Sunday, May 13, 2012

As it turns out, Urban is still Nature

I see and/or hear 24 species of birds in a day from my front porch. I watch six nests, and two probably nest sites. My bird bath is an oasis in the concrete desert. I analyze the mockingbird’s medley and deduce where he has been. That’s just the birds. The butterflies, moths, fireflies and other beetles, cicadas, frogs, bats, lizards, snakes, possums, raccoons, armadillos, foxes, cats, dogs, and people too! The moon and the stars... Lightning wind and warm sunshine… All from my front porch. I can see the forest with a city inside it…my manicured lawn a giant hole in the canopy. I see the connectedness. Human is the cutting edge of evolution. We are the most highly successful, adaptable species as of yet. What we lack in instinct and physiology we more than compensate for with behavioral adaptation, i.e. learning. Lots of animals get three steps up Bloom’s pyramid. (I watched a crow look both ways before crossing the street and snagging a McDonald’s bag.) Be we can evaluate and best of all cre-ate. That is why we stubbornly attempt to “change” people and situations to our liking. That’s what we do! I am not sitting on a log. There is smooth rock under my shiny auto-mobile. It feels like Minnesota in the morning inside my mouse. We don’t adapt to it. We adapt it to us.

No comments: