Crow Planet by Lyanda Lynn Haupt

Author:Lyanda Lynn Haupt [HAUPT, LYANDA LYNN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: NAT004000
ISBN: 9780316053396
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2009-07-26T16:00:00+00:00

With this is mind, I turn back to my own disgruntled helper at the nest, who, in spite of her scowl, trots dutifully behind me, handing me clothespins as I hang the load of lightly colored things out to dry in the warm spring air. I can almost smell the smoke as Claire’s question stews and brews in her nine-year-old brain. Knowing that she herself is learning by watching the habits that might inform her own future household, and perhaps those of generations to come, I feel the clothespin in my hand grow suddenly hot and ominous. My little crow’s seemingly simple question is a good and deep one. Why am I doing this? We talk about voting and other cases where a seemingly small action has wider resonance. We talk about ethics: when we know what we ought to do, what difference does it make what anyone else does? Whence does our action properly spring, from knowledge of a certain outcome, or from doing what we believe is true and good and beautiful? We talk about how satisfying it is to accomplish something using just the sun and no machine at all. We talk about how other people might notice what we are doing and decide to do it themselves. We talk about how pleasant it is to be outside with clean, wet laundry, how good and stiff it feels when we bring it in, and how the wooden clothespins make such a nice “tink” when dropped in the bag. Claire remains skeptical about the global ramifications of our activities but has nevertheless become a clothesline evangelist, touting the ecological and philosophical good of the line and the plight of the salmon to all and sundry, including the woman at Target buying dryer sheets in the middle of a sunny spring day. In the end we leave the question why? an open one, as indeed it must remain.

If I could draw a line for her, I would—a line between our lives, our homes, our habits, and wild nature. Here, here at this point, our actions spill out into “nature,” into the earth. Here they remain contained. In a time of ecological crisis, our boundaries would be so much clearer, our responsibilities laid bare. We could keep to our circle and launch spirited crusades to “save” the rest. But our homey thresholds are flimsy and marginal. They represent the point from which we cross into nature and—distressingly, sometimes—the point at which nature crosses back. No matter how mightily we maintain our fortresses, they remain shockingly semipermeable. Our tidy interiors are visited regularly by spiders, bees, carpenter ants, molds, House Sparrow nests in the rafters, and squirrels in the attic. There is rain that comes in, dust, shafts of light, the disembodied wings of dragonflies. Now and then a bird. Less frequently a bat. * My friend Melanie left cat food inside the back door and discovered a raccoon eating it. My sister found a possum in her bathroom. In Africa

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