If you look up when crossing a small, intermittent stream in the Badlands that I know about, under the overhang of a forty foot sandstone cliff that forms the north bank in this section of the stream, you will see the residences of a colony of Cliff Swallows. Some of these small spherical dwellings have become damaged over the winter. The swallows went to warmer climates for the winter. I trust they will return to their traditional summer homes to hatch and raise their next generation of youngsters.
This summer I will try to learn whether they repair their damaged homes or simply build new ones, assuming, of course, that they return to this, what appears to me, a very user-friendly cliff dwelling. The cliff faces generally south; the overhang shields the clay-sculptured dwellings from rain, or hail, or quadruped predators. The afternoon sun warms the cliff face, protecting the young from the chill of night. The sandstone’s roughness and irregularity provides good surfaces on which to build.
I first noticed this cliff dwelling one time when Dan and I were moving the buffalo herd; and we crossed the stream beneath this cliff. I happened to look up. Then I began wondering how these birds first located this cliff? How long have they been coming here? Do they ever just abandon a dwelling site? Do they ever become lost? Do any animals get lost? Maybe birds become blown off-course and perhaps a bison or reindeer is left behind for whatever reason on their migratory treks. But lost?
The first time we turned our buffalo herd out on the US Forest Service grazing lands, the animals acted as if they had returned home after a long period away. In fact it had been more than a few generations of absence; so my thinking as bent to the concept of genetic memory. The buffalo seemed to know exactly where they were—not ever having been there before—physically. So, no, not lost, not a “stranger in a strange land;” but yes, home— again, finally.
People become lost and when lost, disoriented. Something in the mental make-up of the human being creates a need not to be lost and a passion, nearing panic, for finding one’s way, for achieving the comfort of NOT LOST.
Perhaps that has something to do with our vulnerability to the weather, to the susceptibility of becoming a prey specie. That may be one of the prices we pay for being human. Another one may well be an almost uncontrollable terror of being isolated, alone, lost; so we build an infrastructure of communication, travel, commerce, and dwellings that effectively (sort of) removes us from considering that we are still vulnerable to the natural world. We accept that vulnerability only when it is forced upon us.
Our brain has guaranteed that we have lost what we may well have once had—a sense of wildness that permits us to be at ease in a wilderness world, that does not contain a sense of lostness, that admits a lethal vulnerability in a world we cannot control, in a world we cannot improve, in a world that the main thing we can do is destroy.
Ah, to be yet a human being and also, as such, to be a little more like a peregrine falcon, a White Rhino, an American Bison.
Comments 6
You folks are so fortunate to have chosen to spend out your lives as you are. Any room in the Inn?
Ah, the cost of self-reflection.
Perhaps some of us in moments of mental tumult, feeling we repeatedly suffer tempestuous, disorienting buffetings, longingly fantasize experiencing the relatively simple life of the buffalo or raptor. But, who among us would not miss even melancholy estrangement once the metamorphosis had taken place? Who would not most immediately lament the moment when such a Satanic deal was made?
you speaketh like you cometh from another planet….ah the pleasure of being understood without guessing.
Gervase,
Your essay reminded me of a short story by Pete Dunne, “A Peregrine Going South for the First Time Again.” The story tells of a first-year bird’s migration from Alaska. It closes with the line, “She was restless to return to a place she had never been but would recognize when she got there.”
I believe humans get lost because we have disconnected ourselves so much from nature. Our instincts and neural pathways have atrophied. Somewhere along the way we stopped passing the necessary information from generation to generation.
Each spring for the five years we’ve lived here, we’ve watched as a pair of red-shouldered hawks nested in our woods. We’ve seen courtship flights, mating activity and the growth of the youngsters from fluff balls to masters of the air.
A male showed up a few weeks ago, circled the nest for a few days, calling, then disappeared. The weather has been clear and warm for days. Looking across the yard to the nest today, it occurred to me that they are late. I know they are not lost, so I’m left to wonder.
Spring will come whether the birds arrive or not. But without them I will lose a small connection to the rhythms or the natural world. And I’ll feel a little more lost.
I think frequently that our wilderness and public lands wouldn’t be getting so ravaged if more of the population took time to experience it and realized it’s value for our souls…. how we and “it” are one. I’ve had people say they have no interest to be out of sight from the roof tops… again, the fear. Yes, we are vulnerable to nature in many instances, but the wholeness you gain from knowing it is the closest you’ll get to understanding yourself, I think. I seek the wilderness and “awayness” whenever I can just to feel complete. Talk about feeling oneness with your Maker!
I celebrate the fact that I am not “alone” in my love of the wilderness and open spaces; its obvious I am in the best of company here!
Gervase, can you refer me to a few really good books on the history of South Dakota and/or the Lakota?
Thanks,
Doreen