Imaginary Worlds

The below essay is a combination of two different responses I wrote for my Environmental Writing class this semester as well as about a page of new material. Hopefully the seams don't show.

One of my formative literary experiences was when my mom read The Lord of The Rings (the whole trilogy, plus The Hobbit) aloud to my brothers and me. Going a few pages every night over the course of about three years, she captivated my imagination and instilled in me a lifelong love of fantasy literature. I love stories that weave together mythology, adventure, and magic. I love the way a good story can allow me to escape the stricture and tedium my of particular place and time and transport me into a world of new ways and possibilities.

Good fantasy stories are dependent on what is known as "world building" -- the creation of an otherworldly setting that is both compelling and coherent. To create the novel The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien first had to create its world, Middle Earth. Before becoming famous for his novels, Tolkien was best known for his landmark translation of Beowulf. Drawing on his training as a linguist and his vast knowledge of Northern European mythology, Tolkien created an authentic saga set in a world that never was. His extensive notes include reams of poetry and songs that his characters might know, places, histories, legends and lineages, linguistic sketches of the tongues spoken by elves, orcs, dwarves, and dragons. Some of this immense preparatory work made it into the text of the novels, other parts made their way in to appendices and supplements such as The Silmarillion, and some of it will likely never see the light of day, but all of it informs the tone and setting of the series and helps make Middle Earth feel like a real and vital setting. However, Middle Earth is not a perfectly conceived setting and there is one particular piece of supplemental material that, despite its iconic status, has always troubled me. The map.




You've likely seen it, either as crabbed mass of black lines at the start of one of the paperbacks or as one of the glorious full color posters that adorn countless dorm rooms and English classrooms. In many ways it is like a traditional European map. It has a North/South orientation with a scale and compass rose and place names written in a distinctive Old World font. It boasts a squiggly coastline, pointy cross-hatched mountains, meandering rivers, dotted-line roads, and forests represented by abstract trees with circular tops. It looks like countless medieval maps and makes the world of Middle Earth feel real, yet the paradox of it is that it depicts a world that does not exist and, indeed never could.




It starts with the mountains. Ranges run in perfect little lines and delineate territory about as naturally as a suburban picket fence. They start and stop in accordance with no earthly plate tectonics and exist in a state of ambiguous elevation. Mordor is boxed in on three-and-a-half sides by a near perfect square. Rivers run parallel to the mountains or pass right between them. Sometimes they seem to run uphill. The countries are ill-defined and out of scale - just names squeezed in helter-skelter on the blank parts of the map. Whole nations are dwarfed by doodles of mountains and trees. There is no latitude or longitude, no impression of the distortion inherent in squeezing a round Earth onto a flat page. In short, it is a false Earth. A place built of people and symbols and stories that could not exist in our mundane reality. We really should know better than to ask where all the farmland is or how come the distances on the map rarely match the travel times in the story, yet the power of fantasy, its allure, is that though we know it is an imagination we cannot help but conceive of it as if it were real.




This is a lesson we can (and should) carry into the real world. Every day, we get up, take a peek at the big old world around us, and see what we expect to see. We're not delusional or incapable of processing new information, but rather we are stuck trying to navigate the earth with a map every bit as stylized and suspect as the one of Middle Earth. When we look out the window, we don't just see grass or bushes or pooping birds or skulking felines. We see lawns and hedges, pests and pets. We see the vital and living world of our senses, but also a complex of symbols, ideas, and rationalizations about what we're seeing that exist nowhere but in our minds and the stories we tell each other.





We thirst for knowledge, for fulfillment, for a sense of the world and our place in it, and all of us, whether or not we identify as storytellers, seek to share those experiences with others who will tread the path after us. In the process, we enrich ourselves (spiritually, if not commercially). However, there are dangers inherent in the act of holding ourselves up as guides and beckoning for others to follow.




I could tell you any number of stories about nature and life in general: stories about fields and fences and trees and people and ecosystems and all those other words we use to demarcate specific configurations of organic and inorganic matter. These stories could be compelling, insightful, dramatic, and everything else a proper story should be. If I did my job right, you would be able to hear these stories and map the thing in your mind without ever seeing it, but that imaginary map would be no realer than the one Tolkien drew. All the words in the world could not show a blind man what a tree looks like.




At this point, you may be getting ready to ask a question familiar to every fantasy lover: if it's not the real thing, then what's the point? Why tell stories about places that don't even exist? Why talk about Middle Earth or Narnia or Humboldt County or America? Even the “real” things on that list only have names and boundaries because people made them up. Is our quest to chart, catalog, and characterize the natural world really a process of discovery, or do we merely progress through a series of ever more convincing illusions?





One may well question if the desire to share our experiences of nature is valid at all if the result is merely to deprive others of the very experience we are attempting to share. Walker Percy argues something very close to those lines in “The Loss of the Creature.” He writes powerfully and compellingly about the issue of “sovereignty” of experience. Sovereignty does not mean simple ownership it means ruling over a place or idea and subjugating all others who might lay claim to it.






By describing a place, an object, or a living thing, we are labeling it and the label can and often will supersede the real thing in the minds of others. When Francisco X. Alarcon describes “God bless America” as a “chauvinist” statement, I believe he is alluding to this same mental process. America, in, his words, means all the contiguous lands from Alaska to Patagonia, so its appropriation by the citizens of the United States of America represents an abnegation of the sovereignty of the broader “American” community – that is to say all those nations on the American continents that, by way of symbolic inconsistency, are simultaneously “American” and not.






However, there is an inescapable contradiction inherent in the use of symbols. No matter how we scorn them, we are helpless to avoid them because they are so essential to the way we communicate that as soon as we discard one symbol we immediately begin crafting its replacement. In such a way, deconstructionism can become an iconoclastic Orobouros feeding off its own hunger for newer, more precise symbology. Why should be the definition of “America” Alarcon prefers be any more or less valid than the ones he decries? The mountains don't care. The coastline won't change if the USA drops the A. The only ones who will even notice are people.






Yet we would notice, and we would care, and it would bother us like a scab that just has to be scratched no matter how we tried to ignore it. Consider this. The alleged linguistic theft that Alarcon and many others are so bothered by occurred more than two centuries ago. Since the founding of the nation, the United States has called itself “America.” For most of that time, it's been the only country where that was true (the American Civil War and the brief lifespan of the República Federal de Centroamérica appear to be the sole exceptions), yet there are still plenty of other “Americans” who aren't ready to concede the issue.






This is a purely symbolic conflict. We're not talking about countries here. Contries are big solid things with trees and mountains and cities and stuff. Rather, we're talking about the idea of a country – a comforting shared illusion we've all adopted because maps look weird if they don't have names and borders on them. Five centuries ago, America already existed, even though it wasn't America yet.






Imagine a world where one or the other group of Americans wake up tomorrow, decide to start calling the place New Funkyland, change a few maps and street signs, and call it a day. Everyone gets used it and pretty soon the word “America” is just be an interesting bit of trivia we learn in our New Funkylander History classes.






Obviously, that would never happen (usually you at least need a war or two to change these things), but why shouldn't it? It's just a word, an intangible symbol, something to put on the maps. Why is it so very important to us? In a word, because we're human. Because we need that symbol, we need that map to prove to us that there is an America and it is ours.





Ownership of a place, or even of the experience of that place, is a thorny proposition, yet like the thirsty hiker who comes upon the blackberry bush, our desires and compulsions are such that we will all too often grope forward with both hands, heedless of the barbs and snarls.






We can only speculate on the roots of this compulsion.






Perhaps it's prideful chauvinism and we, like Adam before us, are naming the animals (and everything else) so as to assert our dominion over them.






Perhaps it's fear. Fear of the unknown and the unknowable. Fear that if we do not call the Earth the Earth or America America, those things will cease to be those things and we will cease to be the people who called them those things. Perhaps we're right to be afraid.









I don't know what to think and I'm afraid that any answer I did give you would be just another empty symbol, another unwelcome insertion of one man's imagination into a natural world that has no time for such things. Maybe the best we can hope for, when facing the great big world out there, is that our eyes will stay sharp and our minds will remain cognizant of the fact that what we are seeing is greater than anything we could ever describe with mere words.

The Arcata Airport Field in January

From the sketchbook (need inking apparently)

Notebook 10: Camouflage. Start of November

It's about time I ended my role as observer of nature and went back to being a mere participant, but I have one last experience I'd like to share. It so happened that I was standing at the corner of Johnson Lane and Central Avenue, just across the street from the airport field. It was a chilly afternoon on its way to become a cold evening. The sky was mostly painted in shades of gray and cutting wind kept insinuating itself under my coat, but there was enough rays of sunlight peeking through to keep the day from being too unpleasant.

I was not trying to observe nature, but rather was out there to smoke a cigarette where I wouldn't bother (or be bothered by) my roommates. I had never been much of a smoker before, but more than just the weather has changed since I moved up here and it's amazing how quickly boredom and listlessness can lead to some truly bad habits. So there I was, half-smoked American Spirit in my mouth, inhaling long drags of natural, organic poison, stopping occasionally to flick away a bit of gray ash (I try to be a good environmentalist and always hold onto my butts to throw away later, but this sort of pollution is easier to justify because it's biodegradable. I doubt the plants like it though.), when out over the airport field there came to be dozens of wheeling robins.

The robins did not seem to have come from anywhere, they simply were. One instant, it had been an empty brownish field. The next, there was a great mass of low-flying birds coming over it. Thirty robins or more came and settled on the wire of the airport fence. More came rushing over my head and landed in some high trees in one of my neighbor's yard. Some landed on the ground and started pecking at things amid the grass, but most didn't seem to be looking for food but rather had gathered there for some nebulous form of socialization. I have seen plenty of bird flocks in my time, but I'm still a little bowled over by the sheer personality these robins have. None of them seemed to be able to stay still for very long and instead they were flying from perch to perch preening and strutting and peeping while their breasts glowed the same color as the setting sun.

They kept on like this for no more than a few minutes and half a cigarette until, responding to some unknown signal, the great mass of them rose up all and once, flew back over my head, the road, and the airport fence and completely disappeared amid the grasses of the field. It was a neat trick to say the least. A few birds had stuck around in the trees and on the fence and I looked at them, seeing how the brown feathers of their back perfectly matched the tone of the dry grass, seeing how those flamboyant red breasts blended with the rusty colors of blackberries stalks and dry brush to become invisible against the backdrop of the field in the afternoon light. I stayed there for a little while burning another cigarette down to the filter and wondered if there was some place out there where I could disappear into the landscape of this place just as seamlessly as those birds and, if so, where it might be.

Notebook 9: Rust. End of October

California's North Coast is fertile ground for the cultivation of many varieties of fruits, berries, and flowering plants, but it was actually during a discussion of a somewhat seedier crop that I really began to understand what might be happening to my blackberries. It seems that Humboldt's cannabis growers (and there are a great many cannabis growers in Humboldt County) have long struggled to protect their plants from a number of destructive fungi endemic to the region. One of the blights my acquaintance described bore a distinct resemblance to the red-orange rust I had already observed on the leaves of a great many blackberry plants in the region, including those that squatted in the airport field.

Rusts are fungi that belong to the order Pucciniales. They are defined by a complex, multiphase life cycle that I can't even begin to explain here (nor would my explanation be worth much). There are thousands of species of rust that have specialized in infecting everything from coffee to chrysanthemums. According to the Pacific Northwest Plant Disease Management Handbook (http://pnwhandbooks.org/plantdisease/blackberry-rubus-spp-blackberry-rust), The last decade has apparently seen something of an epidemic of Blackberry Rust (phragmidium violaceum) in the Pacific Northwest, so that seems to be the likely suspect, but the stuff growing on the airport blackberries could easily be a completely different fungus than those plaguing cultivated blackberries and almost certainly differs significantly from those that affect the cannabis plant. However, my conversation with the grower still yielded some valuable insights.

The first is that all rusts are pure parasites. They derive all their nutrients from their host plant and don't really offer it much of anything in return. They are diseases pure and simple. In addition, most rusts are also systemic parasites. They begin by infecting leaves, but with each phase of their life cycle they burrow their way deeper into the plant, affecting buds, flowers, and then the stem itself. If left alone long enough, an outbreak of blackberry rust will ultimately affect the whole plant in a way that even systemic fungicides have difficulty addressing. After a certain point, it is virtually impossible to destroy the fungus without also destroying the plant.

Until I learned this, I had assumed that the rust I saw on the field's blackberries was simply affecting the leaves – a minor nuisance, perhaps, but nothing life threatening, but now I am coming to realize that there has been a major epidemic under my nose this entire time. The fertile blackberry brambles across the street do show signs of the rust (I am now reasonably certain they are Himalayan blackberries, a common vector for blackberry rust), but I suspect they were well established enough at the time of the infection that they will soldier on all right for the time being. I am a lot less sanguine about the prospects of the smaller, younger plants in the airport field. Before I really looked at it, I had imagined that the rust was merely common in the airport field, but now I see it is ubiquitous. Every single berry plant I looked at showed signs of infection and many, upon closer examination, seemed quite sickly indeed.

Blackberry rust stunts growth in young plants causing leaves to take on a shriveled and sickly appearance. It can also prevent stalks from growing into proper brambles and keep buds, flowers, and berries from growing at all. As the infection rages on sapping nutrients from the plants, it becomes much less likely that they will ever develop as they should and successful reproduction becomes increasingly unlikely. When I first observed the little plants in the field with their low, slender stalks, malformed leaves, and complete absence of flowers, buds, or berries, I imagined they were just children. Now I realize they are children who will never grow up.

Notebook 8: Brambles Mid October

Many of the roadsides in McKinleyville, including those around Central Avenue and Airport Road, are home to large blackberry brambles. I don't know the exact origin of these brambles as both wild growing and cultivated blackberries are a common sight in the region, but it seems plausible that they were planted to serve as hedges between people's yards and the open street. Some of these brambles have grown to be quite enormous and spill out practically into the street where hungry or merely opportunistic passersby can readily nab a decent quantity of sweet, tangy berries without anyone else seeming to notice or care. 

Presumably some of the homeowners would mind, but many of these patches seem to produce more berries than anyone cares to deal with. At this point in the season, the signs of this neglect are palpable. There are still a few pleasantly ripe late-bloomers lurking among the vines, but they are badly outnumbered by vast quantities of desiccated, inedible little gray-black masses that dangle forlornly where ripe berries once hung. These sad little rejects aren't something you want to put in your mouth (though I have, inadvertently, more than a few times during my quest for the good stuff) and lately have begun to reek like mold and cheap wine from several feet away. I have no doubt something will come along to eat them before too long, but for the moment, even the birds seem to be leaving them alone.

 

At any rate, that's the kind of blackberry plant that grows in front of people's houses. Across the street, in the little world that exists between the asphalt and the airport fence, there grows a very different sort of plant. These vines are rugged and low to the ground. They crisscross the roadside (as well as much of the airport field itself) like red veins. Their leaves are shaped about the same as their upright cousins, but only the new young leaves have any brightness to them. Those that have spent rough months hiding in the dirt and dew to escape the mowers' blades have a battle tested quality to them. They are ragged and rusty at the edges and cloudy and glaucous in center. They have lived rough lives and bear no berries. 

Cursory internet research tells me there are two kinds of blackberry varieties growing wild in Humboldt county: the lovely little native blackberries and the bigger invasive pest the Himalayan blackberry. I'm not a botanist though and field identification is hard. One side of the road has berries that might be considered on the large side. The other has no berries at all. Neither set of plants is growing in what could be considered a “natural state” and though I imagine they are members of the same species growing under very different circumstances, I cannot be certain even of that. For the moment, the question of whether the blackberry vines of the airport field are consummate survivors or implacable invaders remains unanswered.

Notebook 7: Green green grass. Early October

Well, that was dramatic. It's been a couple weeks since the rain started and though it has pretty much petered out for the time being, the long dry summer is clearly over. The puddles are basically gone and most of the clay has turned back into soil, but the airport field has started to undergo a remarkable transition. Everywhere I look, baby grass has begun to poke through the surface.

The seedlings are still only a few millimeters long and practically translucent with blades that gleam electrically like the lime wedge in a particularly sparkly mixed drink. There is a soft ambition to them. They are so thin, so fragile, yet there are tens of thousands of these seedlings in just the airport field alone and they are growing so quickly that each new morning suggests a hint of upward momentum. Soon enough these many little pinpoints of green will become a single lawn and that lawn will become tall and overgrown and someone will come around to cut it and someone else (me probably) will complain about hay fever, but, right now, it seems impossible that these tender little shoots could ever get that big. It's ridiculous -- like if you laid down a little area rug in your house and came back to find wall-to-wall shag – but no one told the grass that so it just keeps climbing toward its destiny, a few fractions of a milimeter at a time. Is it possible for plants to be adorable?

Of course, this story has a sad ending and it's written in the dry stalks above. Last year's grass had been dry and brittle, golden brown going to gray, but still beautiful on clear days when the fresh breeze sent shimmering silver wavetops rippling through the amber sea. No longer. The same rains that awakened this year's seeds has crushed the last hints of vigor from the old growth. The stalks seem grayer now against the overcast sky and the rain and wind have bent them. The field no longer shimmers as a single entity but has become ragged and patchy. Some parts stand nearly as tall as they did before, others are practically horizontal. None stand together. Like a dog shedding for the summer, or a crow in the midst of a dramatic molting, or a man trying and failing to hide a bald spot grown too large, the illusion of coherence has been broken. The incongruity of the components reveals the falseness of the whole. The tapestry has unraveled and only loose strands of dry, dead grass remain.

Each year in California, we see the passing of a generation. In San Diego, the grass doesn't usually start sprouting for another month, but the effect is the same. For the next few months (unless someone mows), the fields will have a bifurcated nature – emaciated elders sharing space with green upstarts. Come spring though, the old stalks will have mostly rotted away, the adolescent lawn will be well on its way to becoming a fire hazard in its own right, and the stray threads will be a tapestry once again. Life, death, rebirth. It's all very cyclical and life affirming. Maybe even sublime. The old grass will feed the new. The new will become the old. Everything repeats. Life is beautiful. Et cetera. So why is it that every year, as summer turns to fall, I find myself feeling sorry for last years' grass?