WHAT IS YOUR AMERICAN DREAM?
Rex Burress
When I read about sculptor-artist Kyle Campbell's art exhibit in Chico and his impressions of “the American Dream,” I wondered what The Dream represented for other people, especially those involved in the interpretation of nature.
Generally, success in a chosen field is a prime ingredient for dreamers, as expressed in the phrase “a life richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunities for each according to ability or achievement.” Probably a house, car, and similar luxuries are basic goals, but everyone is different with different desires and ambitions. Some, such as the homeless, have run up to a worrisome wall where even a simple shelter becomes their dream.
The American Dream ambition or goal is often shrouded in a veil of physical and mental difficulties, as anyone seeking a career or job knows, extending right through to retirement-survival. How different it is for wild animals that have little concern for the future since they are adapted by nature to fulfill all their immediate environmental needs...as long as they have habitat. Without sufficient shelter and food, they can be up against extinction.
There are the random extremes of weather and other natural processes that sometimes dictates the direction of dreams for both wildlife and mankind. The ultimate wild-- wind, rain, hail, flood, fire, – are factors of uncontrollable characteristics, able to change the course of history, and even skewer the best laid plans of mice and men. Natural forces are truly the essence of the wild and free, even though that power can be disruptive and dangerous for life, as in tornadoes and earthquakes. “Untamed!”
What is the American dream for migratory wild animals that seek no permanent residency? Take the case of the wild goose : A water-filled swamp or food-filled field are dreams for it and other incoming winter waterfowl, even though they aren't able to express that in human terms.
There are hundreds of examples of shifting migratory animals and their critical needs, as the winter snow goose status shows in the Sacramento Valley, and then again in the Arctic tundra where habitat is being hard-pressed in the summer for space to accommodate expanding populations. It affects the Canadian dream of nesting success versus the American dream of winter food sufficiency and settling space. Nature usually balances things out with natural limitations in time.
What was the American Dream for John Muir after his father brought him and family from Scotland to America in 1849? John had to work on the Wisconsin farm from daylight to dark to help support his father's dream, and only broke free to pursue a course of his own when he was dismissed from the parental binding at age 21.
Although he spent a couple years in college [without any formal schooling after leaving Scotland when he was 11, except for what books he could smuggle into the basement at night], John was largely nomadic, going from a job in Canada to a job in Indiana to a botanical walk to Florida, and even making a week-long home in a Savannah, Georgia cemetery! His life journey finally took him to California and Yosemite.
John Muir didn't have “an American Dream house” until he married into the Martinez mansion and fruit ranch in 1880 at age 42. He settled down for 10 years with his family and what would be a dream home for most people, but nature and the mountains was his ultimate calling. “I have made a tramp of myself,” he said, “seeing the wonders of the world.” That rings true, especially when your dream is anchored in the interests of nature and the call of the wild!
Thus an American Dream-concept can go beyond a house and property to all realms under Mother sun. “What I say unto you I say unto to all,'Watch! '“ Mark 13:37
“What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?” --Thoreau
“My [Sierra campfire] was in all its glory about midnight, and, having made a bark shed to shelter me from the rain and partially dry my clothing, I had nothing to do but look and listen and join the trees in their hymns and prayers...Going to the woods is going home.” --John Muir
“Oh that I had the wings like a dove! For then would I fly away and be at rest.! –Psalms 4:6