Non-Human Beings

I’ve just had a horrible week — my dear wife was in the hospital for six days, my daughter 1,000 miles away was having a crisis of her own, Trump was terrorizing the rest of us, and the rain (and hail!) wouldn’t stop for more than an hour at a time.

I felt anxious and despondent until I took a walk down my country road during one of those hour-long breaks from the rain. There in the canyon stream stood a grey heron, looking for a meal, then looking at me.

Ever since I moved to this house thirty-six years ago, herons have qualified as a good omen. Their slow, graceful wingstrokes always catch my attention — Ahh, it’s a heron! — and they have flown over my house, my car, and my head at auspicious times. This latest sighting awakened and cheered me, restoring me to a more hopeful feeling about the days to come.

I understand, of course, that the heron is not there to serve as an omen for me, but is simply an uneasy neighbor who wants me to walk on by without saying hello. I understand, too, that the birds that I feed at my window feeder do not appreciate me; that the bunnies who flee at the sound of my front door are here to eat my plants and to have babies who will eat my plants. For all of their indifference, however — maybe even because of their indifference — I’ve always cared more for animals in the abstract than human beings in the abstract.

Yikes, what does that mean? It means that I’m moved more by the suffering of innocent animals than by the suffering of somewhat complicit human beings. I’m more upset about what global climate change is doing to whales and moose and fish and bees and amphibians, those countless species that are being driven to extinction, than I am about the overheated people in Phoenix, Arizona. I’m not proud to make this confession — some people would think it horrible, even traitorous — but it’s true. Human beings are a savage and highly sophisticated species, in whose hands our Earth has the great misfortune of resting. The more of history I read, the more I see the ubiquity of that savagery and sophistication across human cultures and terrains. This is why I hold no real hope for the prevention of climate catastrophe. I love Uncle Joe Biden for trying, under the most difficult circumstances — and I thrill to news about the “30-by-30” plan to protect 30 percent of the planet’s land and oceans by 2030, with fifty nations signed on to participate. . . . But then I read about the Heritage Foundation’s insane new environmental platform, which is becoming official policy for the Republican Party — May they all soon know what it feels like to belong to an endangered species! — and I laugh bitterly. It would be next to impossible to overcome global warming as a unified human race, so how can we possibly do it with such lying motherfuckers among us?

How, indeed? With rooftop solar panels? Check. By mowing less to give the little creatures safety? Check. By avoiding plastic bags? Check. By measuring our environmental footprint with each step? Check. By saving up for an electric car? Check. All of my environmental wokeness is utterly inconsequential, however, as long as China launches two new coal-fired power stations per week and America continues to drill, baby, drill.

Living on an acre and a half, one hundred miles north of New York City, I can at least pretend that the natural world endures as it was during my Queens, New York childhood, when I learned about ethics and compassion by reading Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty twenty times and about the sorrows and sufferings of death, as well as the mysteries of birth, by witnessing them both with my cat, Pokey.

My mother-in-law, a true urbanite, could not understand our decision to move out of New York in 1984. How could we be leaving the greatest city in the world, just to live among trees! “They’re not our team!” she said.

But it turned out to be easy. I had always, always craved greenery more than granite. Thirty-nine years later, I’ve still never been to the Metropolitan Opera, but I’ve heard the chilling sounds of a fox shrieking and a screech owl wailing. I’ve never been to Peter Lugoff’s for a billion-dollar steak, but I’ve seen coyotes and bears lope across my my territory, my 1.5-acre range. I know that I’ve missed hundreds of great art exhibits, but I’ve seen more sunsets and shooting stars than most museum-goers. I don’t get to strut my stuff on the High Line very often, but for three years I walked a gloriously beautiful Newfy named Elsie off her leash in woods and along abandoned railroad beds every day of her life. And while I’ve enjoyed visiting Paris, Venice, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Nairobi, Barcelona, and a dozen other famous cities over the course of my years, my travel bug always yearns more for the Rocky Mountains and the national parks.

How about you?