Making More "Live Animals"

Two weeks ago, I presented a lecture at the Art College Center of Design, in Pasadena, California, titled "Aesthetics, Ethics, and Experience." It was my first attempt to respond to the question of how contemporary artists might connect the "fine arts" to society at large, and I drew from an array of sources, classical (Heraclitus; Aristotle) and contemporary (Dave Hickey; David Milch; Erik Reece), to constellate what I'd like to think Aristotle would have described as a virtuous way of being in the world (as an artist). After the lecture, one of the students remarked that it was the "most liberal arts style" approach she'd come across in art school. I appreciated her compliment, but it reminded me of the urgent need for more generalism in arts education.

As I often insist, there is a lot of beautiful and compelling artwork produced and exhibited today, but it generally lives apart from popular culture. We -- that is, those of us active in the fine arts -- are complicit in this ghettoization because we're content to carry on a conversation among ourselves. Moreover, because we've come to preference our tribe's voices over others, there is a surplus of insider commentary and critique passed off as art. Almost all of this work and wordiness is irrelevant to the world outside the ghetto walls and, because young artists are educated in this context, with little or no pedagogical emphasis on disciplines other than art theory, the art and commentary become, over time, increasingly provincial. The wellspring of this contemporary predicament is as old as modernism.

On the heels of co-curating "A Live Animal" with Selene Foster, I've been rereading John Dewey's brilliant Art & Experience essays (1934). Dewey writes, and I quote him at length because he articulates the crux of the problem so eloquently:

" [Art is today] isolated from the human conditions under which it was brought into being and from the human consequences it engenders in actual life experience. [...] Art is remitted to a separate realm, where it is cut off from that association with the materials and aims of every other form of human effort, undergoing, and achievement. A primary task is thus imposed upon one who undertakes to write upon the philosophy of the arts. This task is to restore continuity between the refined and intensified forms of experience which are works of art and everyday events, doings, and sufferings that are universally recognized to constitute experience.

[...] So extensive and subtly pervasive are the ideas that set Art upon a remote pedestal, that many a person would be repelled rather than pleased if told that he enjoyed his casual recreations, in part at least, because of their esthetic quality. The arts which today have most vitality for the average person are things he does not take to be arts: for instance, the movie, jazzed music, the comic strip, and, too frequently, newspaper accounts of love-nests, murders, and exploits of bandits. For, when what he knows as art is relegated to the museum and gallery, the unconquerable impulse towards experiences enjoyable in themselves finds such outlet as the daily environment provides.

[...] For the popular notion comes from a separation of art from the objects and scenes of ordinary experience that many theorists and critics pride themselves upon holding and even elaborating. The times when select and distinguished objects are closely connected with the products of usual vocations are the times when appreciation of the former is most rife and most keen. [...] Theory can start with and from acknowledged works of art only when the esthetic is already compartmentalized, or only when works of art are set in a niche apart instead of being celebrations, recognized as such, of the things of ordinary experience. Even a crude experience, if authentically an experience, if more fit to give a clue to the intrinsic nature of esthetic experience than is an object already set apart from any other mode of experience. [...The] trouble with existing theories is that they start from a ready-made compartmentalization, or from a conception of art that 'spiritualizes' it out of connection with the objects of concrete experience. The alternative, however, to such spiritualization is not a degrading and Philistinish materialization of works of fine art, but a conception that discloses the way in which these works idealize qualities found in common experience. Were works of art placed in a directly human context in popular esteem, they would have a much wider appeal than they can have when pigeon-hole theories of art win general acceptance.

[...] The sources of art in human experience will be learned by him who sees how the tense grace of the ball-player infects the onlooking crowd; who notes the delight of the housewife in tending her plants, and the intent of her goodman in tending the patch of green in front of the house; the zest of the spectator in poking the wood burning on the hearth and in watching the darting flames and crumbling coals."

Amen, Mr. Dewey...though I'd add that the "primary task" to "restore continuity between" works of art and the everyday is not only the obligation of the art writer; it is also incumbent upon the conscientious artist. Artists need to make art that connects to common human experience, and both artists and art writers need to communicate more effectively with the general audience.



I thought of Dewey's argument when watching a video of Scottish cyclist Danny MacAskill that was recently shared by a friend on Facebook. The video offers a more visceral (and therefore meaningful) aesthetic experience than most of the contemporary art I've viewed in the last weeks. An acrobat with his bike, Macaskill is Dewey's "live animal," "fully present, all there" because of he has honed his craft and is, as we often hear athletes put it, "in the zone."

Can contemporary fine art inspire people to exclaim, as one person did in the comments under my friend's Facebook posting of the Macaskill video, "That's crazy & beautiful!"? Can artists again enthuse the general audience?

I believe that we can, and I hope that I can one day have an opportunity to design (or help to design) an undergraduate or graduate art curriculum that prioritizes generalism and social responsibility.

Photo credit: photo of Danny MacAskill ripped from CyclePath Magazine

Kimmel Harding Nelson Residency: Day 10

Jefferson Sculpture
Lewis & Clark Visitors Center; Nebraska City
Naturalists, Puritans, and New Territories

"I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt."

- Thomas Jefferson, 1787

The American polymath Thomas Jefferson ranks highly in my pantheon of heroes. Yeoman farmer, architect, inventor, philosopher, naturalist, Virginia gentleman, and statesman, Jefferson defies easy classification. His political pragmatism and philosophy reflect his broad excavations, and the complex of sometimes contradictory ideas that Jefferson put down over the course of his long life allows his legacy to be fairly claimed by contemporary pundits of every stripe. His name and statements are marshaled to support causes across the political spectrum, including state's rights, internationalism, provincialism, gun control, the right to bear arms, unregulated capitalism, anarchy, secularism, and even the call for the United States to be officially deemed "a Christian nation." It is not, however, Jefferson's nuanced political philosophy that is responsible for his cultural ebb; he was a slave-owner and a patriarchal figure who decried "intellectual women." By today's standards, he was a deeply flawed man. But Jefferson died 183 years ago. It is wrongheaded to dismiss the whole of the man for latter-day sins. In any case, his accomplishments and legacy are profound.

Jefferson was irredeemably curious and hopeful. The man's hunger for knowledge and his faith that the human lot can forever be improved upon vitalize the Jeffersonian heritage. The Enlightenment-inspired, exuberant optimism of Benjamin Franklin, Joseph Priestley, Thomas Jefferson, and others in their mold watered the soil of American social, political, and technological revolution. And, as I wrote two days ago, "it's a happy wonder to contemplate [...] the maturation and proliferation of human technology." But at what price did so much "happy" change come?


Mandan Fort recreation
Lewis & Clark Visitors Center; Nebraska City
President Jefferson, in March of 1803, commissioned Captain Meriwether Lewis to lead the Corps of Discovery with William Clark. Jefferson obtained federal funding for the expedition on the grounds that, if successful, Lewis and Clark might "offer the most direct and practicable water communication across [the] continent for the purposes of commerce," but the president's principal interests were other. He wrote to Lewis,

"The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri River. [...] Objects worthy of notice will be the soil & face of the country, it's growth & vegetable productions, especially those not of the U.S.; the animals of the country generally, & especially those not known in the U.S., the remains or accounts of any which may be deemed rare or extinct; the mineral productions of every kind; but more particularly metals, limestone, pit coal, & saltpetre; salines & mineral waters, noting the temperature of the last, & such circumstances as may indicate their character; volcanic appearances; climate, as characterized by the thermometer, by the proportion of rainy, cloudy, & clear days, by lightening, hail, snow, ice, by the access & recess of frost, by the winds prevailing at different seasons, the dates at which particular plants put forth or lose their flower, or leaf, times of appearance of particular birds, reptiles or insects."

Historians suggest that the excitement Jefferson felt on the eve of this great expedition was quite real. His impetus was curiosity, not Puritan conquest.


Mt. Zion African Methodist Church yard
Mayhew Historic Village; Nebraska City
The Pilgrim settlers of this country had little curiosity about the natural history or native peoples of their "New World." William Bradford, five-time governor of Plymouth Colony from 1621 - 1657, described (what little he knew of) the North American continent as "a hideous and desolate wilderness." Jefferson, by contrast, wrote that "there is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me." He saw the natural world as an Eden to be studied and, as author Erik Reece describes it, as "an antidote to the deadening forces" of civilization. For Jefferson, the notion of "God and country" was shaped by topography and the human place in it.

But Lewis and Clark's great voyage of discovery didn't simply educate Americans living east of the Appalachian spine about the continent's interior and western Edens. It paved the way for mass migration, mass slaughter, and mass industry. What happened on this vast continent parallels the greater history of mankind and, indeed, of all life.


Bison diorama
Lewis & Clark Visitors Center; Nebraska City
Historian Daniel Boorstin wrote in 1953 that, "the genius of American democracy comes not from any special virtue of the American people but from the unprecedented opportunities of this continent." Similarly, the remarkable evolution of the human ape, from tree-dweller, to hunter-gatherer, to agriculturist, to civilized man, comes from no special virtue of our species, but from the unprecedented opportunities of this Earth. One thing, as it were, led to another, and our species proved able and willing to exploit to the fullest extent. Loren Eiseley writes, in The Immense Journey,

"The stolen energy that would take man across the continents [as a hunter-gatherer] would fail him at last. The great Ice Age herds were destined to vanish. When they did so, another hand like the hand that grasped the stone by the river long ago would pluck a handful of grass seed and hold it contemplatively. In that moment, the golden towers of man, his swarming millions, his turning wheels, the vast learning of his packed libraries, would glimmer dimly there in the ancestor of wheat, a few seeds held in a muddy hand."

So it was with North America. The "meteoric, messy, and astonishing history" of the United States was fueled, above all, by a distinctly un-Jeffersonian conquest of the land's native peoples, animals, and resources.

Near the end of his sweeping ecological history of North America, The Eternal Frontier, Tim Flannery writes,

"During the nineteenth century, [...] the European Americans were developing a new economy. It was an economy based on systems of mass production and mass exploitation that needed enormous resources to operate. The key decade was 1880-90, for only then did European machinery become sophisticated enough to destroy the great herding and flocking species [the passenger pigeon, the American bison, and the Eskimo curlew]. Their enormous numbers provided an ideal teething rusk for an economic machine that would soon produce cars in the millions and hamburgers in the billions."

We devoured the continent.


Fake Prarie Dog burrows and mural
Lewis & Clark Visitors Center; Nebraska City
What allowed for this? What became of the Enlightened foresight of the founding minds? How did we move, in one hundred years, from Thomas Jefferson to Henry Ford? And could we have made such astounding, "happy" progress in human rights, suffrage, and science without surrendering to this demonic appetite? There is no tidy answer to these questions and, in any case, it's irresponsible to wade in what-might-have-been when you can instead strive toward what-yet-could-be. Still, the history perplexes.

Jefferson bemoaned the Christian scriptures' inclusion of miracles and the emphasis, in Christian doctrine, on the afterlife. Erik Reece explains in An American Gospel that Jefferson realized,

"the more Christian fundamentalism emphasizes that the kingdom of God awaits as a reward in the afterlife, the more it ignores [...] Jesus' teachings of how we should act while we inhabit this earthly realm. [...] The relevance of Christianity to most Americans has far more to do with the promise of eternal salvation from this world."

Jefferson's famous and sensible solution was to edit the Christian New Testament, deleting any and all miracles, including the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection. He called the result "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth." Today, the book is best known as "The Jefferson Bible." Perhaps, if more good Christians had followed their incarnate God's example and teachings in this life - the one that actually matters! - the west would have been settled in accord with the land. Unfortunately, most in our "Christian nation" don't know of Jefferson's earnest effort to save Christianity from other-worldly supernaturalism, from, as he called Puritanical ministers, "the soothsayers and necromancers."

Neither do most Americans know of Jefferson's effort to temper our faith in industrialism. Jefferson's agrarian dream for America was impossible; the United States was then and is now a burgeoning country, and true pastoralism can only ever be embraced on a small scale. But we would do well to remember Jefferson's vision, to remember that we are part of a greater system, and that the expiration date for America's frontier mentality, its faith in boldly going and exploiting, is past.

Despite our exceptionalist tendencies, our nation is like any other. Every nation is a tiny part of the greater superorganism, and every nation's story is a life cycle. The sprawling, arrogant United States is no longer an adolescent, and it can't afford to continue acting like one, to continue "lighting out for the territories." If we fail to mature, our reckless faith in what lies over the next mountain, in the future and in the afterlife, will prove our nation's undoing. It is faith in what exists here and now, in the place where we stand, that needs resurrection.


Missouri River Overlook
Lewis & Clark Visitors Center; Nebraska City
Most Americans are estranged from their own nature, as well as from the nature all around them. Reece writes,

"[We are estranged from] the sources of our food, the sources of our clothes, and the sources of the energy that run our homes. Beyond these basic needs, money and corporate influence have estranged us from our own government. Our isolation within suburban homes has estranged us from our neighbors and communities. [...] Cars have estranged us from our own bodies. [...] Our modern condition of estrangement has led us to live in ways that show a remarkable abdication of responsibility."

Reece proposes that Aldo Leopold's philosophy "carries us back into an ethic of responsibility." I agree.

Leopold, the godfather of modern conservation, inherited Jefferson's dream. Like Jefferson, he was a Romantic pragmatist, a type as well-suited to diplomacy as to conservation. Leopold acknowledged that resource use, like the economy, can be regulated thoughtfully, but the Romantic in Leopold was dismayed by the dark side of our equating land with money. He wrote,

"I suspect that the forces inherent in...economic evolution are not all beneficent. Like the forces inside our own bodies, they may become malignant, pathogenic. I believe that many of the economic forces inside the modern body-politic are pathogenic in respect to harmony with land."

He deemed his heroically optimistic response to the increasing pressures of population and market a "land ethic." Despite the difficulties of cultivating such an appreciation of the natural world in the twentieth century, Leopold persisted.

"That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics. [...] A land ethic, then, reflects the existence of an ecological conscience, and this in turn reflects a conviction of individual responsibility for the health of land. [...] We can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love, or otherwise have faith in."

The American estrangement from land and from the rest of nature (including the dark, interior wilderness of the psyche) is redressed through cultivation of a land ethic. And, in so far as I am "happy" to contemplate the incredible rate of technological evolution, I am made happier still by the prospect of a mature, tempered America.


Vacant lot on Central Avenue; Nebraska City
This morning, I sat for a while and talked with an older gentleman in Long Home Coffee Shop, on Nebraska City's Central Avenue. A retired physicist, he expressed concern about the future of America and, more generally, of the human species. "It's all terribly depressing," he observed. "I have my good days and my bad," I concurred. "But the bleak pessimism is more rare than it was, just because it's unproductive." He nodded, and his heavy eyes seemed to say both, 'Thank goodness for the optimism of youth!' and 'Bloody damned fool!'

But I'm not a fool, and neither is he. An hour after we talked, as I sat at a table scribbling the notes that became this essay, he attended, in the back room of the coffee shop, a meeting regarding the construction of a community garden at the west end of town. The city has provided the group with a vacant lot, a local corporation will provide the initial revenue for construction, and the garden will be tended and managed by volunteers, providing food for those in need.

Now that, I contend, is positively Jeffersonian!

Photo credits: all photos, Hungry Hyaena, 2009

Of ideologues and pragmatists

Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson

A few months after the inauguration of President Barack Obama, many one-time "Yes we can" cheerleaders are grumbling and casting skeptical glances at Washington. Indeed, I've been disappointed by some of our new president's decisions, but I also accept his maneuvering as an unfortunate political reality.

Unlike his predecessor, Barack Obama realizes that the President of the United States should not operate as an ideologue. Of course, he (and some election year soon, she) could choose to embrace ideology over pragmatism but, in doing so, the Commander-in-Chief risks aligning himself with the sort of tyrannical autocracy that our leaders rhetorically (and routinely) condemn.

But political reality doesn't temper the poor reviews that Obama receives from many on the political left. Considering their critique of Obama's centrism, I recalled an earlier HH post. In "The Whiteness of the Whale," I wrote:

"Craig Nelson's recent biography of Thomas Paine serves as my subway reading these days, [and] I find the following observation relevant.

'Beginning with Franklin and Washington, every successful American leader would balance the pragmatic with the Utopian. Where Franklin the master politician would be almost entirely pragmatic, Paine would be too fervidly Utopian in ways that would not just damage him financially, but imperil him physically... Paine would...always be too ardent with his religion of the lights, a Savonarola of reason and liberty, and as inept a political operator as any fervid Christian saint...The success or failure of any leader in U.S. history can be judged through his or her successes or failures at reaching the pragmatic Utopian paradox that remains at the heart of the American experiment.'

Nelson's words ring true. 'The pragmatic Utopian paradox' is not uniquely American, but it is central to our American experience. For confirmation, we need look no further than the glut of contemporary, progressive American politicians striving to develop a decidedly centrist track record, even if they contradict themselves (and their conscience) in doing so. By contrast, it's easy to discard compromise and contradiction if you are a committed revolutionary or a monkish loner operating in an intellectual and philosophical vacuum."

Barack Obama qualifies as one of the "contemporary, progressive American politicians" I criticize in that excerpt. Yet, as I suggest in the same post, "outside the D.C. beltway, ideologues are a dime a dozen, but exceptionally gifted rhetoricians like Paine or King, Jr. emerge (and make [a legitimate political] impact) only rarely."

Yet even if the political impact of fringe ideology is negligible, those voices must be heard. Indeed, unpopular opinions are sometimes the most vital in a just democracy. There's a reason, after all, that liberals wring their hands when contemplating the censorship of bigoted hate speech. If you believe in the democratic fray, you're obligated to let all of society's individuals speak.

In a recent episode of the "The Thomas Jefferson Hour," historian and Jefferson impersonator Clay Jenkinson read and responded to the following Paine quotation.

'He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.'

"This is how Paine would react to the Bush Administration for the past seven-and-a-half years. This is an answer to the Patriot Act, to the surveillances, to Guantanamo, to Abu Ghraib!"

Jenkinson's right. In fact, a great many of Paine's sentiments are as pertinent today as they were in the late 18th century, his abolitionist and proto-feminist writing especially so.

He may have made many political enemies in his day but, two hundred years after the turmoil of our nation's early ideological disputes, Thomas Paine's unwavering moralism aligns more closely with contemporary progressive attitudes than does Thomas Jefferson's political pragmatism. Compared to the public attitudes of the slave-owning and patriarchal Jefferson, Paine strikes the 21st century citizen as the more modern thinker and the more conscientious man.

Does it matter that Jefferson, in his private correspondence, agreed with Paine's abolitionist argument? From our vantage point (one of comfortable remove), no, it doesn't. What we consider, above all, is that Jefferson was a slave owner and that Paine was an outspoken abolitionist. 'Deeds, not creeds,' as the saying goes. But it's noteworthy that Paine was poor and unlanded, and therefore never in a position to own slaves. (Indeed, Paine was never in a position to give up slavery, power, or riches; essentially, his social standing cloistered him from temptation.) Nor was Paine a political figure; he could be strident because he didn't have to consider popular opinion or the practical effect of enacting reform.

Writing in his philosophical memoir An American Gospel: On Family, History, and the Kingdom of God, Erik Reece succinctly describes the democratic ideal to which I subscribe.

"Like [Walt] Whitman, John Dewey thought of the ideal American democracy as an 'organism,' a whole that is reflected in each of its parts - that is to say, in each individual citizen. ...As cells work together within an organism, Dewey believed individuals worked together within a good society to achieve 'a unity of will.' ...And because democracy is a social idea, it is also ethical by its very nature. Ethics, after all, begins with the realization that one is a social being and therefore part of a larger whole. A man living alone on an island requires no ethic. An aristocracy or a dictatorship could be run by only a few of its members. But the democratic organism needs all of its cells. And those cells must act simultaneously in their own interest and in the interest of the larger organism."

But Dewey was a pragmatist. Surely he realized that the democratic organism's ability to fight off infection of the malignant variety is not nuanced; the democratic immune system, if you will, acts to extinguish all radical cells. In other words, this organism is just as likely to rise up against outspoken abolitionists as it is against outspoken racists. And, indeed, history stands as a testament to this action.

Thomas Paine found an American and French populace eager to absorb his revolutionary and populist manifestos Common Sense and Rights of Man, but he was eventually ruined by his rational dismissal of Christian doctrine, The Age of Reason. His New York Citizen obituary read, "He had lived long, did some good and much harm." Much harm? Paine's progressive opinions about slavery and feminism didn't win him sustained popularity.

Jefferson, too, was a lightening rod in his day, provoking as much disdain as he did praise (especially from the Federalists and, in particular, Alexander Hamilton). But Jefferson was a savvy political operator, a master of Nelson's pragmatic Utopian paradox. Although he shared many of Paine's opinions, Jefferson did not draft legislation addressing those issues or even, because of his deism, allow his private correspondence to be made publicly available in his lifetime. Our third president carefully considered what the demos were and weren't ready to accept. Paine, the ideologue, simply didn't care.

So what will it be? Should an independent, liberal leaning citizen like myself wish for a revolutionary president, a Paine-like Obama less concerned with centrist politics, an Obama driven by moral conviction? Can I believe that such a president's radical agenda won't be consumed by the fires of reaction?

For my part, I trust that Obama is striving to foment as much progress as he safely can in our flawed, anti-intellectual democracy. I express my few disappointments by signing petitions for ads calling on Obama to address some of what I see as missteps but, above all, I'm proud of our country for electing an intelligent, disciplined and thoughtful man to the nation's highest office...and I remain optimistic.

Image credits: Thomas Paine portrait ripped from American History Guide and Thomas Jefferson portrait ripped from The World Union of Deists

Thinking Like A Mountain?

Erik Reece's eloquent essay, "Death Of A Mountain: Radical Strip Mining and the Leveling of Appalachia," was included in the April 2005 issue of Harper's Magazine. The piece examines and responds to environmentally devastating coal mining practices in eastern Kentucky. Appropriately enough, I read the work while standing in an abominably long line at the World Expo, in Aichi, Japan, the first World's Fair dedicated to "green" thinking or, as the Japanese organizers dubbed it, "Nature's Wisdom."

Every pavilion in the Aichi Expo was sponsored by either a nation or a corporation (a sign o' the times), and they all forecast a happy, healthy, and sustainable future for humanity and for the planet. Reece's melancholy report provided a sobering counterpoint. A "green future" is tenable only if the necessary changes in technology and lifestyle generate an altogether different kind of green: cash money. As the wife of a Kentucky coal miner asks Reece, "What use are the mountains to us other than coal? When are you going to start thinking about us instead of the environment?" Until alternative energy cheerleaders assuage the concerns of those citizens dependent on income provided by companies like Leslie Resources Inc., one of the mining outfits indicted in Reece's article, America's hard-working, blue-collar folks will remain united in opposition to the relatively privileged mouthpieces of environmentalism.

In "Death of a Mountain," Reece describes the minutes of a Kentucky hearing addressing an Environmental Impact Statement on mountaintop removal, the principal method of tapping into buried coal seams. The local coalfield citizens in attendance, many of them employed by the region's energy companies, reacted against "outsiders" telling them what was best for them and for their land. They even hinted "at a conspiracy afoot by the rest of the state to keep eastern Kentucky poor." Not surprisingly, such vehement antagonism to "greening" measures were not highlighted at the Aichi Expo. Likewise, they receive scant attention in environmental publications, even those produced by more thoughtful organizations,including The Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council and EarthJustice. It's clear that most environmentalists don't consider the lives of those people displaced by expanding parkland or laid off by companies under siege from environmental legislation. It's little wonder that "Third World" countries and blue-collar workers like the Kentucky miners or the fishermen of the Galapagos islands object to what they consider do-gooder meddling.

In Aichi, I looked up from the magazine and noticed a Japanese teenager in line not far behind me. He was wilting under a sun umbrella, wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with a picture of the popular American hip-hop duo, Outkast. Fond of connecting seemingly unrelated strands, I thought of the Outkast song, "Return of the G." The lyrics of the song begin, "Every time I try to get peace of mind, niggas try to get a piece of mine, so I gotta grab my piece." The song concisely describes an ugly, myopic cycle, but how much easier for me to characterize it as such when I can afford a plane ticket to Japan and enough over-priced, organic vegetables to fill my canvas grocery sacks?

As a proponent of conservation and environmental protection, I'm necessarily guilty of prioritizing the sustainable long-view over the millions of people vying to put food on their plate. I considered this distressing reality as I entered the air-conditioned Hitachi Pavilion in Aichi to watch an animated feature about the catastrophic - nay, apocalyptic - events brought on by humanity's cavalier approach to natural resource consumption.


A mushroom cap raises a mossy roof
Similar considerations were on my mind this past week, when I traveled to the Monongahela National Forest, in eastern West Virginia, for some camping, hiking, and herping. I know very little about West Virginia, despite having spent several summers at Camp Greenbrier, situated just outside Alderson, in the southern part of the state. During those summers I learned about kayaking, archery, riflery, rock climbing, and the cruel conduct of boys left unsupervised, but I was too young - just nine or ten years of age - to absorb much about the region save the scenic beauty.

Following those camp years, John Denver's song "Country Roads," a particular favorite of my mother, acquired new significance for me. "West Virginia, mountain momma...take me home," Denver sings. Having appreciated the lush splendor of the Appalachian range for myself, Denver's lyrics imparted an aesthetic association as well as the allusion to a mother's buxom embrace. But Denver's paean doesn't only acknowledge West Virginia's awesome landscape. He refers to the state as the "miner's lady...dark and dusty." Even the state's coat of arms, central on the state flag, pictures a miner, pickaxe slung over his shoulder, standing alongside a farmer. But modern miners have largely abandoned the pickaxe in favor of cranes and bulldozers, and evidence of mountain top removal can be seen from the state's highways. Treeless plateaus neighbor intact peaks and, although geologic time will see these scars support trees and other vegetation anew, one can not help but wonder what has become of the once healthy water supply fed by the decapitated mountain streams.

Happily - some might even say selfishly - I was able to avoid despair during my time in Monongahela. Unlike so much of the state, the mountains of the National Forest have been spared extensive surgery. All the same, the park map is peppered with mine sites, demarcated by a pick and shovel. The stream water I drank - after an iodine pill dosing - seemed safe enough (I didn't get sick), but I couldn't quite shake worries about mercury or heavy metal content. Encouragingly, we found plenty of amphibians in the streams, and this suggests that the water is clean.


Salamander hunting near Cheat Mountain Camp
* * * * *
Amphibians: We identified four species of salamander; one example of each is pictured below.


Mountain Dusky Salamander (Desmognathus ochrophaeus)
The Mountain Dusky Salamander (Desmognathus ochrophaeus) was the most common, at least according to our crude census. They seemed to flourish alongside streams, under partially submerged rocks, and on the mountain's face, under woodland detritus - bits of rotten limbs or clumps of moss. The coloration of this species is wide-ranging. Some of the individuals we came upon could have passed for the unrelated redback (Plethodon cinereus), while others appeared more yellow, tan, or even chocolate. Fortunately, one of my companions is an avid herper and he was readily able to distinguish the two species by examining the head and nostrils. When in doubt, I defer to his expertise.


Redback Salamander (Plethodon cinereus)
Comparatively scarce was the redback salamander and, if I'm recalling accurately, we only discovered this species near woodland vernal ponds. Unfortunately, all my photographs of the species turned out poorly. The models, this one included, didn't much take to posing, forcing me to hurry the shots.


Spotted Dusky Salamander (Desmognathus fuscus conanti)
The most unusual discovery of the trip was a Spotted Dusky Salamander (Desmognathus fuscus conanti). The species is not known to live in the region - according to field guide range maps, anyway - but, nevertheless, we encountered this individual under a flat rock in an insignificant stream and spent some time confirming the ID. Proof, once again, that nature is always throwing curve balls, particularly in this time of accelerating climate change. The patterned salamander was strikingly colored and appeared almost translucent, it's distinctive markings discernible beneath a superficial layer of clear skin.


Red-spotted Newt (Notophthalmus viridescens viridescens)
Just up the hill from the Spotted Dusky discovery, we noticed a Red-spotted Newt (Notophthalmus viridescens viridescens) in a puddle of standing water. I was thrilled to see one up close, as it had been the better part of a decade since I last admired this species in person. As it turned out, almost anywhere water pooled in Monongahela, the newts were present. By the time we departed, we'd seen close to a hundred.

Before transitioning into its principally aquatic adulthood, however, the newt spends time on land, as the terrestrial red eft. These attractive little amphibians are perhaps the most charismatic of salamanders. Their stunning outfit is complimented by their not being as retiring as other species. If you find yourself in prime habitat, a keen eye will spot the efts crawling on logs or over leaves, seemingly unperturbed by exposure.


Red-spotted Newt in Red Eft stage (Notophthalmus viridescens viridescens)
Tadpoles, like the newts, could be found in almost every pond or puddle. Although we could not ID the species with certainty, we believe most to be the aquatic larvae of the wood frog (Rana sylvatica), though we did notice a few American bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana) tadpoles. The bullfrog is something of a bully, infamous for out-competing other amphibians and adapting to a wide range of habitats. Biologists designate such a species a trophic generalist. Despite the potential threat to biodiversity, a piece of me admires the pluck of the bullfrog, just as I grudgingly take my hat off to the European starling (Sturnis vulgaris) and the raccoon (Procyon lotor).

Although we saw countless tadpoles, we saw only three adult frogs. One bullfrog, one wood frog, and one upland chorus frog (Pseudacris triseriata feriarum). The upland chorus frog is closely related to, but distinct from, the eastern (or New Jersey) chorus frog (Pseudacris ferairum kalmi), with which I am familiar from my childhood on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.


A Monongahela stream
Reptiles: Our snake hunting forays proved less successful. We shined flashlights into crevices and carefully examined sun-lit leaf litter in hopes of revealing a timber rattlesnake (Crotalus horridus) or a northern copperhead (Agkistrodon contortrix), but neither species graced us with an appearance. I was discouraged, but not surprised. Snake hunting is usually a kettle watching exercise and the animals seem to materialize only once you cease searching.

We found two snakes in Monongahela. Sadly, one of these was a DOR (dead on road) eastern garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis sirtalis), a victim of the automobile. Given the infrequent use of this remote forest road, I decided the unfortunate snake must have accrued some very shitty karma. At least an unidentified land snail was feeding on the dead snake, a welcome reminder of our shared mortality and interdependence.

The identity of the other snake we observed remains in question, but I'm almost certain it was a juvenile eastern milk snake (Lampropeltis triangulum triangulum). It was a very slender snake, not even pencil-thick, wearing alternating bands of red and white. We noticed the snake on the bottom of a shallow, water-filled ditch. It was attempting to feed on small tadpoles. When we clumsily hurried over for a closer look, it retreated into submerged grasses lining the ditch. After a wait of about fifteen minutes, it emerged from hiding and I attempted to ID it as it zigged and zagged across the bottom. I failed, unfortunately, and we did not see the little reptile again. According to field guides, eastern milk snakes are no stranger to stream bottoms. This knowledge, combined with the distinctive markings, leaves me with little doubt of the species, but, as I say, the verdict it still out.


Snake hunting on the southern exposure
Mammals: I hoped to see a black bear (Ursus americanus) or two, but I had to settle for a smattering of tracks. Because we arrived in Monongahela at the tail end of a long wet spell, the trails and back country were muddy and soft. Although the rain made the first night miserable - we rigged a tarp and pitched the tents after dark, in hard rain - the saturation made spotting animal tracks easy, although in some cases the ground was so wet that fresh prints were already partially obscured. White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virgianus) tracks were plentiful, but we saw more deer in the backyards of the houses fringing the National Forest than we did in Monongahela proper. This isn't surprising, as deer are harder to spot in dense forest and, what's more, they thrive in and around human settlement, as so many suburbanites know. Also abundant was the bouncy eastern chipmunk (Tamias striatus).

Birds: We were ill-prepared for bird watching. Although we were careful to pack everything needed for a camping trip - right down to the campfire utensil sets - we somehow neglected to include binoculars. I'm not sure how this oversight occurred, but none of us had a pair in hand, making anything beyond guessing difficult, especially since most of Monongahela's bird species are relatively small. In the shadowed forests, identification is all but hopeless without ocular assistance. Fortunately, one of my friends has a competent ear and some species were identified by their call.

Slate-colored juncos (Junco hyemalis) were innumerable. It seems spring comes late to the upper elevations, as the rhododendrons had yet to bloom and, on the final afternoon, we were scolded by two adult juncos as we hustled past a fledgling perched on a low-hanging branch. The prize for Most Handsome Bird goes to the Blackburnian warbler (Dendroica fusca), a fire-headed fellow with a striking voice. We thought we heard this bird's song in the woods, and our supposition was verified when an individual landed just above us, in the branches of a spruce tree.

Most exciting for me, however, was the family of American woodcock (Philohela minor) that we startled into awkward flight. I'm used to the jump, flutter, and glide behavior of the woodcock in the open, flat fields of coastal Virginia, but in the mountain woods of Monongahela, the woodcocks' comical eruption from among the leaves and ferns betrayed the provenance of the species nickname, the timber doodle. The first bird to take off flapped and jerked and reared and leaned as it moved all of twenty feet in the air, before pitching hard and vanishing into a mess of fallen limbs. Realizing we had disturbed a family group, we made our way downhill at a good clip, so as to allow the birds to regroup.

Plenty of common ravens (Corvus corvax) and cedar waxwings (Bombycilla cedrorum) were about, but we saw only one American blue jay (Cyanocitta cristata) and one turkey vulture (Cathartes aura), species I certainly expected to see more of. Had we been properly equipped (read: not forgotten the $@*&%!! binoculars), I would have more to report, but I was all too happy to concentrate on reptiles and amphibians, as they are particularly exciting to me.

* * * * *
Rising with dawn's birdsong on the final morning, we quickly packed our gear, lowered the bear bag, and began the five hour drive to Washington, D.C., where I was to catch the Chinatown Bus back to New York City. As we headed east, I slouched in the cramped back seat and admired the mountains of West Virginia, even as I again noted signs of resource extraction. My thoughts returned to Reece's "Death of a Mountain" and I made a mental note to reread it upon returning to New York.

Near the end of the article, Reece quotes Aldo Leopold, the famous American ecologist and conservationist. Leopold bemoaned the fact that "one of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds." I'm not sure that this is still the case. Those of us who are environmentally conscious do not live alone, even if we do remain surrounded by wounds. More than ever before, "green" sentiments are also popular sentiments; many folks share a penchant for preservation. Leopold would argue, however, that most contemporary environmentalists remain blissfully ignorant of ecological pragmatism. He was a conservationist, not a preservationist, and he understood that protectionism alone rarely leads to long-term sustainability.

Keeping this conservation/preservation dynamic in mind, I think it noteworthy that my companions in the forests of Monongahela were a biology professor and a writer. For our purposes here, the biologist might be characterized as a biological determinist and the writer, as a moral idealist. Though these two characterizations are by no means mutually exclusive, it makes for an interesting contrast in perspective, even though both appreciate the outdoors equally. Rereading "Death of a Mountain," I was surprised to find this divide touched on in the closing paragraphs.

"If our species is to make it through [the 21st] century, the forces of science and technology must be tempered by two other forces - ethics and aesthetics. All ethical philosophies, from Aristotle on down, are based on this ecological principle as stated by Leopold: 'The individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts.' And as the cave art at Lascaux makes brilliantly clear, we are a species that has evolved to find beauty in the natural world. This trait serves - or should serve - an evolutionary purpose: we love what we find beautiful, and we do not destroy what we love. A strip job is more than a moral failure; it is a failure of the imagination. It is time we stopped thinking like those who conquer a mountain and started thinking like the mountain itself."

A strip job, as Reece writes, is a moral and imaginative failure, but what does it mean to think like a mountain? It would seem to me that to think like a mountain requires us to abandon morality and imagination, both exceptional human virtues. Is my ambivalence concerning invasive species control an example of mountainous thinking? Moral ambivalence - that is, amorality - is Nature's way. But isn't ambivalence, too, problematic? Is it not cousin to apathy? Humans, at their best, are moral animals; morality necessitates choice and action. Strict environmental controls, then, are moral, pragmatic, and rational, flailing efforts in our human time scale not at all like the geologic contemplation of a mountain. We humans consider a skewed equation and strive to balance it. This calculus comes at some cost. For the sensitive aesthete, slavishly devoted to what Reece calls beauty, the dualistic thinking of a moral pragmatist - right or wrong, good or evil - can seem an ugly, even unnecessary evolutionary holdover. Where, then, can the conscientious among us stand? It's an impossible question, really, more of a koan than a query, but it nags nonetheless.

Something approaching an answer is wrapped up in the lyrics of Denver's "Country Roads," in the fight bruised arms of young boys, in the remarkable persistence of trophic generalists, in the determined antagonism of the coal miner's wife, in the scarred plateaus, and in the slurried bear tracks. Thankfully, when I'm painting, or when I'm appreciating back country settings like Monongahela, I'm reminded that contentment, for me, requires acceptance of a messy, mongrel truth. For my part, it's both necessary and natural to be both an idealistic aesthete and a moralistic number cruncher.


Fungi thrive in the moist, dense forests
Photo credit: all photos, Hungry Hyaena, 2006