Raymond Barnett

 

I've had a couple of near-brushes with prison in my life, the first, almost comical; the second not at all comical.  Let's begin with humor, then go to drama. 

 

I was in my one year of seminary after graduation from Yale.  It was at the Union Theological Seminary, in New York City sandwiched on the Upper East Side between Columbia University a few blocks to the south and Harlem the same distance to the north.  This being spring of 1968, student protests were in the air, mainly against the ongoing war in Vietnam ("Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids you killed today?").  A large group of student protestors led by Mark Rudd of the Students for a Democratic Society (sic) had taken possession of Columbia President Grayson Kirk's office in the administration building, barricading themselves in and generally trashing the office and daringly smoking cigars throughout the week or so of the protests.  A few of my fellow seminarians had joined the protestors  It was, of course, of keen interest to all of us, being as we were merely a couple of blocks from the excitement. 

 

With amazingly bad timing, I decided to go see what was happening that day, on the morning of April 30.  As I arrived, NYPD officers stormed the campus with tear gas, roughly yanked the protesters out of President Kirk's office, and shepherded some 700 protestors to the rows of "paddy wagons" awaiting us, the acrid smell of tear gas hanging in the air.  Yes, "us."  Young Ray found himself in a large group of very disheveled, wild-haired, smelly protestors being herded toward the paddy wagons. 

 

"Hey, I'm not a protestor!  I'm just a curious bystander.  Hey!"  I finally got a cop to look at me.  Quite in contrast to the others, I was wearing a coat and tie, had recently shaved and showered, even combed my hair.  He squinted at me, shook his head with a growl, and said, "Get outta here, you idiot."  I eagerly agreed that I was an idiot, and removed myself speedily from the group and retreated to the peace and calm of my seminary room to study Old Testament history.  I guess I'm not much of a protester; I was happy to concentrate on my studies from then on.  (Though Columbia and many other campuses these days are still seeing protests, aren't they?  I'm glad I'm retired.)

 

As it turned out, the majority of the 700 protestors at Columbia were from other colleges around the country, semi-professional agitators who fancied themselves to be saving America from a mistaken war in Southeast Asia.  In fact, they succeeded, as LBJ (Lyndon Baines Johnson) did indeed decline to run for his second term of the presidency due to the turmoil engulfing the country.  And by the second month of my 1969-70 tour of duty with the U.S. Army at Headquarters, US Army, Vietnam in Long Binh (but that's another story), I had also concluded, somewhat belatedly, that the protesters in fact were entirely right.  I even suspected that we (the U.S.) might be fighting a losing battle on the wrong side of the conflict; I had reason to think that I was not the only one harboring such a suspicion. But that's all ancient history.

 

However, my finding myself in a group of protesters being herded to a paddy wagon was somewhat comical, despite the agonizing history associated with the Vietnam War.  My second, not-a-bit comical brush with prison, occurred in Beijing, China, in the spring of 1984.  I found myself surrounded by several dozen Chinese soldiers armed with rifles, with a crowd of some 50 bystanders eagerly watching what was about to happen to the skinny young foreign devil who had most unadvisedly spied on the leadership compound in the Second "Sea" of Zhong-Nan Hai Park in the Forbidden City. 

 

What the heck was I doing in Beijing, China in the spring of 1984? I had co-led a tour to China two years earlier, with my buddy (former student, now close friend) Kyle in the group.  Kyle and I chafed under the restrictions of the tour, led by a Chinese lady whose responsibility was taking us to sanctioned locations, and generally keeping us out of trouble.  Kyle and I, characteristically, had come back to China to wander about the country on our own, not perhaps to get into trouble, but to do what we wanted.

 

I had corresponded with the Chinese scientist Ye Duzhuang, who had translated all of Charles Darwin' work into Chinese, wondering whether I might speak with him while I was in Peking.  To my surprise, he invited me to give a lecture on May 7 to the scientists of the Academia Sinica by invitation of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP), concerning "Current challenges to the Darwinian view of Evolution."  (The IVPP was the successor to the paleontologists, including the Catholic priest Teilhard de Chardin, who discovered the Peking Man skulls in the late 1920's.) I gave my lecture to a crowd of over a hundred scientists, prefacing the talk in my rudimentary Chinese, then in English translated by a young Chinese fellow, Yu Xiaobo (with whom I have remained friends and corresponded for these 40 years). 

 

After the talk, and a fascinating dinner at Ye's home (see chapter 23 in my 2021 Forgotten World for an in-depth history of Ye's tumultuous life and my dinner with him and his colleagues), I got to work on my secondary agenda item for the trip: research scenes and locales for what would be my first novel: Jade and Fire (Random House, 1987).  In my research for the novel, I had stumbled across a reference to a small Chinese pavilion located some 15 yards off the shore of the Middle "Sea" constructed by Kublai Khan.  Within this "Sea" (Zhong-Nan Hai) is located the compound of China's leaders, now as well as then.  Though Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai had died in 1976 (prompting the massive demonstrations in Tiananmen Square soon after), in 1984 the top governing officials of China still lived in this compound, a sort of combined White House, FBI, CIA, and National Security Council gathering in one heavily protected place.

 

So here was the challenge:  to get the photo of this pavilion (and its extremely evocative inscription, which plays an important role in Jade and Fire), I had to direct my camera towards the Middle "Sea" leaders' compound directly behind and beyond it.  I reconnoitered the surroundings, noting the armed soldiers standing every 30 yards or so, keenly vigilant against those who wouldn't respect the leadership compound.  Hmmm.  Had to get a photo of that pavilion and its inscription.  I ambled casually around the perimeter, glanced at the guards to my left and right, then when their attention wasn't focused on me, very quickly aimed my camera and got a good photo of the pavilion.  No outcry, no nothing.  Whew!  I ambled a bit further, past another couple of guards to my right, and (I did a lot of stupid things like this, especially when young) I took another quick photo from what was marginally a different angle. 

 

Mistake.  This time I quickly found myself herded by two of the armed guards to a small open space on the side of the bridge separating the Middle "Sea" and the public park of the North "Sea".  Very soon another dozen or so soldiers arrived, weapons aloft, guarding me ominously.  Then their leader arrived, an old grizzled, hard-bitten fellow wearing a pistol at his waist. 

 

He glared at me a long moment, as if he regretted what he had to do.  He curtly told me to give him the film from my camera.  I understood the Chinese, but pretended not to.  I volunteered to take a photo of everyone.  He of the pistol elaborately pantomimed what he wanted me to do: take the film out of the bloody camera and give it to him.

 

Ordinarily, I would have been happy to do that.  But this particular roll was a 72-shot roll, and it had all my photos from Hangzhou and its tea gardens and Taoist temples on it, not to mention my precious pavilion.  I was very opposed to losing those shots.  So I offered to take everyone's photo again.  The fellow with the pistol became angry, and shouted something at me. He reached out for me, as if to take me into custody.  It was the make-or-break moment.  For some reason—this was my first novel he was about to torpedo!—I backed away from him, turned, shoved my way through the fifty or so bystanders, and walked shakily across the street toward the public gardens in the North "Sea", where my buddy Kyle was waiting.  I fully expected a rough hand on my shoulder turning me around to take me into custody.  I walked further.  No hand.  As I got into the public gardens, I ventured a look around.  I was already, miraculously, out of sight of the soldiers, the pistoled one, and the crowd.  I stumbled on, found Kyle on a bench.   

 

"What the hell's wrong with you?" he enquired when he saw my face and my shaky walking.  I couldn't answer.  With trembling hands I shakily but carefully rolled up the film to its end in my camera.  (Most of those reading this will not know how an old 1984 camera worked.  You could physically roll up the film and retrieve it from the camera, containing whatever photos you had taken until that time.)  I took the film out of the camera. 

 

"Take this.  Put it in your backpack," I croaked to Kyle.  He did so, to my relief.  I was still awaiting the pistol fellow to catch up with me and take me wherever they took enemies of the state.  I took out a new roll of film and put it in the camera.  If the pistoled one confiscated my camera for evidence, they wouldn't find anything on the (new) film.  I sat back on the bench, and recounted my misadventure to Kyle. 

 

He laughed.  Annoyed, I turned to him.  "See that high Dagoba behind us?" he asked.  I nodded at the faux Tibetan tower in the North "Sea" park.  "From there you can see everything.  Including your pavilion in the Middle "Sea".  I put my telephoto lens on, mounted the camera on the tripod, and got plenty of pictures of it for you!"

 

I groaned.

 

I never did understand why the fellow with the pistol didn't pursue me.  Perhaps he didn't think the whole ruckus was worth it; after all, it was just a skinny foeign devil that had merely taken a photo of the leader's compound.  Perhaps he had other more pressing things to do that day.  Perhaps he was late to meet his young wife for an afternoon liaison.  Whatever.

 

Why, you ask, did I get into these scrapes?  Those of us who were college-age in the late 1960's realized that we were living in unusually turbulent times in America.  I've been very cognizant during my teaching career from 1976 to 2008 that my students lived in such different times, times when you didn't face the unalterable threat of being drafted and sent to a war in Southeast Asia.  Those times were incredibly difficult for those of us faced with such drastic life choices. 

And a similar turbulence had ruled China since—well, since the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty in 1912, actually.  Wars, warlords, kidnappings, assassinations; the civil war between Nationalists and Communists, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, the Gang of Four.  Unavoidable threats convulsing a whole society.

 

You want turbulence?  Several American Sinologists in the last year have come to the conclusion, based on various good reasons, that sometime in the window of 2025 to 2027, current leader Xi Jinping will decide China is strong enough to invade Taiwan and forcibly reclaim it for the Motherland, thus becoming the greatest Chinese leader since Mao.  At that point, America's president, whomever it may be, will be forced to decide whether the defense of Taiwan is worth a full-out war with China.  A nuclear-armed China, at that, perhaps aided by its ally North Korea, with our West Coast well within the range of their nuclear missiles. 

 

There are times when, lamentably, I'm almost glad I'm about to turn 80, and not expected to be so active in our national life.  Yes, we're living in a turbulent world.  Good luck to us all.

 

Postscript.  You can read Jade and Fire to discover the evocative inscription on the pavilion; pages 344-345 in the Random House hardcover edition. 

 

 

 

 

A Taoist?!  You're Kidding.

 

No, I'm not kidding.  Why in the world would I self-identify as a "Taoist" in my approach to living life?  Several reasons.  Some of them may offend some of my friends and readers.  Apologies for this.  But here goes. It's a longish tale, but we'll get to Ray becoming a Taoist, I promise.

 

Directly upon my graduation from Yale (focusing on Chinese Studies), I spent a (tumultuous) 1967 and 1968 (yeah, that 1968) at New York City's Union Theological Seminary, a non-denominational seminary.  I had been active in my Presbyterian church's youth league in high school, and, idealist as I was, considered the ministry a possible vocation.  But while at Union Seminary I discovered that many of the beliefs fundamental to Christianity just didn't seem to make sense to me.

 

Take the idea of a God who created humans, alone, in His own image, and gave these humans the whole rest of the created world for their exclusive and unrestricted use.  This tenet is vividly reflected in the early (un-"revised") King James version of Genesis 9: 2,3: 

.  "And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every fowl of the air and upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered. Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you."

 

Gosh; that didn't seem at all the way a fair and loving Christian God, creator of all the world and its marvelous creatures, would set things up.  Then I ran into Theodicy: the tension between the Christian omnipotent and benevolent God and the widespread existence of evil in human and natural history.  The most prevalent explanation for this apparent contradiction is that God has given humans free will, a gift sufficiently precious in His view to allow humans to make evil decisions.  Again: that just didn't seem something a loving, benevolent Christian God would do.  I'd been a history major at Yale, concentrating on American as well as Chinese history, and been struck by how very much cruelty and monstrous evil humanity had wrought throughout its history. 

 

Faced with what I, upon reflection, regarded as fundamental problems with Christianity, I wrote my draft board, rejecting my 4a exemption for seminary.  (What a stern idealist Ray was in those days; go figure.)  I was immediately put in the draft pool, with a very low number and thus the inevitability of being soon drafted and sent to the war in Vietnam.  So I enlisted for three years (rather than the two of a draftee) and thus was able to choose my military occupation.  If I was going to Vietnam, I was determined to go there in the medical corps. 

 

Upon arriving (in the midst of an incredibly intense monsoonal rainstorm), I was assigned to U.S. Army Headquarters, Vietnam, in Long Binh, as a medical records specialist.  Being the headquarters, there was a surprisingly adequate library at the base. There I stumbled upon several books about natural history, and became fascinated with the world of nature.  After my tour of duty, having developed a somewhat misanthropic attitude toward human history, I decided to get a PhD in biology, despite having taken no courses whatsoever in the subject during my four years at Yale.  (Again: go figure.)  Among a dozen curt rejections from various universities, Duke University took me on a trial basis, and 4 years later I had my PhD in Zoology.

 

Being a "certified" biologist at this point, I began reading about Charles Darwin, the central figure in biology (a pursuit I'm still engaged in).  In David Quammen's The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, Darwin's views on creation are given: "Special creation?  Divine providence? Godly design?  Darwin had found no support for those notions in biogeography, the taxonomy of barnacles, or the fates of certain innocent children.  (This latter referring to the heartbreaking death of Darwin's favorite child, Annie, at age 10, a watershed moment in Darwin's life.)  'Everything in nature, he concluded coldly, is the result of fixed laws.'  Had an impersonal First Cause (God) of some sort, a Supreme Being in the fuzziest sense, given rise to the universe and set it in motion according to the mechanics of those fixed laws? Maybe.  For much of his adult life, including the period when he wrote The Origin of Species, that's what Darwin felt inclined to believe."

 

Aha!  That was the moment I identified myself as a Taoist.  I immediately recalled the Chinese history class at Yale, nine years earlier, where Taoism had been discussed.  The Tao was (is!)  a mysterious (but utterly immanent and this-worldly) force that had brought forth the world and coursed, inherent, throughout the world, not giving a fig for humans, particularly. But most importantly: impersonal.  Not capable of anger or Commandments or human emotions, whether love or hate.  Here in the world, in all the "ten thousand creatures" as well as rocks and rivers and clouds and sunsets.  The Tao, as described in the ancient Chinese classics Tao De Jing and Chuangtze, provided exactly the ongoing, inherent creative force that set the fixed laws by which the world moved as Darwin "was inclined to believe."  And which made sense to Ray as well; Ray the newly-minted Taoist.

 

Maybe I've read too many mystery stories.  But like Sherlock Holmes in The Reigate Squires, I need to have things make sense.  As he put it, "I make a point of never having any prejudices and of following docilely wherever fact may lead me."For me, this tenet has led to my adopting the Taoist point of view.  It makes sense of the world, to me at least. 

 

Nor has this been merely an intellectual satisfaction.  This view of life thrills my heart as well as my head.  Knowing that I (all of us, actually) am part of a grand, ancient process of creation according to fixed laws gives a zest to life.  We're all in this together, humans as well as all the equally marvelous creatures and rocks and sunsets of the world, inextricably linked to each and to our lovely planet orbiting an obscure sun in an obscure universe at the edge of the Milky Way. 

 

Let us conclude by recalling the final paragraph of our Mr. Darwin's The Origin of Species, Darwin the unknowing Taoist himself:

"It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us…There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."  (Italics mine)

 

 

Note:  for readers wishing to know more about Taoism, you might consult my 2004 Relax, You're Already Home: everyday Taoist habits for a richer life.   As it turns out, my mentor John Muir was also, like Darwin, an unrealized Taoist.  See my 2016 Earth Wisdom: John Muir, Accidental Taoist, if interested.  Both available on Amazon.  Barnett—the Taoist—out. 

I had a very strange week in the Sonoran Desert here in southern Arizona in late January, about 3 or 4 days on each side of the Chinese Lunar New Year.  For the few months I've been trying to figure out what the devil was going on.  Though I was "neat, clean, shaved and sober," as Philip Marlow is described on the first page of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, my account of what happened sounds like something from an Uncle Remus ride in Disneyland (before the lovable old fellow was "cancelled" there recently).  So I think I'll just describe what happened—true story, no embellishment nor exaggeration—and end with some provisional interpretations. Feel free to think whatever you want about it.

 

It began one morning as I sat in our (east-facing) front courtyard enjoying the early sunshine over Arizona's Catalina mountains: movement between the homes across and up the street, those bordering the Sonoran Desert in which our retirement subdivision sits.  Yes; it was a bobcat, sauntering across the front yards, perhaps 150 feet away.  A gorgeous animal, tawny gold with the bright black and white stripes on the legs (that you never see adequately depicted in the field guides) and the same color spots on the ears.  John Muir often commented how clean wild animals are—always with bright colors and free of dirt or mud.  That sure was this fellow.  Bobcat sightings are not that rare here, due to our proximity to the desert, so I enjoyed it but didn't regard it as anything unusual.

 

Until the next morning, when Tammy and I were doing our stretches facing the picture windows looking into our back yard.  "Tam! Bobcats, to the right!" I announced in an urgent voice.  Yes, two of them, probably mother and yearling, ambling the length of our yard, looking alertly around them as they glided oh so gracefully by.  I watched, mesmerized by the two of them and their beauty, while Tam ran for her phone.  She got a photo of one looking back at us ("Hey! What's all the fuss?  Never seen a bobcat?" it seemed to be thinking) just before they disappeared over the wall into the neighbor's yard. 

 

Wow.  Three bobcats in two days; now that was a bit unusual.  It won't get any better than this, I thought. 

 

Until the next day, as I sat on a favorite bench ("Ray's laughing place") a ten-minute walk from our home, along a finger of the desert that stretches through the neighborhood. Before me stretched an arroyo some 60 yards across, pretty thick with cholla and prickly pear cacti, palo verde trees, and acacia shrubs.  Movement, close to my right.  And yes, another bobcat glides into my field of view not more than 10 feet from me.  I sit stock still.  Directly in front of me, he pauses, catching my scent, I bet.  He turns his head, looks straight at me, then leisurely resumes his fluid movement, and disappears into the desert terrain.  I sit there, bemused, wondering what I'd done to earn the good will of the bobcat gods.   

 

The next day, I walked my wonted loop through the full-on desert just north of our home, a route that takes me well away from any homes, with nothing but desert for as far as you can see to the north.  Someone has thoughtfully provided a crude wooden bench about a mile into the loop, on which I was sitting, drinking hot tea from my thermos.  Since we get an average of 12 inches of rain a year here, this desert has a very high species diversity of plant life, compared to the other three deserts in North America.  I was straddling the thin bench, facing west with 180 degrees of view from the north to the south, though limited by the cacti and thorny shrubs.  Movement to the north amongst the cholla and prickly pear cacti.  A glimpse of two large ears moving along, appearing then disappearing amongst the vegetation—a mule deer? No, our deer here are the white-tails from back east, smaller ears.  But these ears were huge.  A break in the cacti, and I see—what the heck?  Loping along, almost the size of a small deer, but no.  Loping.  A jackrabbit?  But the largest jackrabbit I've ever seen, coming almost straight toward me.  I'm frozen, steaming cup of tea halfway to my mouth.  The creature lopes up within 8 feet of me, and pauses.  Wind must be blowing toward me, because he takes no notice of me as he forages around on the ground for maybe 6 seconds.  Right in front of me; I'm obviously just an inanimate extension of the bench, though sort of funny looking. 

 

I gaze on the creature, thoroughly mystified as to what species he is.  Clearly, he's a very large species of jackrabbit, maybe 24 inches long, with those huge ears, at least 8 inches each.  But he's glowing with color and it isn't the color of the Black-tailed Jackrabbit that I'm very familiar with from California.  No, this critter is bigger than that jackrabbit, and not grizzled brown and black fur but gloriously white fur—again, spotlessly clean--on his flanks and belly, grading to grey speckled with black on his back.  Now, I'm a mammologist, who taught the subject for 32 years, emphasis on California, but this guy was completely new to me.  He positively glowed with health and color, and the naked interior of those 8-inch ears was a lovely soft shade of blood pink.  The most beautiful thing I've ever seen?  Close to it.  And 8 feet from me!  He soon loped away, leaving me very nearly breathless.  I finally resumed lifting my cup the rest of the way to my mouth, gulped the tea down, and poured myself another cup with shaking hand.  I didn't have my guidebook with me, so I had no idea what species of jackrabbit this fellow was (turned out to be Lepus alleni, the antelope (or "Mexican") jackrabbit, who's not supposed to be this far north and west).  But he had sure given me a treat.  I got up to resume my walk, and from the high ground on which the bench sat, I looked across the desert and, believe it or not, I could see him picking his way amongst the cacti as he loped along.  Amazing. 

 

But my strange week in the desert wasn't over, by any means.  A couple of days later I made my weekly car trip to Sabino Canyon, on the other side of the Catalina mountains.  On the walking road into the canyon, you pass a hill to the east, then dip down a long descending stretch of road.  Atop the hill is a rugged stone structure, used for water storage in the past.  Because my good wife and daughter #3 tell me I need to get some "cardio" workout in my walks, my routine is to walk to the low point of the road, then turn around and vigorously walk the 300 feet or so of elevation gain to the trail leading to the hill, then another 400 feet of elevation gain to the top.  No, 700 feet of elevation gain is not a lot, but vigorous walking—and doing the whole thing twice—gets my heart beating faster than usual. 

 

At the top of the hill, beyond the stone structure there, I typically sit on a rock overlook and enjoy the view.  The canyon and Sabino creek stretches far to the northeast, between high sloping walls on either side, stately saguaro cacti strewn over the hillsides.  To my east the creek flows down the canyon and away to my right, where it empties into the basin on which Tucson sits.  A picturesque dam interrupts the flow of the creek just below me. 

 

As I approach "my" rock this day to drink tea and munch a granola bar, I notice something on the rock.  It's a roadrunner, the iconic desert bird, a large specimen, about two feet long counting tail, with dark brown-black coloration, and crested head.  He (probably, from his coloration) appears to be enjoying the view before him.  He doesn't dash away as I approach, as all other roadrunners have.  As roadrunners should.  Rather, he placidly turns and gazes up at me, some 10 feet away.  "Uh. That's my rock?" I stupidly inform him.  More gazing at me.  I take another step.  He calmly gets up, hops over to another rock some 6 feet to the right but with a short palo verde tree providing him some privacy, sets himself down on it, and resumes his contemplation of the view.  Ignoring me. 

 

I make some racket getting onto my rock (it's a pretty good fall beyond the rock, and I've got to be careful as I stow my hiking sticks and get out my thermos and so on).  Doesn't bother my neighbor a bit.  We sit there together, sharing the view, about 6 feet from each other.  This is very strange.  Definitely not roadrunner behavior.  Any more than my mystery jackrabbit was acting like a jackrabbit should.  The bobcats?  They're pretty blasé—top predator and all that—and generally not that spooked by humans.  Though not typically such close humans as me on the bench at Ray's laughing place several days before. 

 

I'm feeling weird, sitting there with my roadrunner neighbor atop the hill in Sabino Canyon, remembering my bobcat and jackrabbit experiences just days ago.  And I remember sinologist Mark Elvin's 2005 Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China.  That book contains Hangzhou nature poet Xie Lingyun's "Living in the Hills," in which he lists the large mammals abundant and frequently encountered around Hangzhou Bay in his day, the early 400's AD (aka CE):  gibbons, badgers, tigers, wolves, bobcats, two species of bear, jackals, big-horned sheep, elk, and muntjaks.  Xie Lingyun's list would have been even more extensive, of course, during the Neolithic, four thousand years before, when "civilization" had not yet so seriously impinged on the original wildlife.

 

Elvin observes: "All these species, without exception, seem to have vanished by (our) modern times (from the Hangzhou region)…It would be a folly to overromanticize this fifth-century world. Tigers and wolves are dangerous.  But human beings grew up for several hundreds of thousands of years with animals all around them (culminating in the Neolithic hunting-gathering-gardening period).  A strange silence has fallen (in the ensuing millennia since the end of the Neolithic). An emptiness.  One cannot help wondering what the long-term implications of this are for the balance of our minds."

 

The "strange silence" which has existed since the end of the Neolithic between humans and our fellow creatures, according to the American historian Lynn White in a pivotal 1967 essay, is grounded in the view of Abrahamic religions as expressed in Genesis 9, verses 2 and 3 (I give the original King James translation, not the "revised"):

"So God created man in his own image…And God blessed them, and said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth on the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea-- into your hand are they all delivered. Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you" (italics and boldface in the preceding paragraphs are mine). 

 

It dawns on me.  Somehow, for some or for no good reason, it seems I've been granted a week in the Neolithic, when we humans still had an unusually close association with our wild neighbors, our fellow inhabitants of this good earth.  Before the "fear and dread" of humans came into being.  It's been thrilling. Sitting there on my rock with Sabino Canon stretching before me, I smile.  Then laugh. My roadrunner neighbor doubtless hears the laugh, and stirs a little uneasily, but doesn't move, continuing his amiable contemplation of the view. 

 

I drink my cup of tea, finish my granola bar.  "See ya later," I say, softly, to the roadrunner.  He doesn't acknowledge me.  I gather my hiking sticks and quietly leave, awed by this curious week I've been given in the Neolithic, smack in the middle of the Chinese Lunar New Year.

 

Make what you want of it, but it was quite week.