Pressure Change
Seated indoors before dinner, some friends and I were continuing our ongoing conversation of the human relationship to wilderness when we felt the air turn chill. A cool breeze, persistent as a wind yet gentle as a feather, stroked our cheeks. The conversation halted; our eyes met, communicating in silence. All four heads angled toward the door to inquire the messenger's secret. The breeze bid us turn our heads toward the window for it heralded a climatic shift.
The sun had been shining since 4 a.m. and had warmed the land around Auke Bay sufficiently to finally dry mowed lawns and even elevated patches of moss climbing up the bases of trees. I had read John McPhee's Coming Into the Country outside under the warm sun this afternoon. The University of Alaska Southeast grounds crew had turned on the sprinklers with reason for once.
In an instant, the barometric pressure had dropped over Auke Lake. The air became active again, tossing young trees and older boughs about. Birch leaves fluttered like wind chimes designed for the hearing impaired. The breeze shaped the water's surface as glaciers carve valleys from rock. We awaited the storm.
The clouds we had seen obscuring Mendenhall's icy slopes have now descended over the lake. The towering spruce sway in the wind, groaning as their boughs rub. The blueberry bush beside me shivers beneath the icy touch of fine rain.
A gust of wind slaps my face: the land has been communicating with and through its inhabitants for two hours now--well, at least that's how long I've been listening. Prof. Jeff Nunokawa suggested to his Social Character of the Victorian Novel class that communication is the practice of secular faith: the hope that the interlocutor will "get through" to someone. The land would seem to have a natural faith in the populations it sustains.
Were we to listen to the voice carried on the wind and let the land "get though" to us, what would our environment say? Climate changes with pressure, but so does society. Policy which affects the sustainability of the planet is subject to the whim of the social environment. For societal pressures to shift, individuals will have to observe the wildness which is around them. Through observation and experience comes appreciation.
As John Muir writes in his Travels in Alaska, "the eye is called away into far-reaching vistas" yet "where there is no distant view [...] your attention is concentrated on the objects close about you" (13, 12). The human eye opens in wonder and scrutiny; in tandem, a neurological dialogue ensues offering perspective after reflection.
*John Muir, Travels in Alaska, 1915, San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1988.
The sun had been shining since 4 a.m. and had warmed the land around Auke Bay sufficiently to finally dry mowed lawns and even elevated patches of moss climbing up the bases of trees. I had read John McPhee's Coming Into the Country outside under the warm sun this afternoon. The University of Alaska Southeast grounds crew had turned on the sprinklers with reason for once.
In an instant, the barometric pressure had dropped over Auke Lake. The air became active again, tossing young trees and older boughs about. Birch leaves fluttered like wind chimes designed for the hearing impaired. The breeze shaped the water's surface as glaciers carve valleys from rock. We awaited the storm.
The clouds we had seen obscuring Mendenhall's icy slopes have now descended over the lake. The towering spruce sway in the wind, groaning as their boughs rub. The blueberry bush beside me shivers beneath the icy touch of fine rain.
A gust of wind slaps my face: the land has been communicating with and through its inhabitants for two hours now--well, at least that's how long I've been listening. Prof. Jeff Nunokawa suggested to his Social Character of the Victorian Novel class that communication is the practice of secular faith: the hope that the interlocutor will "get through" to someone. The land would seem to have a natural faith in the populations it sustains.
Were we to listen to the voice carried on the wind and let the land "get though" to us, what would our environment say? Climate changes with pressure, but so does society. Policy which affects the sustainability of the planet is subject to the whim of the social environment. For societal pressures to shift, individuals will have to observe the wildness which is around them. Through observation and experience comes appreciation.
As John Muir writes in his Travels in Alaska, "the eye is called away into far-reaching vistas" yet "where there is no distant view [...] your attention is concentrated on the objects close about you" (13, 12). The human eye opens in wonder and scrutiny; in tandem, a neurological dialogue ensues offering perspective after reflection.
*John Muir, Travels in Alaska, 1915, San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1988.
posted by Palmer Seeley | 6:37 PM
2 Comments:
To think that the environment and man can communicate is an idea in itself, yet I congratulate you on wondering what Nature would communicate if there were a greater number of forms to communicate by. Such a grand thought commences the beginning of profound and affluent discussion. To take an even greater in-depth step, perhaps what the environment would say would be based on the necessity of dominance, just as most everything on this earth strives for such an accomplishment. Dominance is the essence of survival. Therefore if there were a plethora of avenues to communicate by, would it be too grand an assumption to state that the environment’s first “words” would be used to establish its dominance over humanity?
With such technological and scientific studies underway, man may be able to control the environment on a small scale. However when confronted by its complete and gargantuan force there is no way to control its presence. With such knowledge would man continue to yearn for a greater means of communication than touch, smell, sound, and sight? Would man attempt to create a means of discourse that resembles the words we so dearly use now? Are the means of communication enough; are there better forms of communication than words? After all, man is not born knowing the written language; it is taught this special brand of correspondence. Without such a language would comprehension be effortless or would it take more effort than writing or directing the travel of words?
I write this from a computer on the second floor of a building, secluded from the environment. The only bit of environment I can see is through the tinted window that I must stretch my legs to reach a position in which they are in my line of sight and even that has a paved and painted parking lot. Therefore I do not know if my comments amount to much, seeing as how I am far from the environment at the moment. However I do wish that any who have possible answers to the questions posed above to post them on this very finely designed and written site. Mr. Seeley, I commend you on such a wonderful presentation.
Thanks for your flattering comments and your powerful commentary. I look forward to picking up the threads of this conversation when we get back to school. Shall we picnic on the quad and talk about a truly modern mode of discourse by which to communicate with nature more fully and therefore more readily? You have set me thinking about what the aim of a course on nature writing should be: to identify a new kind of communication with our fellow citizens which facilitates the dialogue nature hopes to have.
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