This week’s nature walk was, ahem, a nature adventure. Being the dork that I am, while taking out the garbage I accidentally locked myself out, and subsequently spent two hours outside waiting for my boyfriend to return home with his key. (not a shining moment I realize)
Anyway, I suddenly understood how Thoreau could sit in his front door all morning without doing anything, although I was clothed. Anyone who says they spent quiet time outdoor in the woods is either lying, deaf, or really self-centered. I was struck by how noisy it was, and aside from the cars on 41, we don’t have any ‘big game’ animals around where I live generally. When you have nothing else to focus on, even the space between blades of grass makes noise.
Watching the woods, I found the source of one of the noises: my neighbor’s free range chicken. It clearly escaped from her unfenced yard and wandered into the woods behind my building for whatever reason. It reminded me of the beginning of Leopold when he follows the skunk. “The skunk track leads on, showing no interest in possible food, and no concern over the rompings or retributions of his neighbors. I wonder what he has on his mind; what got him out of bed? Can one impute romantic motives to this corpulent fellow…” I tried following the chicken for a while, but it didn’t follow any sort of trail or pattern (I think her chickens are a particular brand of stupid but that’s not the point…they dive at cars) and I eventually had to give up. But it got me thinking about the ways in which humans interact with animals, particularly my neighbor’s stupid free-range chickens. I don’t think she eats them actually, I think they’re more like pets, which in itself is a very interesting relationship. I was curious enough to follow the chicken just as Leopold was intrigued enough to follow the skunk track, although he didn’t have the actual skunk there. We wonder what animals are doing and are limited in our understanding because we have only our human terms to interpret their actions. I don’t think chickens or skunks wake up in the morning and think about going for walks to visit other creatures as part of a neighborly ritual, but we as humans lack their instincts and mindsets to understand it any other way. What do they think of us? Was my neighbor’s chicken actually following a human’s tracks through the woods (of which there are many trails and such from kids making shortcuts to the lake) wondering what it was doing?
Leopold doesn’t really address the motives of animals, which I like; he only tells us what they are doing, not what it means. Can someone as close to nature as Leopold or Thoreau interpret what they are doing better than someone who lives inside and spends all her time in a university? How close to nature do we need to be to develop an understanding of it, even if that understanding is shadowed by our human understanding in the first place?
Having locked myself out many a time I really identified with Kelsey's post. However, I have never had the good fortune to do this where a neighbor has chickens. I am glad that Kelsey actually followed them, not only was it amusing it was also dedicated. I to wondered why Leopold identified so much with nature and animals.
ReplyDeleteI thought that perhaps because he spent so much time in the woods observing and interacting with them. I did not realize that he did not give them motives until Kelsey pointed it our here. I looked back at what he writes about in regards to them, and he humanizes them in a way that makes them tangible. I think that the reason why he does not give them motive is because he has such respect for them that he would not want to put his ideas in their heads.