 |
||
|
Approaches to the Natural World: Karen McDonald Vandrovec1 The term postmodernism is thought to have first appeared in print in Architecture and the Spirit of Man (Joseph Hudnot-1949), but it was not until the late 1970s that the term began to be routinely used in artistic circles. Many believe that the transition from modernism to postmodernism signaled an epochal shift in consciousness, corresponding to unforeseen changes in the contemporary social and economic landscape. As modern culture was pushed by a need to come to terms with the industrial age, the post modernist world has been driven by a need to accommodate the techno/electronic age. The ecological revolt that came alive in the 1960s could not sufficiently distract a public caught up in the corresponding consumerist frenzy to bring home the latest techno-marvel. One of the most disturbing characteristics of postmodernism is ambivalence about the effects that "progress" has had on the environment. In addition, the prevailing disconnect between people and nature in the urban setting has spawned certain unwanted social manifestations. Terms such as "couch potato," "road rage," and "going postal" describe symptoms. Research has begun to study the effects of the artificial environment on children, as nature and natural objects are, more often than not, treated as decorative elements. Fortunately, there are voices calling to us from the mountains and the prairies. They ask, "Is this what you agreed to have happen to your world, the world in which your children and your children’s children must live?" Linda Hogan, Terry Tempest Williams, and Loren Eiseley emerged from distinctly different backgrounds. Linda Hogan is a Chickasaw writer, by virtue of her culture attuned to cosmologies that revere all manifestations of Nature. Terry Tempest Williams sprung, a wild seed, in the garden of Mormonism. The Mormon church is a latter day movement of pioneers, well-connected to place. Williams is an esteemed conservationist and activist. Loren Eiseley was an anthropologist and academic who believed that the answers to the important questions could be found in the body of Earth. He spent many years searching the high plains, deserts, and mountain caves for clues to man’s beginnings. Eiseley seemed to believe that it was possible to uncover the source of all life, but on the final page of The Immense Journey, there is a concession of sorts. He writes:
We can observe the growth of a plant or a star or a child, even capture it on film with time-lapse settings, but we cannot say what causes life to happen. Scientists confess that they do not know what causes the heart to pulse, not in the fetus or the sparrow. In contrast, they are rendered particularly powerless when life and breath withdraw from the body. In Refuge, Terry Tempest Williams experiences that same sense of helplessness. Loved ones are drawn prematurely toward the "exit." Environmental pollutants are suspect. We watch as she goes through the stages of grief. The known physicality of the natural world is, for whatever reason, as close as we are allowed to penetrate into the mystery, and it is to nature that she turns. The beauty of that relationship flowers from the pages of Refuge:
The aggressively conditioned western mind drives us to seek order among the fragments, to piece together rational answers. Our children have now become accustomed to searching in cyberspace for answers, while our greatest poets lead us back to the natural world. Williams reads her weakened and dying mother a favorite poem by Wendell Berry:
The natural world is our place of rest, and earth, air, water, and fire could be thought of as the proverbial "gatekeepers." Eiseley could go no further, in his search through the most ancient matter dug from the dregs of the earth. He searched and searched for the origins of life, and never gave up. Williams accepts and falls into the embrace of nature. And, in the remarkable book Power, by Linda Hogan, the wise woman/healer Ama Eaton has come to an understanding of life, death, and power gained in isolation with the natural world. She has no fear of life or death. After her banishment, the young protege dreams:
In Power, Ama has sacrificed herself for the good of her people. She faces death wearing her best dress. There is no fear. She has discovered that there are no limits between one thing and another yet, neither has she found the giver of life. She points to rocks and says, "those are teeth of a larger thing, we live in the mouth of something. I don’t know what it is. All I know is we’re as small as weevils" (Power 136). In fact, all three writers make reference to a sense of unity between themselves and nature. Eiseley describes climbing out of a cave in this manner:
It is heartbreaking to read words that end all pretension. They overpower all concerns of false importance. Williams, in the depths of her mother’s battle with cancer writes:
In the new millennium, we don’t speak of "going back to nature" much anymore, the wild places have been commodified as with most things. It was intriguing to examine the overall positioning of people, in relation to the greater natural world as written in these three books. Eiseley, representing the male perspective, mocked his contemporaries and all of western civilization for parading around as if we are the highest form of intelligent life that has ever been or ever shall be. His insistence that we are from the same primordial slime as the most exotic deep-sea dweller was made clear by a near glorification of the word "ooze." He was able to identify with all levels of life, but proceeded as one locked out of Heaven having become bored in the ruins of Eden. The setting described in Power seems an isolated world. I thought of it as a world encased in a clam shell. The rest of the American continent does not seem to exist. To be correct, Hogan writes of two worlds that, like tectonic plates, exist in an uneasy comfort. There is the world of the small town, with public school, grocery store, dress shop, etc. In contrast, the Taiga people of the Panther Clan have retreated to the backwood swamps with the alligators and wild cats. Industrial pollutants are chewing away at both worlds. Ama, watching the sky for portents, resurrects the notion of mankind as an amusement in the jar of a child in some distant world. Though able to communicate with nature, the Panther people seem to be at the mercy of modern as well as ancient forces. In Refuge, Williams matches her stride with that of nature. Her extended family includes the bird kingdom. She is quick to answer a call to stewardship as there are threats to be addressed. Rather than the typical disconnection, the stresses of cancer prompt her to connect more immediately with nature. The Earth may be the breast of life, and she has been poisoned. These books represent a range of voices, but when it comes to reverence for the Earth they speak with one voice. I heard a scientist say that as species disappear, the Earth from space appears to be losing life. Dying. We are one with that. Will anyone stop long enough to listen?
Eiseley, Loren. The Immense Journey. New York: Random House, 1957. Hogan, Linda. Power. New York: Norton, 1998. Williams, Terry Tempest. Refuge. New York: Random House, 1991.
Atkins, Robert. Art Speak: A Guide to Contemporary Ideas, Movements, and Buzzwords. New York: Abbeville Press, 1990. 1 Written for semester coursework with Beatrix Gates. |
||