agricultural lands, wide open spaces and the foulest technological "solutions" would leave any animal thinking about how to survive.
If we view a place as sacred,
we treat it differently.
Once we see a place, man-made or natural, as holy and we tend it with love, respect and, yes, even a sense of awe.
Think of how you feel when a quiet hush comes over you at the sight of beauty. Feel how we instinctively nurture that moment, so as to make it last, as we do the fragile life of a young infant -- or our cooing over a baby of any species on Earth. We are programmed in our cells to nurture, I believe. Countless journeys through this world have shown me this.
Although human cultures which viewed the Earth as sacred have been destroyed by other cultures' aggressive domination which arose from conflicts over survival (my family eats, not yours) and from subsequent millennia of leaders' encouragement to substitute the intoxication of victorious power for the trump power of God -- and although we can't unmake that fact -- we can still evolve. Each of us can choose, just for a moment in each a day, to try on a new viewpoint:
We can see clearly, feel awe and wonder --
as we once did when we viewed Earth as Eden.
Even if just for a minute each day, we can feel as our ancestors did when migrating from hostile, dry, broken deserts to new green valleys: we can feel relief and thanks for what this habitat Earth provides.
And then we can act in accordance with our new feelings of living in a sacred garden:
We can tend gently and care greatly for all of Earth's inhabitants; we can choose to live as part of a whole woven fabric.
So let us heed that uneasy feeling that accompanies mighty natural "events" and evolve already.
________________________
My Journey continues for a little longer. . .
I will place here installments of each of my new books as they are ready, for you to join me on this journey of awe, wonder and belief of being part of something larger than my little self and my little species.
And I will pester you, fellow reader, until you join with me in treating our habitat as sacred, and not just as a possession.
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