After I first got here to the grassland habitats of Canada, I missed the birds and the lifetime of the tropics. I nonetheless do. No type of images is sort of like fowl images. No type of animal is sort of like a fowl, both. What might be discovered from grass?
After I consider the grasslands, I ponder about “essence”. Do the grasslands have an essence, or even perhaps a way of consciousness as an entire? Historical Milesian philosophers may need thought so, with their panpsychist tendencies. In that case, the grasslands will need to have among the identical essence of adolescence when it first emerged, bleary-eyed and nonetheless getting used to a brand new order of issues.
The spirit of the grasses. The spirit of the tropics. Yin and yang. Within the tropics, niches mix and bleed into one another, combined in to a kaleidoscope of frenetic confusion. An enormous platoon of ants marches over a quiet beetle, solely to be eaten within the subsequent second by a tyrannulet. Not so right here, the place life is discrete. Unsheltered. Slower. And virtually…alien.
Alien, completely alien. As a result of, I feel human beings have been by no means actually meant to be right here. With out the extreme warmth and the common solar and the luxurious leaves and the piercing sunbeams simply reaching the darkness of the forest flooring, there’ll at all times be a longing to return to our origins. Our ancestral dwelling. Or at the least, there must be.
The grass grows taller, waving endlessly in these winds which can be by no means fairly scorching. How can I seize that? Is there a solution to convey out the soul of those plains? These small particulars, remoted, one stroke of a pale coloration on a blue-gray canvas? I discovered myself wanting nearer and calmer towards the just about proto-life patterns, the ephemeral and temporary flash of a wrestle for being, for order. Sure, that wrestle is all over the place, however a single dimension is remoted right here, highlighted and compressed into the blink of a watch.
The bark of bushes brings me nearer. The dryness produces distinct cracks, reminding me of crystals however extra chaotic. To start with, crystals have been one of many first highly-ordered buildings. There have to be some connection to our extra historical origins right here, earlier than life burst into the biodiversity we see right now. What’s that connection? Is it one thing that may by no means be put into phrases, however somewhat solely to be drawn upon sooner or later in some necessary second endlessly to relaxation within the unconscious?
A extra historical order bursts by with the flowers, purple, pink, blue, yellow. A lot completely different from the luxurious tropical zones the place the crops appear to have time for nothing else besides a race to the highest for gentle. Right here, there may be sufficient gentle for each plant, however will it’s sufficient? Sure, however for a short sigh of symmetry and nothing extra till subsequent yr.
And within the distance? The deer are wandering, consuming, and concerned in some secret social ritual. Antlers, peaking out. Rustling within the brush. However at all times, these vigilant eyes are there earlier than my eyes roam to seek out them, shining with the soul that resonates with these grasses excess of my soul ever might.
The lengthy, northern solar pushes by the colder air, however barely. It sits in opposition to the mountains, casting shadows by the forest, shifting away just a bit farther. Just a bit. The speedy push of the spring offers solution to the slowing of life. The grassy hills are falling asleep for a a lot wanted relaxation beneath the blanket of snow quickly to comply with.
I don’t suppose I’ll ever get used to open plains and the crushing discomfort of the chilly. Sure, the chilly by no means actually lets go, and the solar is dangling from a precipice, quickly to fall into the abyss. However in all discomforts there’s something to be taught.
Certainly, inside the chilly there’s a lovely silence lower solely by the rustling of the crispy leaves. And we’d like that silence, to grasp that whereas there may be magnificence within the vibrant, yellow-green feathers of a Trogon, there may be additionally magnificence in vacancy, each time we shut our eyes. I feel that is what the grasslands try to inform us.