Editor’s note: This commentary is by Bob Stannard, a former lobbyist, who is still an author and musician. This piece first appeared in the Bennington Banner.
[I]t was chilly on this November morning. Snow was in the forecast but not coming until the next day. I have been to the rock where I intended to spend the day many times before. This past summer I introduced my granddaughter, Thyra Grayce, to the rock. Inasmuch as she’s only 3 feet high the rock had to feel really huge to her. It’s a huge rock that was left behind millions of years ago after the glacier was done grinding down Mother Myrick from being taller than the Swiss Alps to the height it is today.
I arrived at the rock long before daybreak. A day earlier I placed a swivel chair just below the top of the rock, thus allowing me to be hidden on one side yet still providing me with a 360 degree view. Deer have been hanging out around this rock for eons. Oddly, they decided that this, the opening day of deer season was not a day they were going to hang around the rock.
There are many folks who don’t understand why normally intelligent human beings bundle up and sit on a rock in the freezing cold for hours in hopes of seeing — and perhaps shooting — a deer (in my case the latter is of little significance).
I know people who spend thousands of dollars on therapy to help them through life’s numerous problems. Perhaps what they really need to do is sit on a rock, in silence, on a cold day and meditate on what is, or is not, happening around them. One can quickly be lulled into thinking that there’s absolutely nothing happening within earshot, but that’s only because they’re not paying close attention. Look beyond the silence and it soon becomes apparent that there’s a near symphony playing just for your benefit.
It’s not easy living a hectic life today. Simultaneously there is another beheading by some sick creature on the other side of the globe and California is running out of water along with many other western states.
First it was an owl that hooted; then a squirrel chattered. Nuthatches and woodpeckers showed up to drown out the din of settling leaves and creaking trees. Before too long what was once blissful silence is now almost unbearably loud. It takes great effort to force your mind away from the chatter to focus on what you’re there for, to think about stuff.
It’s not easy living a hectic life today. Simultaneously there is another beheading by some sick creature on the other side of the globe and California is running out of water along with many other western states. The results of the midterm elections will place a climate change denier in charge of the Environment Committee.
The nearby brook serves as a reminder of how fortunate we are to have clean water. The issue is not that we’re running out of anything. The problem is that we have an over-abundance of one species: us.
We kill for oil. We kill for food and we will kill for water. We are survivors at all costs, even if that requires eliminating each other. Of all the species on earth none is more deadly than the one reading this. We are the strongest, most intelligent organism that has ever existed.
Sitting on a rock on a chilly November day spending time contemplating what’s happening. Was that snapping of a branch the trophy buck I’ve been waiting for or was it just another instrument in the orchestra? If it was a deer, would I shoot it? That’s hard to say, but it’s what I’m there for, right? It’s what my species does; we eliminate other species; some more slowly than others.
Sitting on a rock you wonder how different things would be if the deer could shoot back; if we weren’t the dominant species. If they could, we probably wouldn’t be running out of clean water, air and oil. All might be right with the world.
