A Rabbit's Life

This week, from the Re-Visiting Books From a Long Time Ago department: Watership Down. If memory serves, I first read the book 35 years ago this summer, which is an amazingly long time ago when you think about it. The only thing I remembered was that it concerned a group of rabbits who were displaced from their burrow by a construction project and had to find a new home. I'd forgotten everything else, except that it had seemed a novel concept for a book-length work of adult fiction. (I just learned that some people consider it children's literature--if it is, it's an extraordinarily nuanced and sophisticated example of the genre.)

Once more, I find that the passage of time seems to have turned a work into something completely different than I remember, so different that it's hard to believe this is the same book I read all those years ago. It's almost as if, as Shakespeare puts it, it has undergone "a sea-change." Of course, I know that isn't right, because the words on the page haven't altered--it's the reader who is different. Back then, I found the book moderately diverting, but this time, I was struck at every turn by the sheer humanity of the author, if that doesn't sound like an odd thing to say about a novel about rabbits. My own imaginative powers seem to have expanded enough that I can now take in the great feat Richard Adams accomplished by entering so sensitively into the lives of non-human protagonists.

The book almost made me want to be a rabbit--in spite of the inherent hazards of the lifestyle (and the fact that you have to live underground). Humans do not come off particularly well in most of the book, and while the rabbits have their faults, it would almost be worth giving up the advantages of being human for such companions as Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig, Holly, and their friends. Their resourcefulness, courage, ingenuity, and loyalty to one another put the rest of us to shame, I'm afraid. I was so engrossed in the story that I had a hard time putting the book down, and I cried at the end, which rarely happens. I was hoping against hope, every time the rabbits faced seemingly impossible odds--trying to cross a river, escaping from foxes, stoats, and cats, escaping a snare, battling a formidable enemy--that their wits would carry them through just one more time. It's a spirited adventure story, well told.

It may be that the first time I read Watership Down, I objected to what I saw as anthropomorphizing. I'm glad I got over that, because I think the novel's presentation of a fully realized animal world--the rabbits have their own stories and mythology, their own games, diversions, worries, and dreams--gives us, in a totally non-preachy way, a richer, more penetrating view of our own world. It's hard to think the same way about a new housing development when you consider it from the point of view of the creatures who suffer because of it and have no say in what happens to them. Seeing the world from the perspective of a rabbit might be enough to give you pause, for a little while, at least, on the whole "might makes right" philosophy. In any case, it's a pleasant antidote to human presumption.

Besides being entertained by the spirit and humor of the rabbits' mythology and storytelling, I was struck by something else that I suspect went over my head the first time. The novel is firmly planted in the sensate world, in all the sights, sounds, tastes and scents of the Hampshire countryside. Every blade of grass, every individual leaf, has character, and the rabbits' keen senses, especially their hearing and sense of smell, pick up so much more information than I could gather at my most observant. The novel luxuriates in descriptions of wildflowers, weeds, and grasses and a multitude of other objects a rabbit would recognize instantly; I would walk through the same scene and experience it much more monochromatically.

So, who is smarter, humans or rabbits? I think it depends on what you mean by smart. There is certainly something to admire in the simplicity and economy of the rabbits' lifestyle and in the way they live their lives as part of the whole. And in the book, at least, they seem to know a thing or two about humans that most of the humans have failed to notice about themselves. (Who knows, this could be true in real life as well.) I believe these particular characters are also meant to show us how we ourselves are at our best. It's perhaps a gentle reminder that human nature is also animal nature, however evolved we may have become.

The Lovesick Pigeon and Other Stories

I was in St. Louis for a few days and spent my time going to the zoo (three different days), visiting the Butterfly House (a long drive from my hotel but worth it), and strolling through the Missouri Botanical Garden (gorgeous). You might say I was under the spell of both Artemis and Aphrodite; wild animals are sacred to Artemis, but gardens, with all of their flowers and cultivated beauty, have a strong whiff of Aphrodite.

At the zoo, I was especially drawn to the bears, the big cats, and the birds. The St. Louis Zoo has an extraordinary group of animals, from insects to large carnivores. It was the latter that had the greatest pull on me, and this zoo was an especially good place to see them up close and active, and even to make eye contact with them. Of course, even with its carefully created habitats, a zoo is a man-made environment, and the humans and animals gaze at one another across barriers.

While it was great to get so close to the animals, I wondered what they thought about their confines. In return for being well cared for and safe, the animals have been removed from their natural homes and have pretty constricted ranges. I agree with Wordsworth that "their thoughts I cannot measure," but it seemed to me that I saw a spectrum of attitudes, from contentment, to restlessness, to curiosity.

With no real danger involved for either me or the animals, I was free to enjoy their beauty. One thing I noticed is that when an animal looks at you (especially if it's capable
of killing you) you really feel you've been looked at. The birds were the most interactive and seemingly most interested in their admirers. Most of the bears and large cats showed what looked like only a casual interest in visitors. The tiger was an exception; as she roved back and forth across her territory, she seemed to take a keen interest in the zoo train that stopped periodically directly across from her.

In the bird house, many of the inhabitants made eye contact, vocalized, and even flew to the front of their enclosures when people walked by. There were many "exotic" species I had never heard of, exhibiting a great variety of colors, sizes, plumage, and behaviors. I had the strange idea that one fellow, a Victoria Crowned Pigeon, was trying to tell me something. There was something very purposeful in the way he dipped his head and extended his tail feathers over and over again. I don't know much about pigeons, but to me, it looked like a courtship dance, and after researching the situation on the Internet, I found out I was right. (The only thing I can say is "Wow!")

Although the grounds of the zoo are lush and garden-like, they're really the backdrop for the main attraction. In a botanical garden, the plants are the showcase, and outside of the Huntington Gardens in California, the Missouri Botanical Garden is the most spectacular one I've seen. It has everything from a tropical garden inside a geodesic dome to a Japanese garden to a maze, with enough color to knock your eyes out and a number of art works, fountains, and buildings incorporated into the grounds.

Except for a few herbs I grew on a windowsill, I've never had a garden of my own, but I love being in them. A garden falls under the purview of Aphrodite (in its beauty and luxuriance), Apollo (in its engineering and layout), and even Artemis (in the birds and other wild creatures that are present). To me a garden is a meeting place of natural forms and human creativity in which both are shown to their full advantage.

A wilderness is beautiful without any gentling influence, and a city is a controlled environment in which much of our connection to wild nature is muted (which is not to say that cities can't be beautiful; they often are). The plumage of a parrot deep in the jungle is breathtaking, but so is a gracefully engineered bridge or the St. Louis arch.
 

I'm still thinking about the web of life, with all its beauties and dangers. To me it seems just as much of a mistake to sentimentalize nature as it is to think we control it. Nature is mosquitoes as well as butterflies; it's cancer cells, bacteria, and parasites as well as flowering trees, roses, and baby animals. The verse in Genesis in which God tells man "to fill the earth and subdue it" (Genesis 1:28) has been criticized for its anthropocentric attitude, but I think there's another way to look at it. Human consciousness lets us reflect on the world and our place in it. It gives us the ability to understand nature and work with it without necessarily accepting all the suffering that's part of the natural order.

Maybe humans and the natural world are locked together in a symbiotic relationship that's meant to be mutually sustaining (even when it isn't). I saw a film today, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, in which one specialist was asked about the significance of the ancient paintings, possibly as old as 32,000 years, that came to light in France in 1994. He said they were an artifact of the special human capacity for symbol-making, mythology, and poetry, the artistic impulse that reflects and also creates much beauty in the world.

Interestingly, in these works, among the very earliest of all known paintings, the subject is almost always animals -- horses, deer, rhinos, lions, bison -- which shows that people have been reflecting on the processes of life all around them for eons. Maybe the ability to bear witness to these processes and to create art out of our imaginations and the raw materials of nature is the reason we're here. 

Man vs. Nature in Orange County

I heard a thousand blended notes,

While in a grove I sate reclined,

In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts

Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link

The human soul that through me ran;

And much it grieved my heart to think

What man has made of man.

-- William Wordsworth, Lines Written in Early Spring

Who trusted God was love indeed

And love Creation’s final law–

Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw

With ravine, shriek’d against his creed–

Who loved, who suffer’d countless ills,

Who battled for the True, the Just,

Be blown about the desert dust,

Or seal’d within the iron hills?

-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam

I am on vacation here in Southern California, an escapee from the cold and stormy May weather at home. Staying in the South Bay has been a revelation. Since I'm close to coastal Orange County, I've spent several days exploring beach towns south of L.A.: Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, Corona del Mar, Laguna Beach. While it might appear that I've had nothing more on my mind than a determination to eat my way through all the gelato shops within a hundred-mile radius, my brain hasn't been entirely idle.

The skies are blue, the waves are pounding and picturesque, and the sunshine is wonderfully clarifying, but there is still a mystery I can't wrap my mind around. What's brought this to a head is some close encounters with nature that I've had over the last few days, but I've been thinking about it for some time. The question is basically this: Is nature essentially sound and are human beings the problem, or is nature brutal and unfeeling and is human civilization an improvement over the vagaries of a dog-eat-dog universe?

I realize philosophers, theologians, and poets (among others) have pondered this question for centuries, and it's unlikely I can solve it in a few days spent idling by the ocean. Joseph Campbell said that the entire reason mythology came into being was that humans needed to make sense of a world in which "eat or be eaten" was the harsh and unalterable essence of things. That perfect cheeseburger I had last night at In-N-Out Burger was an illustration of that rule in action; the cattle I saw running from the noise of the train as I made my way westward last week elicited a stab of sympathy from me, but it didn't stop me from enjoying the cheeseburger.

Sometimes when I hear people talk about unwinding in the beauty of nature, I wonder if they are looking at the same thing I am. I know what it is to be awed; this afternoon, I was on a boat surrounded by a large pod of dolphins -- I'm talking hundreds of dolphins, swimming with their characteristic grace out toward open sea and slicing through the water underneath the boat in what looked like play. The prototypical dolphin for me has always been Flipper, a good-natured and kindly creature who was loyal and helpful to his human friends when he wasn't teasing them with his antics.

Recently, Flipper's image took a serious hit for me when I read about how dolphins sometimes attack porpoises by ramming them until they die of internal injuries. There are also instances of attacks on their own young as well as attacks on humans. I thought about this while watching the dolphins leap around the boat. Of course, we haven't treated dolphins that well either. How many of them have died unnecessarily in nets when fishermen who weren't even interested in dolphins as prey caught them indiscriminately along with the rest of their haul?

Do you want to know what I was thinking while out on that boat, watching the dolphins frolic and enjoying the feeling of the waves rolling under my feet? I was thinking how glad I was of the human ingenuity that created the boat I was on. The waters off Southern California are picture postcard beautiful when you're looking at them from the deck of a boat, but I couldn't help but think of all the predator and prey scenarios playing out underneath that beguiling surface.

Not that things are that much better on land. Take the grizzly bear I saw in Yellowstone on my first visit to the park several years ago. Spotting that bear was the highlight of my trip and the beginning of a special interest I've taken in grizzlies since then. But what was the bear doing when I saw it? Well, actually, it was feeding on a baby elk. Of course, human sprawl has hemmed the bears in so much that they, fearsome claws and all, are the beleaguered ones. I remember being horrified to hear the way some people in Idaho talked about the bears as if they were vermin. But how would I feel if I were a settler in pioneer days -- when bears were plentiful -- whose child had been killed by a bear? I feel sure I wouldn't be tacking pictures of grizzlies up on my refrigerator with magnets.

Yesterday I took a long walk near sunset in an ecological reserve renowned for its birds. At first, most of the birds were too far away for me to see them well. Ironically, the best part of the walk came near the end, when I was following a trail right next to Highway 1. A startling flash of snowy white on my left turned out to be an egret, standing in the shallows at the edge of the marsh. He tolerated my presence for half a minute or so before flying off. When I came upon him again several minutes later, picking his way through the reeds at water's edge, it was like a gift to be given a second look at such a beautiful bird.

The sight was breathtaking. At the same time, I have to admit to a few seconds of uneasiness when I noticed a group of shore birds flying toward me. Uneasiness as in, "Am I about to experience a re-enactment of The Birds?" I recently read that ravens and crows can recognize faces and apparently don't forget grudges -- not that I've given the birds of Orange County any reason to be mad at me in particular. Yet there I was, walking next to a highway that hemmed in the reserve that is there to protect the birds, in the presence of oil or gas wells jugging away in the background, pulling the fuel out of the earth that powers the machines of the humans who were whizzing by a few yards away.

My own rental car was in the reserve's parking lot, where any sharp-eyed bird could easily pick it out. If the birds did decide to take their frustrations out on someone, I would have been an easy target, and instead of enjoying a pensive walk might have ended up fending off beaks and claws.

Despite all of these dark thoughts, I admit to enjoying the beauty of pelicans in flight, the colors of butterfly wings, the streamlined grace of dolphins, the power and grandeur of the grizzly bear, and many other things I've been fortunate to see. One thing I can say about all of the aforementioned is that they have never lied to me, or stolen from me, or broken my heart to suit themselves. Maybe that's one reason, despite nature's harshness, that it continues to be so compelling. It is something wholly other than human and open for our contemplation when we get a little tired of the human scene.