nature – Page 3 – Being Finite

Nature often saves me. The trees outside my office building catch infinite shades of light; hummingbirds zip by improbably close; hawks redefine effortless. The non-human-created gets me out of myself in a way nothing else does.

Last weekend I found a new-to-me park with a trail that led past the “Hazard: Unsafe Bluffs” sign down to the collection of rocks that served as a beach. It was one of those glassy ocean days when it looks as if you could skim sunlight off the water’s surface. The sea was receding, leaving tide pools in its wake.

I squatted down to look at one of the pools, little more than a puddle really, and was initially unimpressed: some wavy pink plant, a lot of snail shells, a few closed up anemones. I stayed, though, and after a time previously inanimate objects began to move, first only a few and eventually most of what had been stationary.

Crabs ranging from small to borderline microscopic stood up underneath those supposed snail shells and started scuttling about with them. What I’d thought were pebbles encrusted on the outside of the anemones sprouted tiny legs and joined them. Some sort of mini lizard-fish made short, intermittent darts here and there. A many-legged creepy-crawly that resembled those you don’t enjoy finding in your bathtub appeared and moved in random, short bursts, miraculously never running into the lizard-fish. And finally some creature who resembled nothing more than a few grains of sand stuck together began bobbing about.

The tide pool couldn’t have held more than a few gallons of water, and yet it supported this exquisite and astonishing abundance of life. As I’ve said before, I sometimes worry we’re going to wipe out ourselves and the rest of the world through various forms of stupidity or inattention. I understand the scientific delicacy of ecosystems. But the sheer amount of life in this splash the ocean left behind gave me hope that creation is bigger than our stupidity and inattention and not likely, however improbable it seems, to be overcome by the likes of us.

Hope can be difficult to locate. Our destruction of the environment often appears insuperable to me: global warming, overpopulation, impending lack of fresh water, and to top it all off my own propensity to drive too much and use too many paper towels.

My Spirit Play group recently visited Piedras Blancas Light Station, a 136-year-old lighthouse on the California coast (Spirit Play group: women who gather to do playful things that feed our spirit). We thought the point of the trip was to see the lighthouse, but the highlight turned out to be the surrounding bluffs, which put forth a dazzling display of fuzzy yellow flowers—aptly named wooly yarrow—interspersed with clumps of an unusual white lupine and spurts of purple seaside daisies.

In 2001, a heartbeat ago geologically speaking, non-native iceplant covered the entire area. A group of dedicated volunteers cleared nineteen acres by hand, a little over fourteen football fields’ worth.

Today, native vegetation has made a complete recovery, and, as our guide said, the critters have returned. The volunteers didn’t replant or bus in brush bunnies from the surrounding hills. As soon as they removed the iceplant, the native grasses and flowers began to grow. When the wooly yarrow, dune buckwheat, and others had taken sufficient hold, the animals followed.

I don’t understand this resurgence any more than I understand where fruit flies come from. There are no flies in my house; some fruit rots; voila, fruit flies, as if they spontaneously create themselves or pop through a wormhole. Though bunnies and bobcats seem too solid to explode fully formed into existence, the revival of an ecosystem in such a short time gives the feel of the miraculous.

I find this transformation heartening. We don’t have to fix it all. If we clear away what we’ve allowed to grow over our earth—or our hearts or relationships—the natural beauty already waiting beneath will spring up and amaze us.