Did you have dreams in the sod where you lay, Of resting in your mother’s pod each day, Before sleeping through winter’s chill? And now alone, snug under frost’s still With wriggling worms for company at dawn, You wait for the first kiss of moisture drawn That wakes metabolism in the warming bed, And bursts your coat with a white rootlet spread Bristling with hairs, burrowing deep down, Sucking the goodness around, a crown Of yellow cotyledons and a shoot Breaking out, whose spear tip knows its route Pushing grains aside until breaking free, To bask in the sun’s rays, oh, such glee And digging dimples in the seedman’s face, Your day unfolds with gentle grace.
Most times when I look at a tree, it’s only a tree, but occasionally I see a living being lifting its arms like a shaman in a trance. Most times when I look at a dog, it’s only a dog, but sometimes I see in its face a dear relative gazing back with a loving smile. But a seed in my palm is always a seed that never loses its seediness. It reaches back to the first cell, forward to my embryo, and to the uttermost speck of life on the planet in the future.
A ship’s voyage can be a metaphor for our journey through life. Sometimes ships pass within hailing distance of each other. Sometimes they pass unseen in fog or darkness until sailors learn they missed an interesting vessel from gossip at the next port. This sums up a feeling I had on a visit to the Moremi Game Reserve of northern Botswana. I traveled with a local guide and camp cook through the Kalahari sandveld into the Mopane forest. It had turned green after seasonal rains and abounded with wildlife. Zebras and Red Lechwe grazed. Vervet monkeys and Chacma Baboons clambered on branches. Lions lazed in the shade until sundown when they began roaring before a hunt. Cape doves and hornbills called from every grove, announcing the breeding season. Life revolves around Africa’s seasons in one of the richest wildlife habitats on Earth, where the Okavango Delta looks from the air like a lush, green mirage hemmed in by arid land. We often stopped to watch animals at close quarters. One day we paused on the edge of the forest where it meets a finger of the Delta. The guide pointed at a semi-circle of bleached skulls at the base of an ancient tree. Skeletons are common sights, often the remains of kills by big cats, so what was special about these specimens, apart from the carefully laid display? The skull of an elephant, buffalo, hippopotamus, lion, antelope, and more. The guide shook his head when I reached for one of them. I felt as if a museum curator slapped my hand for touching a precious exhibit. But why? Behind the tree that overlooked a reed bed stretching to the horizon, I noticed a raised wooden deck about 20 by 20 feet square. A human artifact in a protected wilderness is rare. I wish I had taken a closer look or a photograph or asked for an explanation. We returned to camp as the heat became oppressive and didn’t venture out for another game drive until late afternoon. When I came home to Virginia, I read that an author and artist had lived there. The same as published the field guides I used.
Veronica Roodt was a math teacher in South Africa before guiding visitors in the Kruger National Park and taking her first degree in biology. She moved to Botswana as a young, single woman in the 1980s to devote the rest of her life as a naturalist and talented artist to record the pristine wilderness in and around the Delta. She lived in a tent on the deck almost year-round for 34 years. In the early years, big game hunters took trophies from this wildlife magnet in the center of the continent. Other hunters decimated the crocodile population for people to flaunt fine leather handbags (the reptiles have recovered). After a hunting ban, tourists come with cameras instead of guns, escorted by guides with local knowledge. But no one had mapped the trails or recorded plants and animals (except the most iconic beasts) until Veronica filled gaps with her beautifully illustrated books for the Shell guide series. She traveled around the region to research the traditional medicines of Bushmen and Bantu tribes. This continued earlier studies for the army in South Africa and Namibia so that troops lost in the bush would know how to survive on native plants. Her books are staples for wildlife guides and visitors, as well as the best introduction to the region for field biologists. Perhaps no one knew the ecology of Moremi better than Veronica. How could they without that much immersion in its depths? Far more than regretting I didn’t explore her camp, I am desperately sorry I missed meeting her by a few months. Our ships passed out of time. How I wish I could have had a lesson on the deck and listened to her stories. Someone found her in her chair, but no longer alive. She was 65 years old. Considering the hazards of living alone in the game park, it is amazing she died there of natural causes but has left a moving image seated in a beloved place.
If you loved an animal and have felt it loving you back (more than just from trained obedience) you probably wondered how it perceives you and itself. I long to know what my Goldens are thinking. Philosophers have asked that question. I wish Thomas Nagel had chosen his pet for a challenging article he wrote instead of asking What is it like to be a bat? However, the nub of it is about the general nature of consciousness, not the character of bats! After skimming the paper, I checked what other philosophers are saying about consciousness. It took me down a rabbit hole to a dark place where there was no general sense of direction and I met strange theories, like epiphenomenalism. The subject attracts thinkers to the hardest problem in biology and psychology. If they are unable to agree about its nature in humans, what hope of understanding animal consciousness? At least there is wide agreement today that it exists after long being denied, partly on the authority of Descartes. His dualistic philosophy, now happily in retreat, held that animals are automatons with a body but no mind. It is now respectable in science to admit that all mammals and birds have conscious minds, even squids and octopuses whose nervous systems are organized quite differently, and some advocates add species from “lower” phyla, such as insects. Self-awareness is often tested with a mirror for animals whose primary sense is vision, but I can’t tell if a cockroach is conscious because we step on it first! Consciousness is not the same thing as sentience, although they are related. Robots can be sentient but aren’t conscious and artificial intelligence algorithms are smart but emotionally absent. Nagel’s article spurred a prickly debate that continues today. He stirred controversy by claiming that the nature of the mind cannot be understood through reductive materialism alone, which is so successful in other areas of science. The mind presents a unique problem that I don’t mind calling mysterious, or doubly so in animals whose perceptions of the world and thoughts are unknowable. The evidence of consciousness in animals gives a rational basis for my affectionate feelings toward furry companions. More than sentimental feelings, our minds connect when they are with me. And acknowledging animal sentience binds our relationship to all mammals and birds and perhaps other creatures to a higher ethical standard than in the past.
I’m not a movie buff, but occasionally something I see stirs me to make a recommendation. When I woke about 30,000 feet above the Congo, I scrolled through a list of movies to entertain the rest of my flight. The cover image of a bird caught my attention. There are many fine documentaries about wildlife, but the award-winningAll That Breathes renders with subtitles a story of bird conservation like a visual poem. To a background of slum-dwelling and ethnic tensions in New Delhi, two Muslim brothers are saving Black Kites brought sick or injured to their “clinic” in the world’s most polluted city. Since Indian vultures were unintentionally decimated by exposure to a veterinary drug that persists in cattle carcasses, the kites have filled the vacant niche. Scavenging helps to eliminate rotting food in mountainous landfills that would otherwise be a human health hazard. Up to twenty or more casualties are brought to the brothers’ hovel every day where they apply splints and potions, caring for them until they fly again or die. Their dedication is inspiring, more so because they weren’t discouraged by the circumstances of their lives or the lack of training in avian medicine. Their reward was to see birds soaring over the city again, a symbolic meaning for them and service for all in an interconnected world.
The USDA updated the Plant Hardiness Zone this week, changing our zone to 8A. This is an example of how climate change is affecting gardens and farms throughout the country. We didn’t need a government to tell us. Record temperatures are announced in the national news and we feel the change. This corner of south-east Virginia has been in Zone 7B for longer than I have lived here. Weather stations across the nation, including the local one in Wakefield, have recorded increases in minimum winter temperatures, which now stands at 10-15 degrees F. (-12.2 to -9.4C.) in our district. We have merged with neighboring North Carolina, which is still in Zone 8A. Re-zoning inevitably lags after the facts. We haven’t had a bitterly cold winter for a long time. Moreover, plants we were advised are too tender to survive here now throw up green shoots in springtime.
My favorite is Lantana, a shrubby plant that dies down to the ground in the fall. Shoots appearing in May produce by late June waist-high leafy branches with abundant buds promising flowers to attract butterflies and wild bees in the summer. Even as I write this post at Thanksgiving, Lantana is still flowering outside. It seems as if our district has migrated to a milder place 100 miles further south, but of course, it’s the climate that has shifted. What are the implications for the distribution of wildlife? Will I live to see us join Zone 9, like Georgia, where they grow bananas?
Roger musing about Peace with Nature 