[Notes: February-March 2025]
**I have moved to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, long-ago hangout for Ed Abbey and a botanically more abundant, diverse desert but without the fascinations of rock and floral creativity that I saw in Joshua Tree. (I spent five days there; it has the great misfortune of being popular and within easy driving distance of Los Angeles. Yosemite and San Francisco have a similar dynamic but Yosemite seems less diminished by it [still crowded but somehow not as degraded], perhaps because it’s not as drivable, but it also raises the question of how people are differently affected by different landscapes.) It was a move from the Mojave to the Sonoran Desert, although I had been close to the subtle boundary between them, not that it’s evident to the average person, including me. I first spent time in each of the three desert areas, that I am once again visiting in one trip, all the way back in 1988 on what unexpectedly turned out to be a transformative journey that included both deserts and the Sierra Nevada, several weeks whose effects have lasted ever since—a statement I would not lightly make. My sense of self, my values, the things I most cared about were all reshaped. As a lapsed Protestant I can easily speak of it as a baptism, an immersion and renewal. I had given up my work in order to go to these places and write a dissertation, which happened but with benefits well beyond the academic result.
Cognition is often over-rated as the source of our ideas, judgments, and philosophies and certainly our ethics. The qualities described in subsequent pages that I found initially in Joshua Tree arose from my experiencing the landscape, receptive to percept and spirit of the place, and then organizing and putting words to that relational and inner encounter. Words are the way to remember, refine, think reflectively about, to analyze and share what has happened, sometimes hoping to foster similar experiences in others. The critical thing, though, and the reason I return, is to resurrect and deepen the experience and once again be affected by this landscape and ambiance and be enriched by it. Such natural settings evoke ways and reasons to live and to embrace nonegoistic engagement with the otherness of it that is meaningful in itself and that is context for what I mean by spiritual. All mutuality begins in presence; here in Nature that quiet being there is enough, yet carries on in its effects. As well, I believe that morality and ethics have their origin in encounter with an other—with any other when I allow it—in which I see that that other has value in itself and cares to be as it is made to be and that I owe it a debt of noninterference insofar as I can pay it. I never act with an effect on the other without ethical involvement. I am accountable for my part in the relation, for my effects on the other. I learned this in the natural world because that was where I felt spiritual recognition most strongly. Eventually I wanted to organize these recognitions and make them intelligible as a pattern, a way of life, and I framed them in terms of I-Thou morality with the virtues conceived as ethical and intellectual excellence, that is, I-Thou in relational attitude and excellence as goodness and truth. At root, I am one with the other and reverent toward the existence that opened these realms.
Stars: Speaking of Nature, I don’t usually extend its boundaries above the clouds and the bubble of Earth’s atmosphere in my mind. But I often use Nature interchangeably with natural world, which feels more wide-ranging—the stars are part of the natural world but not of Nature. A strange seeming locution but appropriate and leading to a conclusion that natural world and Universe are terms for the same place, micro to macro, seed to stellar infinity. If natural world is interchangeable with both Nature and Universe that may suggest unity of Being, at least in expression but I think points to more.
Desert is for stars as much as for cactus and creosote. Partially that is owing to human defilement of air and natural sources of light by pollutants. Since desert locales such as this are often relatively far from industry and population centers, there is less of noxious gases and particulates and artificial light to come between us and stars; also, there aren’t trees to impede vision. Forest has its own wonders but sky is not one of them if you’re not in the canopy or the edge. The night sky may well have been my initial introduction and invitation to the natural world and greater awareness, to deeper engagement with it. It was not at first in desert but at lakeside in forest so sky was open to me over the water. It was a place I could go to at will and I went frequently. That was over half my lifetime ago and what it was part of hasn’t ended and won’t till I die, as I said. From there I went to mountain, then desert, then ocean, and I found what I sought in all of them. What that was isn’t always easily speakable and wasn’t always clear, but those five natural world qualities listed below are surely a large part: Order, Beauty, Goodness, Rightness, Intelligence. I seek reliable occasions for these qualities and find them here.
Some time ago I was drawn to the notion of “reverence for existence” (without being quite sure where those particular words came from) and eventually used the term as name for a book. Later, I learned that Plato included Piety alongside the four “cardinal” virtues (making five), but I’ve not given it the attention I think I should have in light of my concern for reverence as the fitting response to sheer Being/Existence. There are two aspects of the matter that occur to me here: First, what Piety means, which I take to be composed of a fitting response of veneration, or reverence, for a sacred realm, much related to the gods for Plato and others of his time. And second, that as a virtue it constituted part of moral excellence, which was inherent in achieving a good life. As one who senses that the “divine” realm is the material realm in its deepest and most mysterious relational/unitive composition—by which reverence is evoked—and who shares the view that a good life is described as the life aimed at the pursuit of wisdom and the practice of virtue…with these, reverence for existence and especially for Nature is implicit.
Despite their distance, stars (and planets, galaxies, and all the rest) have felt accessible when I made the effort to connect. I don’t know how to understand that except as the consequence of infinity on the mind of its beholder. My first consciously unitive experience was with stars, better put as night sky since the perception was of darkness, pattern, discrete faraway objects, variable brightness, and excepting Polaris, their steady slow movements over the night. They sparked my imagination, expanded my world while contracting my focus. There is comfort in infinity from the perspective of my finite world. Just as there is in the geologic time scales of Earth and Nature’s perdurance and recovery through the assaults of asteroid, volcanic disruption, basalt flow, and humans. And on a smaller scale, in the eternal molecular recyclings and resurrections of individual lives ending and then transforming as part of new ones that take them up in new beginnings. I have spent many hours among stars.
I think that most likely the Universe has always existed, so when we say it is 13.8 b. years old we may only mean this iteration is that age. Which means time really is infinite, and presumably space. I have no idea what to make of this; it is settling and unsettling at the same time. Fortunately, the Universe has no need for me to make anything of it.
Not infrequently when I go to Nature, regardless of my state of mind, I become somber, not sad but serious. It no longer surprises me but does perplex. I am in a favored place but where is the usual joy and satisfaction? Is it what I felt a couple years ago traveling in the Nordic countries when I felt drawn to old cathedrals for their silence and beauty and sacred atmosphere? I explored, meditated, left always pleased and sometimes somber. Or do I feel the holiness of the natural setting and fear for its vulnerability? What the two places have in common is spiritual presence, which brings humility and absorption and toward which the pain of incompleteness sometimes strikes me. My limitations mean it will always be that way.
I usually camp for several weeks at a time and usually visit a few favorite places for the obvious reason that I like being there for the qualities of the landscapes and climate and getting to know them ever better. Secondarily, I enjoy aloneness and the time takes me deeper into myself and my place (in both senses). Last night it occurred to me, as it hadn’t before, that my purposes in living—at least many of them—have run dry and feel finished insofar as I care to pursue them. For instance, large parts of my life and work have been spent trying to understand humans and our place within the Earth biome and existential space. I now think I know as much as I can or want to know. Despite having loved and admired my share of fellow beings, I tend to believe that Homo sapiens is a failed species. Failed in the sense we might describe an organization or institution, state or individual, as failed: They betrayed, or at least failed, their purposes and capacities; they couldn’t get along with others; their ethical values were malleable, optional, or superficial; they wouldn’t recognize their true needs and interests and were heedless in relation to their crucial ones; they were self-centered and destructive and squandered when they should have preserved. I’m sure that with continued effort there’s more I could learn about Homo but I would be surprised if it were inconsistent with what I have learned already. It would waste increasingly limited time when I think my purpose now is mostly to detach from that part of existence. I am sad at what I see but this does not express depression or despair. There is more to existence than humanity, even though it will probably be humanity that turns out the lights on its own could-have-been-valuable opportunity to realize that.
Which leaves me with what? Nature, spirit, other purposes, other learning, a beloved partner—these will occupy the best moments and for the day-to-day, my winnowed and trusted pastimes.
I walked among the cacti and their botanical companions this morning, out north of the campground, and heard a flute. I moved toward it and saw a woman playing, accompanied softly by an old “boom box.” Not wanting to intrude or disturb, I stopped farther than I would have liked but close enough to hear as I looked over her head to the hilltop and its spiked covering. When finished, she packed and headed for her camp along a trail near me, whom she hadn’t seen. I thanked her for the music and said that outdoor music always sounded different and better to me. She agreed, said she was practicing to play at her church, and that, yes, she felt closer to God (looking up) out here. We agreed about that also and she left. A nice little accident of time and place.
After describing mine as a failed species yesterday, I wondered if I thought it irreparable. Except for fits and starts, I do think it is probably permanent and eventually fatal. We became too many, too egoistic and materially oriented, too acquisitive and violent, for meaning and us to survive. Human nature is generally obscure in its particulars but one phenomenon appears universal and timeless—There are always a few who desperately want more than their share and who massively exceed others in their worst qualities, and will do what they must to cling to excess power and wealth and use it to the disadvantage of others while claiming the opposite. Malleability and gullibility of the masses unite with nihilistic self-seeking among the powerful and the collective deteriorates. I won’t say more: it’s a distraction, useless to talk about, but constitutes a large part of our failure and its consequences, I believe. Better to watch the stars at night and the landscape by day, which preserve equanimity and encourage quiet mind, and are inspiring.
My chief consolation, when I observe the terrible destruction wrought by humans on the natural world—which, seemingly unremembered or unnoticed, sustains them despite all—is to recollect that after we have delivered ourselves to extinction, never to return, Nature will heal and eventually return herself to plenitude even if it takes a leisurely million years or so. I have no doubt about this and smile when it comes to mind. But it’s also true that plenty of innocents will suffer and perish with the guilty as we make our way out. The great majority of humans didn’t ask for this, but they didn’t stop it. A minority, the morally worst of us, made the choices that sank the rest of us and we complied. None of Nature’s other creatures had anything to do with it but all will feel it and die early or not have their chance to be born. It was their bad luck that their time corresponded with that of the destructors, similar to the fate, over eons, of other transient beings living simultaneous with passing asteroid or volcanic events. Luck of the draw, one could say, and relatively brief and few in the multi-billion year cavalcade that many still say has no purpose, a conclusion with which I differ.
It doesn’t seem to me there are as many birds around here as I remember. Is it the season, or the times? I ask a similar question when I approach Tehachapi Pass from the east and face the gray-brown air: how much is fog and how much Central Valley air pollutants? And when I walk on the Pacific Ocean bluffs near my home: how much hurt do the waves conceal? Among the changes we have wrought is the frequent inability to distinguish what’s natural from what’s not and to know what’s been lost. In the somewhat esoteric debate over humans being or not being part of Nature, I tend to believe that insofar as any creature persistently acts against the interests of itself and its home and neighbors, it is unnatural. This doesn’t address the question of whether the uniqueness of Homo sapiens just happens to include this proclivity, i.e., their capacity for self-destruction is part of their nature (someone once said that humans were Gaia’s suicidal aspect), or looked at from a different perspective, they are an evolutionary mutation that carried the flaw predisposing them to failure. As a working hypothesis the humans-not-of-Nature postulate is good enough for me. Other creatures make mistakes but not methodically and persistently, and human actions can no longer be considered mere mistakes but more on the order of willful misconceptions and willful hurts imposed. The others of Nature seem to know who they are and what they need and quietly go about meeting the requirements of their being without extraneous damage to Earth itself.
I am reading Darwin’s The Voyage of the Beagle; he was clearly a remarkable man. Astonishingly observant and diligent, to the point of tedium sometimes (for the reader) although it was necessary for his purposes, which were both scientific (with even more detail no doubt in his formal scientific reports) and telling the story of his 5-year journey to a general audience. He seemed kind and gentle, an honorable English gentleman of the 19th Century and surely a good neighbor. I was disturbed to read of his probably normal (for his class, time, and purposes) treatment of animals—killing rampantly at times for food, fun, or science—but he says as he grew older he foreswore such behavior. (It is interesting how many men I read of who did this, seemingly becoming more sensitive and aware with maturity.) Also disturbing were his inconsistent racial attitudes, which he unconsciously revealed in his encounters with Black people in Brazil, some of whom were former or present slaves, and many natives. In order of occurrence over six pages early in the book:
• Regarding a story about runaway slaves who had been captured on top of a steep hill nearby, except for an old woman who threw herself from the top rather than be returned to slavery: “In a Roman matron this would have been called the noble love of freedom; in a poor negress it is mere brutal obstinacy.”
• He could see the appeal of retiring to such a place, “As long as the idea of slavery could be banished…”
• Of the workers on one estate: “I have no doubt the slaves pass happy and contented lives.”
• On another estate he nearly witnessed “…one of those atrocious acts which can only take place in a slave country.” In anger, the estate owner threatened to sell all the enslaved women and children but keep the males, but “Interest, and not any feeling of compassion, prevented this act…” Still, Darwin “…pledged myself, that in humanity and good feeling he [the owner] was superior to the common run of men.”
• Lastly, while in the company of a “negro, who was uncommonly stupid” and with whom he could not communicate, he raised a hand to make a sign that the man misread as the prelude to a blow and in response dropped his hands, half-closed his eyes, and looked frightened, “[although] a great powerful man…This man had been trained to a degradation lower than the slavery of the most helpless animal.” Darwin was horrified and ashamed.
How difficult it is for a person to resolutely stand outside his society even when its practices would be abhorrent to many of them except for their willingness to categorize people into subservient classes as inferior beings. Darwin was sensible and compassionate enough to want slavery banished but not able to see the enslaved as fellow humans of equal value, fellow “children of God.”
This points to another observation I have made about other good men such as Muir and Thoreau: they see Black or Native people who act so different than Whites (to the point, in some eyes, of seeming almost to justify their egregious treatment) and assume that is how they were made by Nature rather than recognizing the effects on minds, self-images, behavior, and emotions of the treatment they have suffered all their lives, the oppression, violence, and degradation, the demeaning curtailment of opportunity and respect. A stupid negro; a pathetically obstinate negress? Tragically, oppressor and oppressed and those in-between have been shaped to their roles, and human stuff, once formed and reinforced by habit, society, and interest, is not at all adept at self-repair. As I read further in Darwin, I see how pronounced was his assumption that people and types of people were born to be what they are with no suggestion that their environment and experiences had much to do with how they’ve turned out. This assumption would certainly support a class-based society. Underlying it, surely, was the unspoken notion that this was God’s design and intention. I recall that at one point he said that if the structures of society were not by such design then England had perpetrated great sins.
When camped I live differently than at home: superficially much the same—the same few pleasures and duties—but time organized and apportioned in other ways and a different mind-set. More time alone and for reading, for uninterrupted silence and thought, more for walking and talking to cactus and lizard, for contemplation and stimulus to write.
I have been reading conservative intellectuals recently (Kirk, Babbit, Scruton) and trying to identify their liberal counterparts. This morning I thought of what appeals to me in each side of the discussion. I decided tentatively that one way to look at them was through the frame of the Four Cardinal Virtues, and that conservatives were focused on Prudence and Temperance and liberals on Courage and Justice. Not an absolute division by any means but a good provisional one, I think, and food for discussion. Discussion is probably more productive than debate and depends more on values of civility and respect that will serve us well if generalized.
I have also been re-reading some essays by Wendell Berry, who as it happens makes a good bridge between the two orientations just spoken of. I doubt another writer has values so consistent with mine or a way of life and of expressing those values so compatible. He represents well what I tried to express in Reverence for Existence. I still believe that that single change to an attitude of reverence, or respect for intrinsic value, would necessarily lead to others that foster our being a better kind of people living in kinds of communities we loved, and that the capacity is widely spread but largely neglected.
One of the Berry pieces came from his 1977 book The Unsettling of America, which I read long ago but had forgotten the part I’m going to talk about here. He was describing the industrial mind-set and its ideology of exploitation, and as metaphor he uses the presently effectively banned word “nigger,” which has been replaced in polite language by “the N-word.” I have always objected to this and will be curious to discover if his usage survived into later editions.
I grew up in rural Texas during the ‘50s and heard the word used as an aggressively pejorative label frequently and knew as I think most people did that it was a uniquely ugly and insulting way to speak of or to another person, so much so that it was sometimes used between whites as an insult. As one who considers racism and other bigotries among the greatest evils that the fertile human mind has ever fashioned, the word offends and grates on my conscience and sensibilities. I would not be sorry to see it die of disuse. But banning it by “cancellation” or fashionable fiat does not strike me as progress, even though I understand and also care about not offending the sensibilities of those among whose historical harms it has been an emblematic part of the language. Still, I cringe when I hear or read “the N-word” more than I do, albeit for different reasons, on the very rare occasions I hear or see “nigger” used. Which is why it caught my attention when Berry used it (48 years ago) and I read it today. I don’t think it made a good metaphor as he used it but I get his point and wasn’t offended; I imagine he considers the word as ugly and offensive as I do and wanted to put the power of that behind his abhorrence of industrialism. “Nigger” has too much history, too many heavily loaded associations, behind it to be effectively used outside the racial realm, but for it, say, to be banned from illustrative uses in favor of “the N-word” gains us nothing and wastes its power, and frankly strikes me as precious, contrived. Who is going to be moved by historical accounts, for example, of racist thought or behavior in which “the N-word” is inserted in lieu of uses where “nigger” was the chosen epithet and used presently to illustrate that? Do we exchange its power to make a positive point for the delicacy of avoiding that power’s negative application? Should lynching become “terminated with extreme prejudice.” Racism is far too destructive and pervasive and persistent an evil in human societies and word-banning almost frivolous in response, no more effective than book-banning by the right-wing to promote right-thinking (or no thinking at all). “Nigger” still has rare anti-racist uses and I would prefer banning “the N-word” to banning the real word when one of those uses comes up. Which is not to say that as many writers prefer to use “f…” for “fuck” out of delicacy, there will not be others who prefer “N…” over “Nigger” for similar reasons, and I respect that—it’s the banning, the imposition, that bothers me because in banning the word the question of sincerity and pretension in the user simultaneously arises, as does the potential for using symbol to avoid hard reality. (I would add that I have similar concerns with the contemporary pronoun fetish among my fellow liberal types, but this isn’t the time for it.)
I have attended silent retreats and am always newly surprised at how much easier it is being with people when talk isn’t expected. Instead, we smile, nod, feel closer to others and are inclined to like rather than measure them. This morning I sat in an arroyo a mile or so from camp and enjoyed that same kind of silence. I still worry about the paucity of birds—Is it seasonal or part of the worldwide major drop in wildlife numbers?—but aside from that, the silence is a large part of what brings me here; it is delicious, and too little available (libraries try but swim against the current) and too little appreciated. Silence is one of the reasons I always hike alone; when two or more are gathered tongues will wag. I passed two groups of four on the hike today and both were a verbal clamor, within the context. The difficulty of finding outer silence is paralleled internally by the difficulty of silencing the mind. Almost daily I find times to sit alone, silently, motionlessly, but moments when I escape the inner dialog are too few. Even so, I feel refreshed by it and think it helps with equanimity and perspective, perhaps especially as I grow old. I’ve always thought that line admonishing us “not to go gentle into that good night” was childish. One should go out with dignity and grace; if friends are present a few words and looks and touches will be added, but what place has “rage against the dying of the light”? Ending must follow beginning at some point.
Three small wishes for before I die: I want to camp in a desert during the rainy season and experience gentle, persistent rains for a few days and see a dry creek rise and flow. I want to be in the Sierra and have a few days of gentle snow. I want to camp in a migratory flyway at the right time to hear and watch the multitudes go on their way.
**Looking back on Joshua Tree where I began this trip, I realize how much it shares with Organ Pipe as an ecosystem but that its comparative austerity lets stand out certain aspects of that. When there, I see and feel an Order like that of other places I camp and spend time, but in ways more pronounced, as if the lack of embellishments exposes it: the rock piles and boulders weather and fracture and assume relatively lasting positions as they change; erosion and exfoliation never cease, earthquake, gravity, and chemical interaction push things into new settlings. The piles look as if purposefully assembled but actually are the result of disassembly, having changed continually but very slowly since their emergence from far below. Even the rubble of exfoliation, the scree and talus, seemingly chaotic, seems in place. Bush and cactus, juniper and pinyon, each finds space to root, not haphazardly if they want to survive, but where niches open and seeds arrive and grow and existing flora accept them along with shade and sun, moisture and soil, to nourish them. The whole perspective is one of fit, of harmony and balance leading to sensory appeal: an otherness to recognize, enjoy harmlessly and respectfully, to revere. When I came for the first time in 1988 I was intimidated by the unfamiliarity and fierceness of it; I was still an innocent out here, but have matured and now it feels inviting. The order—organization, distinctiveness, assembly, conjoinings, contrasts, peculiarities—was part of that and part as well of other qualities I will note.
Beauty through the senses and into the soul, where I am most aware of it and carry it when I move about or leave. Beauty persuades me to want more, non-appropriatively; to feel improved in its presence, enlightened, uplifted; slightly less ordinary in an extraordinary world and in an unselfed way. Natural beauty seems effortless, inherent to the being it composes, simply born with it. Under its influence arise love and mutuality and desire, even duty, to exert care for its gifts. These are its effects, but what is it, what makes it beautiful? I hold with the notion that it is made of such stuff as revelation is made, brief openings of the sacred—in the theological context where I don’t go it is part of the mysterium tremendum, fullness to overflowing.
Goodness speaks for itself and is implicit in beauty; Earth is better for the presence of what’s here, desert beauty, best known directly in silence. Of course, everything natural that Earth and life have given is good; I highlight the goodness of this desert place out of particular love.
Rightness as: “Of course, what else could be here? or be better, more fitting? could possibly do it with equal fervor?” I am invited to join and be part of it, with the manners of a guest.
The Intelligence to attract and engender in communion, knowing its place and needs and what belongs to it. Through its assemblage of parts a unity: giving, receiving, living and dying in rhythm.
[An addendum: By coincidence, a few weeks after I was drawn to the above observations, I read a planning document for a new nonprofit group that I support and have a strong allegiance and affection for—undoubtedly because I had considerable familiarity from thirty years before with the people and events that motivated its formation—and in a section stating their Values I found these listed: Intention, Simplicity, Beauty, Respect, Community. I was struck with the compatibility, the continuity, between these values and my observations, which seem as suggestive of a modern version of Aristotelian-type goods and virtues as I can imagine. All reach toward a Eudemonic vision of lives lived toward flourishing and excellence in ethical and intellectual dimensions. I discovered my five qualities implicit in a desert landscape; those from the plan I referenced mean to guide a new group of people forming themselves into a community aimed at doing good work for good reasons purely because it is good that it be done.]
**Arrived Death Valley yesterday, entry from south on 178, my favorite approach. It seemed, after I crossed the mountains and moved north in the valley itself, that there was way more bright white mineralization covering more of the valley floor than I remembered. Must ask about this. Lucked into one of the few good campsites within the Furnace Creek area, not including the reservation-only campground. It has always seemed to me there’s too little of plant growth within these camps and insufficient thought went into their layout. Good campgrounds should be simple while abundant with native vegetation and not crowded and ugly. I’ll stay for six days.
From Joshua Tree to Organ Pipe Cactus to DV: each so different—rocky granite prominence and Joshua trees, then floral riot (relatively speaking), and now extreme austerity bounded by high mountains and strange colorful geologic productions. After three desert weeks I’ll be ready for the Sierra Nevada but I fear it won’t be ready for me. There are still many areas snowed in with more on the way and cold along 395. Weather allowing, I’ll drive it slowly north, cross the Sierra at Carson Pass, and be home late next week.
A few weeks ago I happened to read someone’s recollections of Jonathan Schell, the good man he was, and the fine and important books he wrote, so I ordered the re-released The Village of Ben Suc, his 1967 account of American destruction of a Vietnamese village of 3,500 people thought to be infiltrated by, if not allied with, the Viet Cong. Like the whole damned war it was calamitous, violent, and clumsily done, not to mention unnecessary, counterproductive, and wrong. I was six months from graduation and first marriage (its own calamity) and had spent the last couple of years protesting the war and knew I would soon face the draft and might be ordered to add my efforts to the disaster, which I didn’t think I morally could do. A very difficult time that probably doesn’t need review; after four years, two refusals at Army induction ceremonies, two rejected applications for classification as a conscientious objector (my rural Texas draft board couldn’t fathom my ignorance of the Communist menace we faced), one appearance in court, and untold anxiety, I turned 26 and was no longer eligible for drafting under the rules of that time. My belief is that the nature and ultimate fate of the U.S. was largely determined at its beginning in the early 17th century when European colonists began importing slaves and killing Natives, and the more proximate shove toward its fate began with the growth of American militarism after WWII that led to this war—a disastrous lie-fueled fraud that demonstrated just how violent, ignorant, and vicious we could be and, once again, as with slavery and genocide, never reckoning with what we’d done and just blundering on in the same fashion. The size of the calamity and the deceptions, I think, were enough to wreck trust, optimism, and even hope and, combined with subsequent socio-economic changes, lead to gross inequality and the virtually exclusive valorization of wealth and power accumulation at the putative leadership level, eliminating anything morally good as a national goal and further fragmenting society. And now it’s 2025, and look at what we’ve come to!
I don’t have phone access here so went down to the developed area to email Lynn and let her know I’d arrived safely. As the news-related emails landed in the inbox after my ten days of innocence I read headlines and felt my spirits fall. The incessant display of opportunism, seediness, and degradation, of violence, grasping, and lying—what a sight and what a contrast with what I’d been part of the last couple of weeks. One of the few articles I opened and read was about corporate CEO types and their take on Trump so far. Some supported him and always had, some had converted into a supporter, others were withholding judgment, but all appeared to agree that while he might be a buffoon, moral vacuum, and bad for the country, he was good for corporations as he would cut taxes and regulations and obviously sabotage governing and administrative effectiveness. Party time, in other words, and not exactly patriotic or ethically-minded were they. Don’t know how I could have been even a little bit surprised but I was. These people are part of the leader class and have turned out consistent with its traditional low and self-centered character, just like their compeers in the petrochemical industry who are intent on wrecking the climate, reaping the profits, and passing the consequences on to their children and grandchildren. In response, I intend to terminate all my news subscriptions and avoid as much awareness of current events as I can. What I can’t change I must accept, but I don’t have to read about it. My equanimity is too important to me, especially at 79.
I don’t know how common it is historically, but it seems to me that those of us born at the end of WWII (I arrived only a few days after Hiroshima and Nagasaki and have always been anti-nuclear [even pacifistic] politically, a coincidence, I suppose) and looking over the decades since have to wonder what we accomplished: on balance, has it been to the good or not of life that our cohort passed through? I have a hard time avoiding the conclusion that it’s a worse world than we entered with war (briefly) ending and relative peace at hand. I like to believe that my work as a clinical social worker and later in animal protection were some small counter-friction (in the Thoreauvian sense), visible in individual instances but not on the whole. If, as I speculate, the die was cast 400 years ago (in the U.S.; among Homo sapiens as a whole it may have been a few thousand years ago), there’s been time for a better kind of people to see what was happening, to face themselves and reject delusional interpretations, and to correct course. But we wouldn’t earlier and won’t today. So instead we’re fractured within and without, irredeemably I suspect, with lots of talk about religious convictions but no evidence of their active ameliorative presence, and no serious talk about ethics and the essential mutual care and respect that keeps a citizenry intact, healthy, and happy. Those CEOs I mentioned are the model for how things collapse.
I want to think about what it means emotionally, even “existentially,” to a generation such as mine that approaches our end time with this knowledge and the responsibility that goes with it. Accountability is too diffuse and perhaps pointless, although self-awareness means that many individuals such as myself cannot avoid wondering and shaking our heads with sadness. If others feel as I do, that we’ve lived mostly responsibly and ethically and that our lives were a “success” and mostly satisfying, we have to consider that our picture of the whole is missing something, that it’s more complicated than a summation of individual lives can measure. And of course, it is. For instance, some lives are more determinative than others. Systemically, a few are given more control by far than others. Thousands of satisfied lives don’t neutralize one President set on conquest or grossly wrong in his decisions or engulfed in corrupt self-centeredness. (The moral of this story: never let anyone accumulate excessive power or wealth and when authority is needed and vested monitor it scrupulously if you want to protect your society.) So, 80 years after WWII and massive changes—often called progress by some—I am saddened and almost out of words. The number of “X-risks” allowed to lurk over us may be the greatest indicator of the spiritual emptiness and passivity of our culture.
On a different note, the answer to my question about the seemingly vaster extent of mineralization on the DV floor this year is that it’s not much more extensive than in the past but rains have caused more to percolate up where it is and winds have kept it swept of dust and whiter than usual. This, compliments of a volunteer in the Visitor Center. (I did her job in the Yosemite Valley Visitor Center for many years during the aughts and enjoyed it immensely. Being helpful is very satisfying.)
Back to my thread of thought, I was going to begin with “western cultures” but since I know the American version best I’ll use it (also it tends to be more extreme in its follies since at least WWII). It seems to me we have a conflicted relation with limits and the idea of limits, especially moral limits, mostly seeing them as impediments to be gotten around. For some limitations that is surely true, ignorance for example. But more often than not we need limits and unconsciously seek them. It’s a matter of how they are built or accepted and understood. I think of this now because three weeks living in this van camper is a series of lessons in spatial limits and the awareness that must arise else spillage and breakage will. Also external limits like weather, which may make me alter my route home from 395 up the eastern Sierra, often at high elevation, along which I had hoped to dawdle until turning west to cross at Carson Pass and go home. It’s still winter up there, cold, snowy, and windy: too much for my van to risk. And there are the limits implied by commitments and membership in communities, in the obligations of friendship and ethical consciousness. And many more, of course.
I looked north this morning and saw a fierce black cloud that I thought might bring deluge to DV but that instead cleared (sort of) leaving heavy snow on the mountain tops. This is a disappointment but perhaps compensated by spending a day in Yosemite Valley if I have to go the southern route across the mountains. Closer contact with natural limitations brings closer contact with natural reality and that is good: it helps with perspective and humility and respect for the world we inhabit although not at present in the most fruitful, benevolent, and spiritually mindful of ways. In fact, we don’t so much inhabit the Earth as pause to exploit it as if on the way elsewhere.
Yesterday Twig and I hiked up my favorite nearby little mountain. About three miles roundtrip and 4-500’ high. It has horizontal lineaments, is dark brown in the top layers, and has prevailing sandy-colored gravelly surfaces below with buttress-like extensions and a fairly flat top. The trail winds up on the back side of what I see from camp starting out. It didn’t used to be particularly strenuous but in my present condition it is (speaking of limits). Over the years there’s no counting how many times I’ve gone up. I love its perspective. (Taking Twig of course breaks the no-dogs-on-trails rule but she is small so I think only venial sin if caught, but we never are.) There was a large raven on a rock column separated by a few feet from where I usually sit on top. I gave him additional space as I could see he was uneasy. As he moved to walk around to the opposite side from me I saw that he was injured: hanging wing on left and feathers disturbed on right one. How did he get up here; how will he get down? What happened to him? He didn’t seem able to fly. He stayed on the other side and I didn’t see him again. He may well die up here. When taken by a predator animals resist, up to a point, and when dying like this raven for whatever reason (attack by hawk?) I am convinced of their calm acceptance that death has come. They are fully embedded and in tune with Nature and death is no aberration at any time. It’s an attitude I’ve long striven for and I think accomplished. The human kind of consciousness, however, is always able to imagine alternatives and tends to feel exceptional, and it is probably these that cause people to suffer so as they contemplate their death. For me, the known process of changing from intact me to dissolution into parts and being taken up and carried on in other lives is enough to negate fanciful flights and accept reality, to embrace it.