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BACKGROUND
This book is a collection of essays and anecdotes about 19 animals,
18 birds, 15 fish, 10 reptiles, 31 insects, 39 plants, 17 trees, and
6 other subjects I've personally encountered. Hopefully, it lends
personality to these subjects and leaves the reader with a sense of
the changing view of our natural world during the 20th century.
One of the things I've discovered about nature is that none of us
will ever know all there is to learn about it. I'm no longer surprised
to find something new on a path I've traveled many times before. This
book was published about ten years ago and I've already learned a few
new things that can make a 2nd edition worth doing. That's the nature
of this field, and it's why the sub-title of the book is, "Always A Babe
In The Woods."
It seemed to me that this book would interest a great many people
and that, therefore, I would have no trouble finding a publisher.
(When will I ever learn?) Anyway, after my 'hot list' of publishers
rejected it, I resolved to keep about 10 submissions active at all
times. This saved me a great deal of time in collecting 112
rejections. So now you are the judge and I throw myself on the
mercy of the court.
In considering what to show as an excerpt, I first settled on the
longest essay in the book, the one on poison ivy. The reasoning was
that whether you like this excerpt or not, you would learn something
useful if you read the whole thing. However, that was five years ago
and it seemed time to replace it, for which I chose the essay on humans.
You may print out one copy of this excerpt if you like, but the
material is copyrighted and multiple copies or distribution is forbidden.
HUMANS
One of the things you may find on a nature walk is yourself. This is
most likely to happen if you are alone at the time. Society is such
that nearly all of our joys and sorrows, elations and disappointments,
are people-related. We cannot be rich or poor except as we compare
our possessions to those of someone else. We cannot be a success or
failure except as we compare to someone else.
Many people want to be surrounded by friends when faced with a major
problem. I would rather go for a lone walk in the woods. Different
strokes for different folks. I can't be you, nor vice versa and we
each ought to be glad of that. We may envy someone else's achievements
or possessions, but I would hope that we don't really want to be anyone
but ourselves.
My best friend in grade school lost a brother in the South Pacific in
World War II. My best friend in high school lost a brother in the Battle
of the Bulge. Same war. I remember that both friends were back in school
a few days later, although obviously in great distress. We sort of
believed then that any disaster we could survive made us stronger. Today,
crisis intervention teams try to help people through those things and I
suppose that's better, but I would probably still prefer just to walk it
out alone in the woods.
Left to themselves in the woods, I think kids behave much as their primitive
ancestors ten or fifteen thousand years ago did. There's an instinct to
form a club, or tribe of some kind. A recognition that a group is stronger
than an individual, coupled with a desire to be independent from some other
group. With today's kids, that 'other group' they want to be independent
from is most likely to be the parents.
When I made that mighty leap from bachelorhood to marriage and fatherhood,
the thing that surprised me most was that each of our four children arrived
with distinct personalities already in place. I had always imagined that
infant minds were blank sheets, waiting to be programmed by the parents.
Wrong! Totally wrong! In raising our children, the policy Clara and I
followed, if we had any policy at all, was to encourage and support the kids
in any socially acceptable thing they wanted to do, especially if they did
it well. We pushed education, but left the career choices to them. Lacking
any crystal ball to say otherwise, I think it worked out well.
The people of India are said to believe in reincarnation. The fact that
babies arrive with a personality may have something to do with that. Belief
in reincarnation can be comforting. If the kid grows up to be a thief, the
parent can say, "What could I do? That's what he was in his previous life
and will be in his next one."
Once in a while, I find a 'secret clubhouse' in the woods. These 'wild'
clubhouses, I think, are far more interesting than the back yard tree houses
one sees. One I found was a lean-to, well hidden in a tangle of dead limbs
left from a recent logging operation. Another (in the time of the Vietnam
War) was a dug-out, invisible except for the dirt-covered piece of plywood
over the entrance. A third was a twig hut, composed of thousands of twigs
set in a circle and roofed over with saplings. It was at the top of a knoll
and commanded a good view of all approaches. It was a beautiful piece of
work, but I was glad to see that they hadn't been using fire in it.
Some of these 'secret clubhouses' are so ambitious that they never get
finished. The country school teacher I had in grades five through eight
knew that kids have more enthusiasm than perseverance. Any time we decided
to build a 'log house' during recess and lunch time, she was all for it. None
of them got finished, and it gave her a supply of kindling wood for the
coal-fired furnace.
One of the puzzles I've encountered in the woods in recent years are the RVs
and snowmobiles. Any time I hear them coming, I move about fifty feet off
the trail and stand still. They go roaring by, necessarily watching the
trail, seeing nothing else. Obviously, they find it entertaining and would
probably consider it absurd to go plodding along on foot. Different strokes
for different folks.
When it comes to preferences and prejudices, it's interesting to note that
birds of a feather really do flock together. Crows, cardinals, blue jays,
Chickadees, etc. stay with their own kind. But I don't think we humans can
afford to be that tribal. We do generally prefer people like ourselves, but,
if we really are the most intelligent species, we will learn to accept,
appreciate, and befriend people who are different.
We have a savage past (and not long past, at that). I think there's more
truth than humor in the saying, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of
the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for I am the meanest bastard in
the valley!" We are an ethical soul wed to an animal body and there lies
the heart of our troubles. If we can evolve on the side of that ethical
soul, I think we will colonize the solar system and, if it be physically
possible, the universe. That's the kind of challenge we need to keep from
getting so bored that we self-destruct. Mutual respect and cooperation may
be something more than an ideal; it may be an absolute necessity.
Human sexuality? Very little was said about it in public until the 1960s.
Now, too much is said. In our prehistoric time when life was short, it was
probably necessary to start families with parents who had just reached
puberty so that the children wouldn't be orphaned too soon. Little or no
sexual taboos would have been needed. Now we need twenty or thirty years
to learn our life's work and we go a little bit crazy keeping a lid on our
sexuality until it's convenient to turn it loose. Until I was about 25 years
old, I actually thought homosexuals and lesbians were sort of mythical people
who didn't really exist. I thought "Fairy!" and "Queer!" were just epithets
we flung about to aggravate someone we were mad at. When I finally realized
that real people had those sexual problems, I was a bit shocked to realize
that two of my friends of yesteryear were probably gay and probably thought
I was too! Worse, I finally realized that my own father had once thought I
might be gay. Gays I've met since convince me that they are as their body
chemistry made them, just as all of us are. I see no point in belaboring
gays over a problem they're probably born with. A sexless being would
probably view all sexual activity as a sort of temporary insanity. Anyway,
that's my excuse; temporary insanity.
Consider too, the vital role puberty has played in our evolution. The only
people who reproduce are those who have proved physically and mentally strong
enough to survive 13 years on this planet. And imagine how many prehistoric
children would have been orphaned early if women could reproduce beyond 40
years of age. What if ---?
Someday, when you're bored or wrestling with a problem, consider a walk in
the woods. Let your mind wander along with your feet. It will do you no harm.
I've spent a lot of time roaming the fields, woods, and streams of
Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, and a
few other places. This results in knowing some odd things that
other nature books don't cover and A LIFETIME NATURE WALK attempts
to compile such things.