Earth Abides

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“

A real cowboy's hat

The machines men are so intent on making have carried them very far from the old sweet things.”
― Sherwood Anderson

 “Some men are daylight readers, who peruse the ambiguous wording of clouds or the individual letter shapes of wandering birds. Some, like myself, are librarians of the night, whose ephemeral documents consist of root-inscribed bones or whatever rustles in the thickets upon solitary walks.”
~ Loren Eiseley

  When I look at the horror show that is this human urbanized life we live, this chimerical civilization, these meretricious modern times, I wonder why I participated in it for so long, believing in its values, succumbing to its ersatz allures. 

It's baby antelope season!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Nature is part of our humanity, and without some awareness and experience of that divine mystery man ceases to be man. When the Pleiades and the wind in the grass are no longer a part of the human spirit, a part of our very flesh and bone, man becomes a kind of cosmic outlaw, having neither the completeness and integrity of the animal nor the birthright of a true humanity.”
― Henry Beston

 “The physical world is entirely abstract and without actuality apart from its linkage to consciousness.”
― Sir Arthur Eddington

“The universe looks more and more like a great thought rather than a great machine.”
― Sir James Jeans

Maybe it's just me, maybe my personality, or perhaps my northern European barbarian ancestors and northern American Indian ancestors calling to me from the ancient past that still exists somewhere in this quantum universe, but when I return from the hurley-burley of the human-centered world to Mother Earth as she was for all of time before this now, I feel a thankful relief, as if some great pressure pushing down on me has been lifted.

Although I've lived and worked in the world of men all my adult life, now that I am absolutely free of it, I am experiencing a peace of mind, a contentment and, dare I say it, a happiness I was missing. I did not know I was missing it.  But now I do.  And now I can't live without it.  Plus now I have all day every day with the fruit of my loins and can watch them grow day by day, teach them, provide an adult example for them, play with them, and just know they are around and so am I.  I can also be available to assist my parents should they need a bit of help, and I do enjoy interacting with them.  I can also be of service to other relatives should the need arise.  And I help out around the ranch as I am able to.

So I am busy and there are plenty of demands on my time. Each day flies by and before I know it I am closing curtains and turning on lights. And when it's time to go to bed just about as soon as my head hits the pillow I am asleep and don't wake till morning.  Before, I often lay awake for hours, my mind racing, thinking about the day past, planning the day to come and the many days afterward, worrying about all sorts of things, often things I could do nothing about, or do nothing about until they actually transpired, if they ever did.

“It is eternity now. I am in the midst of it. It is about me in the sunshine; I am in it as the butterfly in the light-laden air. Nothing has to come; it is now. Now is eternity; now is the immortal life.”
― Richard Jefferies

“What is this thing called life? I believe
That the earth and the stars too, and the whole glittering universe, and rocks on the mountains have life,
Only we do not call it so--I speak of the life
That oxidizes fats and proteins and carbo-
Hydrates to live on, and from that chemical energy
Makes pleasure and pain, wonder, love, adoration, hatred and terror: how do these things grow
From a chemical reaction?
I think they were here already, I think the rocks
And the earth and the other planets, and the stars and the galaxies
have their various consciousness, all things are conscious;
But the nerves of an animal, the nerves and brain
Bring it to focus; the nerves and brain are like a burning-glass
To concentrate the heat and make it catch fire:
It seems to us martyrs hotter than the blazing hearth
From which it came. So we scream and laugh, clamorous animals
Born howling to die groaning: the old stones in the dooryard
Prefer silence; but those and all things have their own awareness,
As the cells of a man have; they feel and feed and influence each other, each unto all,
Like the cells of a man's body making one being,
They make one being, one consciousness, one life, one God.”
― Robinson Jeffers

“I won’t see this year again, not again so innocent; and longing wrapped round my throat like a scarf. 'For the Heavenly Father desires that we should see,' says Ruysbroeck, 'and that is why He is ever saying to our inmost spirit one deep unfathomable word and nothing else.' But what is the word? Is this mystery or coyness? A cast-iron bell hung from the arch of my rib cage; when I stirred, it rang, or it tolled, a long syllable pulsing ripples up my lungs and down the gritty sap inside my bones, and I couldn’t make it out; I felt the voiced vowel like a sigh or a note but I couldn’t catch the consonant that shaped it into sense.”
― Annie Dillard

I still can't really grasp how large the ranch is, especially when considered with the tens of thousands of acres of BLM and state land we lease in addition to our own holdings, from foothills to snow-capped mountains to plains and prairie, fertile valleys to barren badlands.  I could saddle my horse, load a pack horse with supplies, set out in whichever direction I felt like and pass out of sight of the workings of man, aside from the trail or abandoned wagon road I follow, in very short order and not see them again for weeks.  And, should I choose, I could make my way cross-country, following no trail, though that can require serious concentration when the terrain gets rough or when it begins to climb.  But if the elk and antelope can traverse the trackless wastes, so can a horse and rider.  Were I a hunter, I would encounter enough game to keep me well fed, though I would be content with less bloody fare.

I have veered off a trail and ridden across a prairie and then begun an ascent of the foothills only to discover old blaze marks on trees, healed over by bark ages ago but still visible, telling me that the path I've chosen is a logical one selected by others long before me. So, reassured, I continue on, spotting other blaze marks as I keep to the natural trail.  And should I climb above the tree line, there are old ducks (rocks stacked atop each other) showing the way to the pass, and a downward path to a lake or pond, damned by beavers once before they were hunted out by John Jacob Astor's men two hundred years ago, but now preserved by rock and tree falls and silt build-up.  In some places, they (the beavers not Astor's men) are making a come-back and there are fresh beaver dams here and there.

Once, a cowpoke looking for strays that had gotten themselves into some very rugged country took a break in the shade of some rocks that formed a shelter from the weather and his glance by chance fell upon a pouch woven of fiber. Picking it up, he felt its heft and, opening it, discovered flints, knapping tools and arrowheads.  Being of Indian stock himself, he replaced it where he found it, apologizing for disturbing the spirit who guarded it.  Does that sound silly?  It doesn't to me.  Looking around, he saw a faded petroglyph. He touched it with his hand.   Above him, he saw the rock was blackened by smoke.  Some time later, taking a class in archaeology at the local community college, he mentioned to his instructor his find and together they went to the site, finding the remains of what appeared to be a single night's campfire, the pouch and the petroglyph.  Carbon-dating revealed the site to be between 800 and 850 years old.  Explaining it to me, after saying this, the cowboy paused, looked away, then said, "That's ten thousand full moons ago."  Eight-hundred years doesn't seem so much.  We think we can grasp it.  But ten thousand full moons?  Can you encompass that with your mind?  Would the comparison have occurred to you?  Do you even notice the moon?  The man whose life and work is in nature as God created it does. The moon waxing and waning, season after season, over and over and over again...beyond what the mind can understand. And then there is a man, traveling alone perhaps, seeking shelter for the night.  He makes a little fire.  He eats. Maybe he watches the moon. He sleeps. In the morning he moves on, forgetting his knapping pouch.  He never came back for it. Why not? It was valuable and necessary to survive.  Did he make the petroglyph or was it there when he came?  Did he put his hand out and touch it?

I could drive out some old rutted, abandoned road as far as my four-wheel drive would take me, park it, shrug into my frame pack, sling my rifle over my shoulder, and head for the high country, or maybe follow a stream as it meanders along, cutting canyons here and there, wading or boulder-hopping through their cool shadows, then emerging into bright sunshine, all the while keeping a wary eye out for bears.  Where the land opens up, I may find myself  passing through herds of antelope, elk or buffalo, flushing pheasant and grouse, and where marshes and ponds are, there are moose. And ducks and geese, herons and sometimes egrets and cranes. Of course, deer are everywhere. As are coyotes.  Resting in the shade of a tree, I may hear the scream of a mountain lion.  If it's close, it sends a jolt of fear through me and I feel for my Winchester, the touch of it reassuring. I thank again my grandfather for teaching me to shoot by tossing old tobacco cans into the air or side-arming them skittering along the ground, ordering me to "shoot the head off Prince Albert!" And by-and-by I could. Every time.  My grandfather believed that a good hunter only needed to take three bullets with him: one might be a dud, and, were his game-shot somehow unlucky, he might need that third to finish off his quarry -- but shame to him if he did.

I could leave the truck I left behind unlocked, the ignition key in the glove compartment or dangling from the rear-view mirror. No one would come along.  And if someone did, he would not bother anything. He might leave a note saying he'd passed by and to blow the horn if I needed him for anything.  He'd write down the date, too, in case I came back a week later so I would know he was long gone.  Being long gone is now all that I wish to be. 

 “In the world there is nothing to explain the world. Nothing to explain the necessity of life, nothing to explain the hunger of the elements to become life, nothing to explain why the stolid realm of rock and soil and mineral should diversify itself into beauty, terror, and uncertainty. To bring organic novelty into existence, to create pain, injustice, joy, demands more than we can discern in the nature that we analyze so completely.

Hope this won't be "last photo before she was eaten."

In the world there is nothing that is truly explanatory. It is as if matter dreamed and muttered in its sleep. But why, and for what reason it dreams, there is no evidence.”
~ Loren Eiseley

  “Since the first human eye saw a leaf in Devonian sandstone and a puzzled finger reached to touch it, sadness has lain over the heart of man. By this tenuous thread of living protoplasm, stretching backward into time, we are linked forever to lost beaches whose sands have long since hardened into stone. The stars that caught our blind amphibian stare have shifted far or vanished in their courses, but still that naked, glistening thread winds onward. No one knows the secret of its beginning or its end. Its forms are phantoms. The thread alone is real; the thread is life.”
― Loren Eiseley

  “There are some delightful places in this world which have a sensual charm for the eyes. One loves them with a physical love. We people who are attracted by the countryside cherish fond memories of certain springs, certain woods, certain ponds, certain hills, which have become familiar sights and can touch our hearts like happy events.
Sometimes indeed the memory goes back towards a forest glade, or a spot on a river bank or an orchard in blossom, glimpsed only once on a happy day, but preserved in our heart.”
― Guy de Maupassant

“I will shed no more tears like a spoilt child.
For whatever happens we have had what we have had. No one can take that from us. And I have been alive, who was never alive before.”
― Daphne du Maurier

  

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The radio play Earth Abides, adapted from the novel of the same name by George R. Stewart, first broadcast over the CBS radio network's sustaining series Escape on November 5 and November 12, 1950.  Worth a listen.

Earth Abides, Part I 

Earth Abides, Part II