On Having a Daughter in the World to Come
What saddens me the most is shifting baseline syndrome. Coined by Daniel Pauly, it refers to the phenomenon that people regard the world they experienced as children as the normal state of things, unaware that the Edens of their youth were the ruins of their parents. And so on down the line. The creek where a girl caught tadpoles and crawfish now runs dry, but housed all manner of fish and wildlife in her father’s day, and a couple generations back gushed with steelhead that swelled the banks and water that spread outward into trickling streams following the tracks formed by the beavers who once shaped the west. It saddens me because people don’t fight for abstract concepts. They fight for what they love, and you can’t love what you never knew existed.
I wasn’t born on this patch of land on which I now found myself, nestled in the mountains east of San Diego. I grew up 50 miles or so to the west in a suburb marked by bland human imprint. Not much place for the natural world to take its course out there. So my baseline is somewhat pathetic. But in absorbing the history of the region (if you read nothing else in your life, read Tending the Wild by Kat Anderson), scraps of real experiences I’ve stumbled upon, and the accounts of old timers, I’ve grown into a much richer baseline than might be expected. On some level I know what this land was once, and it’s painful to understand what we’ve done to it.
While I’m not numb yet nor blind to the potential of regeneration, the conditions grow continually harsher. Many who visit this place see it as a wonderland, and compared to much of Southern California, it is. But I see the stains of decay from every angle, of woodland turned ragged and dry. Search for the oldest oak you can find and chances are you’ll witness a glorious shell of a tree, its vast spreading columns a mass of seeping wounds furrowed through by borer beatles, if not dead then barely clinging to life, its once majestic canopy spread thin. Drought and the lack of cleansing fires that two hundred years ago routinely washed the hillsides have pushed many over the edge. Just thirty years ago thunderstorms poured down weekly in the summers. But keeping newly planted trees alive through the long stretches of dust and dryness now requires a Sysiphian struggle against the pounding sun and the squirrels and crows grown lean and parched and hungry, who crave the moisture held in young leaves and bark. I fantasize about moving to some region that gets adequate rainfall nearly constantly.
That’s not to say that I don’t love this land, or at least I am trying to. I love the small frogs that hide in the pockets of garden squash, the manzanita shedding their thin garnet bark to reveal the shiny green skin underneath, the way the black oaks unfurl pink and yellow leaves in early spring, the squeak of sedge grass under the steady tug of cows. And I appreciate it for what it is not — it is not sprawl nor pavement, nor chain stores and track homes. But the markings are on the wall for those who care to read them.
And like many, I worry about the direction of society as a whole, the anger and hatred spilling over throughout the country, the natural disasters that multiply each year, the teetering of supply chains, the lies and deception of the rich and powerful, the lack of a shared reality, the failing systems and crumbling foundations. It feels as though we are standing over the edge, the only sound the weird silence of potential energy. It is clear that much is falling away. It’s scary. What will be left thirty years from now, no one knows. And in a week or so my daughter Eloise will make her appearance, and this is the context in which she will find herself, and my God it is up to me to guide her through it.
There’s iron in my saddlebags now, and no going back. Life has a weight to it, and I hope it will draw out the best in me. Being a father will certainly require all the goodness I have. In addition to navigating the brocade of ugliness that seems to adorn modernity, a parent in today’s world must play the role of the entire village. While our families live close in relative terms, they are not a walk or a bike ride away. There are no other children nearby to show her the ropes in a way adults cannot, no aunties across the road to whisk her away when Bernadette or I reach our breaking point. And when it comes time, do we send her to school, that bleak factory designed to churn out docile workers for the industrial economy? I don’t want that for her, to be shaped for grinding on the machine’s wheel. But shouldering that responsibility in addition to everything else is daunting. Much of what is worth knowing I’m just now learning myself. And would homeschooling socially deprive her? There is immense value and a rarity in intimately knowing the trees and birds and rabbits, but she’ll need to fit into the human world too, and isolation from your peer group takes its toll. There are hard compromises ahead, and steering through murky waters, and I’m not sure I’m equipped. I’m not sure anyone is.
And where does one look for guidance? Not to our culture, surely. What should be an ancient well of wisdom has gone dry. There’s little enough there of substance, filled as it is with reality tv and corporate sponsored holidays that have been drained of any connection to a specific place or circumstance of the natural world. There’s antibiotics and birth control in our cultural waters (ironic that they’re in our actual water too).
Could we fall back on religion, as many have done during hard times? I’ve felt a hole in my chest ever since I lost my faith ten years ago. People need old stories and models of being, a framework of mystery to color the material world, communal rituals that look outside the human and speak to something greater, something humbling, and the lack of all that hurts. I wish I could return to the Catholic Church. I really do. At least it has remnants of a tradition that spans a couple thousand years, and I think there’s truth to be found in its bones somewhere. But there’s nothing for me in it. It’s grown fragile and stilted and simply doesn’t resonate anymore. The other spiritual offerings on tap today don’t do it for me either — the eclectic blend of astrology reiki yoga sweat lodge past life regression stuff, disconnected as they from a cohesive framework or overarching narrative.
So what to do, what to do... I suppose the only thing to do is muddle forward, trudging step by step in an attempt to find a third way. To pull some culture and the rudiments of a spirituality from first principles. That is, from a true reliance on and reverence for the immediate, specific landscape and the multitudes it contains. To be humbled by it, learn from it, honor it in some way that feels natural and hope something of substance springs forth. To look to the myths of old cultures, who knew much that we do not, and to learn concrete skills at risk of being lost. To build a community of people who see the importance and the challenge in all this.
I’m searching for the third way with everything I’ve got, and although I feel pretty low much of the time, and fearful of the road ahead, there are quite a few moments of hope as well. We’ve got the beginnings of a proper village now that Cory and Jess live here in their van and we prepare to build a cob cottage to house them. I hope one day to gather up more friends and move onto a larger property, build a handful of small cob houses around a bustling communal space filled with aunties and children playing and people doing work that matters for its inherent value, that breathes life back into the landscape and its ecology. I feel inklings of this sitting around the fire with good friends after a hard day’s work, drinking wine I’ve made from fruit I’ve foraged. It reminds me that contentment might be within reach.
So it seems like quite the interesting world into which Eloise will soon enter, and I hope that Bernadette and I can manage to assemble a cast of characters that will give her the courage and skill and wiliness to thrive in it. I’m excited to see the natural world through her eyes, and I hope she is awed by everything in it. I hope I can teach her a thing or two worth knowing, and that, starting young, she’ll soon surpass me in knowledge and one day pull me along in her current. I hope she gets the deep goodness of her mother and her ability to be content, and from me, I suppose the stubbornness to refuse the world as it is handed to her, if she knows deep down it should not be that way.