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"Within wildness is the preservation of the world"
- Henry David Thoreau
by Isaac Cunningham
When I think of Mexico, I envision the yellow-breasted meadow lark flying at sunset. I venture to the water's edge where cattails stand thick on converted range land. A small group of birds begins the ritual. I see ten or so pairs of black wings in a mixture of flapping and soaring on an invisible Tilt-a-Whirl suspended over the pond. The silent ducks gaze up with the same awe as myself. To the north is a great horned owl perched on the highest leafless branch in sight. The owl waits for sundown and the hunt. It waits for the larks to settle.
Now there are thirty or forty orbiting. In the distance I see more; black dots preparing to double the numbers already present. In an instant, they fill the sky towering above the core group weaving rhythmic ellipses in open space. One by one the new arrivals still their wings and fall like autumn leaves in deciduous country. They swing in delicate freefall until the pendulum of the flock absorbs their individuality, and they all move as one. With each revolution, the birds turn flat to my vision nearly vanishing before curving sideways to display their full size.
As they pass close to the ground, the weak ones tumble away from the edges in the typical leaf-like form, though the group size appears undiminished until the skyline transforms into desert pastels. The dominant females circle longest and nestle down last, displacing the weak ones in a roar equal to any city street.
I realize I cannot place their beauty into words; I can merely describe the mechanics of the flight. How the birds danced is not important. The experience shifted my consciousness giving me a new appreciation for life.
The birds bestowed a glimpse into nature which created an alternate time and space. After the display, I lingered, unable to return to my life. I contemplated the migrant foragers following the daylight, and the owl patiently waiting for its passing. I contemplated birds on landscapes, comparing their flight and necessities to my own. My needs are fulfilled to the point that I cannot tell the difference between need and desire. I have never searched for a resting place at twilight so instinctually fearful of death by predation that I force the weak to the fringe. What gives me this disconnect?
Are my instincts and genetic make-up designed to lounge about during the sunset unable to move merely because of visual splendor. Am I separate from nature because I do not ride the edge between life and death? My brethren of closest genetic relation have covered the globe displacing and marginalizing other life forms in order to distance themselves from the line of hunger. I do not constantly fear death because I share the rewards from prosperity of culture and industrial revolution.
Evolution (the dominant paradigm of biology) determines the fitness of particular species as a function of the longevity of life and reproductive capability. Humans have maximized both these categories, surviving the hottest deserts and coldest arctic steppes, battling for ground in the jungle and on prairie through innovation and communication more than adaptation. Our reproductive capacities are driven by hormonal addiction which link pleasure and copulation. This combination of frequent reproduction and survivability almost anywhere propels our population upward at an exponential rate. The success of cultural is now being upset by our biological evolution. The plight is not etching out a means for survival, but solving the greater social problem of overpopulation. All of our prosperity is the result of population density creating innovations for technological advancement. Now the trait most advantageous to the species has become the problem. Society must find a way to balance our need for higher quantity of life with higher quality of life.
Quality of life involves recovery of the natural processes of the world. In order to build our modern society, people displaced natural ecosystems faster than most species could adapt. Survival for other species has entailed finding value within an anthropocentric culture, in order to gain a scrap of empathy and assistance.
The extreme example of this is animal domestication now an integral part of human culture. Life is easy for dogs and cats who are given food for nothing but an ounce of civility. But the wolf and the jaguar remain true to their evolutionary track since they do not worship humans for their survival? They still possess a wildness which is unachievable by a house pet. We forget that Fido and Jingles are the pathetic weaklings of their respective genuses who were marginalized in the past by the dominants and would be killed and eaten today if not for human intervention.
One of the failures of national attempts to preserve wild creatures is the sacrifice of their wildness. The elk and deer in Yellowstone unafraid of tourists are nearly domesticated. We don't seem to have any qualms with raccoons who live off human garbage, but as soon as bears wander into Yosemite and rip open somebody's minivan for a Milkyway, the bear is deported as a criminal for not being wild enough to eat its own food. National Parks fail to provide adequately for the animals because the parks are still for people, not for animals, despite any propaganda saying otherwise. Wilderness Areas are better, but despite what public lands rancher Steve Boise says, cattle are not wildlife even if they have never seen a human. If there is ever going to be preservation of wilderness, it must be for the sake of the wild without concessions for human and bovine usage. Preservation of wilderness requires more than elimination of machinery from the land. Wilderness should imply danger like it always had until predators were extirpated in the last century. Humans and their pets should be subject to predation and natural selection just like anything else. In order to cease the unnatural selection of forest clear cuts and toxic watersheds, humans must give up absolute power and honor their place in the natural world.
Wild ecosystems must behave naturally, unperturbed in order to sustain themselves. Wildness is essential for the survival of non-human life, and it will protect and perpetuate a higher quality of life for all. Wild lands and wild life deserve our honor and respect instead of fear and oppression. Without a cultural shift to preserve and restore what we can, we face imminent destruction at the elimination of the wilderness.