Still Waters and Waters that Flow

Much nature writing exhibits the melancholy of Heraclites, the weeping philosopher, who wrote:

“Into the same river we cannot step twice, for other and still other waters are flowing.”

The message in so much nature writing is that biology and ecology reveal that nothing is permanent, change is inevitable, things do not repeat themselves.

Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote:

“The truly apocalyptic view of the world is that things do not repeat themselves. It isn’t absurd, e.g., to believe that the age of science and technology is the beginning of the end for humanity; that the idea of great progress is a delusion, along with the idea that the truth will ultimately be known; that there is nothing good or desirable about scientific knowledge and that mankind, in seeking it, is falling into a trap. It is by no means obvious that this is not how things are.”

Wittgenstein was not a nature writer, of course, but his apocalyptic view is recognizable in so much nature writing today.  The message in so much nature writing is apocalyptic – we live on the eve of the end of time, of life, of nature, of wilderness.

Thinking about apocalyptic writing leads me to think about such writings in the Bible, writings that say we live on the eve of the end of time.  In the Bible they are mixed with other writings, less frightening writings, with words that reassure.  Recalling Heraclites’ words about flowing waters leads me to recall the reassuring words in Psalm 23:

“He leads me beside still waters and restores my soul.”

I hold this expression up in my mind next to the expression of Heraclites.  In one the waters are still and in the other the waters are flowing.  Paradoxically, both expressions make me weep.  I love them both – the still waters and the waters that flow, the waters that restore and the waters into which we can only step once.

The photograph, which was made on Christmas eve in a forest on the side of a mountain, shows a depression on the top of a boulder that has formed a basin and is filled with water from winter rain and snow.  Meditating on the still water in the basin, I saw the reflection of the sky and remembered that the water will rise up out of the basin and return to the sky on a warm day.  It will not be there when I pass by the boulder again.  Melancholy Heraclites had such meditations about the flow of waters and about how we can only step into them once.  As my wife composed this photograph, I studied the reflection of the sky in the water and I thought about the words of Heraclites.  I thought about the water in this small basin that will flow away into the sky as a metaphor for what I fear will happen to wilderness – it was an apocalyptic thought.   Then, catching myself before falling into sadness, I recalled the reassuring words of another ancient Greek sage, Parmenides, who wrote:

“It is all one to me: where I am to begin; for I shall return there again.”

It is such a beautiful thought, such a fine expression of hope.

I do worry that things will not repeat.  Yet, surely it is not absurd to pray that we shall all return somehow, and be one again – boulder, water, sky, forest, mountain and me.

Aloneness and At-oneness

Wilhelm Kempff once said, “No other musical instrument is as wonderful as the piano. One is alone with the music.” When I read those words in the essay that accompanies a Deutsche Grammophon recording of him playing several Beethoven sonatas, I knew from my own experience that feeling of being alone, or even, at-one with the piano and the music.

Monks and other admirers of wilderness have long and often said that in the wilderness one is alone with God. I know that feeling too.

Such feelings are connected – piano and wilderness, music and God, aloneness and at-oneness.

It is fashionable today to say that all we know of reality, if there is such a thing at all, is caught up in language, somehow, at-one with language. I know that feeling too, if it is a feeling. It is a powerful notion.

I have been thinking about evolution lately. The idea does make us quite at-one, or alone, with wilderness, and surely there is a connection, a link, between our music and the music of birds, our language and the moans and chatter of the other creatures.

But where is God? In the music or in the piano? In wilderness or in solitude? In language alone? In natural selection at-one?

The Ecology of Sir Francis Bacon

“That the state of knowledge is not prosperous nor greatly advancing; and that a way must be opened for the human understanding entirely different from any hitherto known, and other helps provided, in order that the mind may exercise over the nature of things the authority which properly belongs to it.”

That is how Sir Francis Bacon, in 1620, explained why humanity should embrace the scientific method as its epistemology.

It once sounded so beautiful, so right.

It makes us feel uneasy now.

Manzanita by Boulder

The manzanita in this photo live at the edge of a dense grove of oak and cedar and pine. Through the branches of the manzanita the top of a boulder reflects blue light from the sky in the early morning. Just beyond the boulder the land begins its thousand foot descent into the valley below.

These manzanita by a boulder on a ridge and the grove of which they are part, lonely and private, compose a place like Edwin Way Teale described in Lost Woods – a place that “recalls the mood of a lost enchantment.”

Here coyotes howl at night.