Comparing Our Common

Wendel Berry has said at least two things in his life:

“Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed.”

and the more uplifting statement of:

“The earth is what we all have in common”

We might all live on this beautiful, elliptical ball of land, water and ice- but we do not all see the same side of her. She is a dynamic system of cyclic change, and in some places this is more apparent than in others ie: New York State, USA. Here nature moves in a pattern: birth, life and dormancy/ death (depending on what kind of creature you are) and this pattern continues on a predictable trajectory. The Birth of Spring, Life of Summer, the transitional dormancy of Fall and the quiet recharge of winter- and repeat.

I am a creature of the obvious and apparent cycle, a child of extreme heat and extreme cold, and a woman, apparently, of habit. And while I am not a destroyer, I am, of course, ignorant of of life in any alternative cycle. So now we move into Jamaica.

A week ago I resented the lack of autumnal beauty and crisp air in this ever green countryside and I found myself romanticizing Fall to a Jamaican friend “Things die and are reborn so blatantly in front of you that it’s impossible to ignore, it’s such a beautiful contrast” I remember gushing.

I try to explain fall to Jamaicans in this way- “You know when the breadfruit tree has a few leaves that turn orange, and then brown, and then they fall off the tree one at a time? well, imagine if all of the leaves on all of the trees changed color at the same time. And not just brown or orange but red and yellow and orange and sometimes all of those colors on the same tree. Then, in the span of a few weeks the wind blows, as if it understands that its sole purpose is to persuade every leaf to swirl and twirl and gust about until they reach the ground.”

That explanation got a little more poetic than it usually is but the message is the same. Except that the other day it occurred to me: The process of death, life, rebirth still happens here, but it is subtle, and the cycles are staggered so that life will always occur simultaneously with death. There is certainly a balanced and cooperative beauty in that as well. The breadfruit and almond tree sheds its leaves, but eternal photosythetic opportunity dictates that it must also leave most green. So they take turns. Just as I lose my hair but I am never bald, and my skin sheds but it never thins.

So there is a beauty in looking a little harder to appreciate nature and her need to out the old and welcome the new. And there is beauty in knowing that the two are not mutually exclusive, that one must feed the other no matter how the cycle presents itself.

What a unique perspective I now have. I am a creature accustomed to hibernation and the notion that agricultural prosperity ends around mid-November, so I nest and I stock up (and unintentionally rely on greenhouses and California) and I accept that I will have blackberries again next August. I am now in a place where mangos fall and cannot all be eaten and people can live off of their own piece of land, or in tandem with their neighbors’ throughout the entire year. I am in an environment that does not make a big dramatic event of change but rather does so subtly, with only the prolonged presence or absence of rain to somewhat boldly indicate that life is precious and fragile and by no means ever lasting.

But now I raise my glass to the ever-green, and the one brown leaf; and to you at home, watching the sun set over a flaming mountain of shifting tides and I say, “Cheers” to our mother earth and her dynamic system of cyclic change. She truly is what we all have in common.

(Almond Tree Leaf)