by every predator. There will be no fight between the sunfish and the
horned pout, but the sunfish has affirmed its ancient rights to the
territory that comprises its nest. It is bold in defense of its home,
up to the point, presumably, that it goes beyond a boundary which its
feelings establish for it. I am reminded of those birds, like the
herring gulls and their “threat postures” (described by N. K. Tinbergen
in _The Herring Gull’s World_, 1954) assumed when two birds defend
their respective positions on either side of a boundary invisible to
us but strongly felt by them. In these cases a fight may never result,
because the two alternate drives of defense and aggression cancel each
other out. What the trained observer sees as an indication of what is
going on are “behavior patterns,” types of physical action that show
him what this gull communication might mean. In any case, up and down
the scale of life is force and counterforce, action and reaction, in a
balance that is understood in as many ways as there are species.
The lusty month of June is made up of all its encounters, many of them
savage in isolation; but we may look for Roman circuses in vain. Wait
all day and no life seems to devour another. Wait all year and you
may never see the fight you are looking for. Now and then to be sure,
as with an abundance of fish and their marauding predators, you can
see savagery and greed confined, but even so the lesson is the same.
It is not killing, eating, and aggression which seem paramount but an
over-all rhythm and balance in which they are only elements. Later on,
between July and December, the young alewives hatched out this spring
in pond waters will start returning to the sea. I have often seen
them as they go down the fish ladders by which their spawning parents
came up. Perhaps through some attraction to the water’s force where it
spills down hard over the concrete rims of each pool in the ladder,
the fingerlings mass and circle before dropping back downstream. It
is here that a number of eels, some of them of large size, coil and
slither through the water, and eat large quantities of fish. Eels are
largely nocturnal in habit, but they do go through periods of feeding
by day. Sometimes they act like eating machines, methodically grabbing
one little fish after another; but the alewives continually swim over
them, unregarding. Where the fish idle in the stream below, in less
turbulent, clearer water, perfectly capable of seeing any eels lying
in wait for them, they are in no way affected, so far as I can see.
The eels themselves, lying on the stream bottom for long periods after
eating, pay no attention while the little alewives swim over them. Here
is a strange relation between enemies.
It is perfectly true that a young alewife may not know an eel from a
stick unless it is directly attacked, being in some respects oblivious
to much of anything except the need to migrate to salt water. And
yet the point is not that they are “stupid,” but that their crowd
lives demand a cohesive rhythm, sensitive enough in action, which
is paramount to all risks they encounter. It is in fact their main
protection. They school and eat. They school and escape. They school
and perpetuate themselves. The solitary alewife is lost. These fish
move and intercommunicate in a frame of continuity to which they are
forever held. But can we call it a restriction? Its terms may be quite
invisible to us.
_The Binding Rain_
So this is, or was, Cape Cod, as June booms with fruition. The nights
throb; and on a clear one how the long frames of the stars line up
overhead! There is no end of internment, no end of use and opening out.
It is not the place I came to, out of the city, though its shape,
like a giant curved arm, or fish hook lying out in the Atlantic, is
the same. Its oak trees have grown, even in the comparatively few
years I have lived here. The old, gray-shingled houses are still in
evidence, but there are many more new ones, seemingly temporary as this
age goes. The shores are crowded, beginning toward the end of June.
We are scrambling to take advantage of our summer economy while it
lasts, although the buzz saw sounds the year through, as well as the
chickadees, building motels, summer cottages, gas stations, houses for
the retired. Cape Cod still has a certain itinerant quality, which may
ally it to its more seagoing past.
In my own terms the Cape is not the same. I have outlived my dependence
on its past. I go by the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century gravestones
with less interest. The “old characters” are not around to talk to any
more. I am not quite so fascinated by grown-over wagon tracks as I used
to be. Something pleasant is lost--even a blessed continuity. Still, I
have learned to look for another, which has no particular choice as to
place, joining them all.
This is not just “natural history” I have found, unless you are also
willing to call it “natural mystery.” This is life, or death-in-life,
as well as “nature.” In any case it is bountiful, or niggardly,
relentless, terrible, but always at hand. Only walk out and see. Cape
Cod is rife with unknown lives (and what I know about its ocean waters
is not worth mentioning). Where do we begin? With a first question
perhaps. To make it is to recover from being afraid of getting or
giving the wrong answer, a step toward knowledge.
I have not learned much about cell structure, or the delicate
co-ordination of organisms in their environment, or some of those
remarkable mechanisms that trigger action in certain plants or animals
of land and sea; but I have made that first step.
I stand by some pond, wondering how deep it is. Everything around me
says, in comparative silence: “As deep as you make it,” and I have no
need to think my questions will delay the source that leads them on.
The rolling energies of nature remind us of our own potentialities.
In a small country field is all existence and its hazards. Ponderous
storms, killing balances of cold and heat, great rains or droughts,
hang over the needs of its competitive inhabitants. A natural,
unimpeachable violence wipes out untold numbers, or holds them to its
order. And yet the plants and animals themselves that endure, survive,
and die prove an essential vigor in the process. It is not only a
matter of “food gathering” and “competition” for them. They fight the
winds, in rhythmic unity. They are made to face the universe, with
the universe inside them. Their motions, their changing adaptation
to circumstance, are also their great self-expenditure. Live and be
finished off, but above all live!
This Cape Cod, this special piece of America, has its unexampled
strength and a “progress” which will not take second place to our
own. Sun and rain, the capacities of earth, the mindless ways of the
flower, the strange and short sensitivities of the insects in their
other world, the brooding sea in its ominous tidal balance held by moon
and turning globe, all this matrix of energy has its standards and its
abiding needs.
It rains steadily as the tourists begin to drive down the Cape in ever
increasing numbers, thus abashing their spirits. Rain is a nuisance.
It keeps us in and deprives us of perpetual warmth and light. If there
were no rain? Drought is only on the surface. Water comes from pipes,
the way milk comes from refrigerator cars.
But the rain will not be stopped. Clean, cool, straight falling,
pattering on multitudinous leaves, it insists on its own power and
propriety. There is no wind. The calm gray sky is gently, loosely
moving, but held dead center with its riches of rain. The fall is
steady and fast above the treetops, with single drops ticking off from
each waxen leaf, sliding down the pine needles to end at their tips in
brilliant crystal eyes. With a thin long seething it spits and spats
and trickles on, pausing occasionally, then putting forth again. The
water lands on the dead leaf floor under the trees, or thick beds of
needles, sliding and soaking through, making gradual displacements
between litter and soil, stirring gently, providing the life of earth
its refreshment and guaranteeing its sustenance.
Between pond lilies and reeds the rain spatters the fresh water. It
changes the lakes and ponds as it changes the earth. The water level
moves up and down from year to year depending on the rainfall. In
a pond it will move up the rim and cover the roots of overhanging
shrubs--blueberries, alders, or swamp azaleas--then, after a year or
two, it will recede again, revealing a narrow beach. During the years
there will be continual, subtle alterations in the nature of plants
around the pond, and in the habits of the animals dependent on them.
The rain falls through woodland bogs, and open swamps. It trickles
down bare slopes and thicket-studded valleys. It runs over incessantly
moving brooks and streams that bear it toward the sea. Its drops bounce
with silvery emphasis across the waters of the slow, gray tidal inlets.
They sound like a breath along the sands, and while arrowlike terns are
excitedly diving for fish, they pock the silver-streaked levels of the
bay, and then are lost to sight, pattering out over massive waters.
Even and sweet the descent, calm and clean its provision. The rain
thrusts in and guarantees immediate growth. It binds the birds to
the insects to the plants, to sun and air, breaking down elements in
the soil, loosening it for billions of its travelers, making sure of
sustenance in that release. Rain sound in June, which at other seasons
may cut like a knife, is one of beatitude. I listen. I accept. It
carries me on. Out of the hollow mind of the universe what conceptions
may come in the millions and millions of years ahead? How many, in the
next spit of timelessness, will fall prey to disaster? Both calm and
calamity are in the cards. This is acceptable enough to life in nature.
And who am I to claim some vain detachment?
Transcriber’s Notes
New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the
public domain.
Perceived typographical errors have been silently corrected.
Illustrations have been moved nearer to the text to which they refer.