Back to Nature April 2010

It may be that the wonderful feelings we experience about that nature connection are a Western luxury. Wasn’t there a guy, maybe Maslow, who said you can’t appreciate nature, or any other kind of beauty, until your other needs are met? I sort of remember a triangle, with food, sex, shelter, comfort, etc., tapering up to the top. But I always thought he missed the point, because the cave paintings to me represented a basic need for art that I think is universal. My time here in Ghana has made me re-examine all of that. I was immediately surprised by the lack of landscaping, color, etc., in a place where I expected to see a profusion. Maybe I expected it to be more like Jamaica, based on climate, British colony, etc., But it’s not. (On the other hand, because of that British influence I expected good gin, excellent tea, and tonic water. Not happening here.)

It may be cultural, but I just can’t figure it out. For about seven to 10 minutes at a certain time in some evenings, the light changes everything into this luminous glow that is like nothing I have seen. And I thought the violet glow from the sun setting behind Haleakala was as good as it gets. There are sometimes sunsets visible from my porch that just take my breath away, but people don’t understand what I am excited about. There is also their curiosity about my home, and they sometimes overlap. For example, a genuine question, Do you not have sunsets in your country? And, Is this moon the same one you see at home? There is a huge lack of knowledge about just basic geography, but there seems to be something else in play as well.

Some of the Peace Corps art teachers have given a good example. They announce this is individual or independent art time, give a kid blank paper and paint or colored pencils, and wait for the result. There is none. The kid explains, but you didn’t tell me what to draw. Our teachers are absolutely the best, and they are making changes and modeling different ways, but they have all commented on the same experience.

Since I have been at site I have seen few if any birds or butterflies, but that is changing with the season. I recently saw eight butterflies in one day, and each of them was spectacularly different from the others. And there are now more than 100 small yellow birds in one palm tree outside my front door at six every morning. I just stand and gawk, and people going to fetch water ask what I am doing. I point out the birds, and the response is a Ghanaian version of, “Yeah. So what’s your point?” And the last two weeks I have seen things starting to bloom, so there are big swaths of color where there were just various shades of green.

I get letters from hikers at home about the fall colors, or from kayaking friends about being on the delta with the herons, and I get a visceral kind of jealousy. It’s not that there isn’t beauty here, there is, but maybe there’s just no one to share it with. In the way we would share at home, as we both or all experience one of those moments. A single heron, or a flock of geese heading south, or the way the trees on some Sacramento streets explode with beauty in the spring and fall. I remember when I was on campus, I would have a severe attack of hyper-aesthesia at the way the fall colors blended with each other as I walked the quad.

Maybe this business about being one with nature is hard to get to if the regular experience is one where you are losing. The ants, the termites, the mosquitoes, the house that’s melting in the rain, the crop that is failing because now there is no rain, etc. I know at home we think farmers have a special bond to the land, and I still think so…even in the days of agri-business, but the guy picking grapes for minimum wage may not think so. I just don’t know. But I wish you were here, and we could have a real conversation about it all.

When Christo wrapped a lot of the Napa Valley in white parachute silk, I took Kelley out of school and we drove to see it the last week when they were taking it down. We were stopped on a dirt road at the end of a long driveway, and the farmer walked down to get his mail. He was a lot like my dad, dark from the fields, not very communicative, eyes taking in everything. We howdied and shook, and I asked what he thought of the fence. He had started back up the drive, but he turned around and said, “Well, I thought it was pretty stupid.” Long silence, then , “But I sure am gonna miss it when it’s down.”

Enough for today. The whole point of a blog is to be here now, not come back and edit, and polish, etc. Have a good day. And enjoy the sunset.