Always some part invisible

[greenstorm]

I've been leisurely reading my way through the Sand County Almanac. It's one of the foundational American/western texts in anything related to my disciplines: forestry, conservation, and farming will all find it in a curriculum somewhere and a bookshelf somewhere in an office.

You know, I've spent all my life being close to computer folks since I was close to any folks at all (since I guess I was 14 or so). These folks work within a human-created world, most are from the city and like it there, many can be enormously creative within their realm. The ones I get along with often have a humanities lean to them: a philosophy or English degree in their background, interactions with pagan spirituality or philosophy, a strong community construction streak, something or a couple things like that.

For years I've been trying to say: I think people need more exposure to the natural world. People need to be exposed to things they can't control, that aren't built for them, and that they can't blame on other people. They need to learn humility: that there is a larger system which dictates, not just success or failure but also life or death.

I say this and I say this and everyone disagrees: oh, but coding is complicated, sometimes you can't even predict everything. The fact that anyone can argue this proves the point. These are systems we choose dependency on, and that choice is everything. And so it's lovely to come across Aldo Leopold, someone who thinks deeply and lovingly about the natural world, agreeing with me in an offhand comment.

Aldo Leopold writes:

‘Around the bend now came the cause of his alarm: two boys in a canoe. Spying us, they edged in to pass the time of day.

What time is it?’ was their first question. They explained that their watches had run down, and for the first time in their lives there was no clock, whistle, or radio to set watches by. For two days they had lived by ‘sun-time,’ and were getting a thrill out of it. No servant brought them meals: they got their meat out of the river, or went without. No traffic cop whistled them off the hidden rock in the next rapids. No friendly roof kept them dry when they misguessed whether or not to pitch the tent. No guide showed them which camping spots offered a nightlong breeze, and which a nightlong misery of mosquitoes; which firewood made clean coals, and which only smoke.

Before our young adventurers pushed off downstream, we learned that both were slated for the Army upon the conclusion of their trip. Now the motif was clear. This trip was their first and last taste of freedom, an interlude between two regimentations: the campus and the barracks. The elemental simplicities of wilderness travel were thrills not only because of their novelty, but because they represented complete freedom to make mistakes. The wilderness gave them their first taste of those rewards and penalties for wise and foolish acts which every woodsman faces daily, but against which civilization has built a thousand buffers. These boys were ‘on their own’ in this particular sense.

Perhaps every youth needs an occasional wilderness trip, in order to learn the meaning of this particular freedom.

It's old writing. There is so much of me that he can't imagine. Still, this part of me that never has company, the part of me that is so different from most folks I've known that I no longer fully accept the category of human: that part feels seen.



*I wouldn't even disagree that on the whole society is another natural system and so interacting with society is a subset of interacting with nature: it's beyond everyone's individual control but not outside the realm of our influence and learning.

Comments

[graydon2]

I'm sorry for the extent to which I've perpetuated this sort of feeling in you. Or argued the point. Agree there's much to be gained from encounters with systems outside any human's control. Glad Leopold at least is some company.