SEPARATE SOLUTIONS

Rex Burress

There are many types of separation, even beyond the 2018 Mexican border conflict involving separation of children and parents .

 

Although I was primarily thinking of the separation, or gulf, between man and nature, some other major samples of separation are apparent, too. One is the group supporting the separation of Northern California and Southern CA--the State of Jefferson movement--and even a larger physical possibility is of California splitting apart by potential separation along the San Andreas fault-line! All it takes is a quake and a tectonic plate shift, and bam!, the separation situation is settled, like a divorce court settling the separation of a married couple. Legal terms alter life courses.

 

Just as the church and state are supposed to be separate, there is a separation of wildlife and man. I thought of this subject while watching wildlife along the river. A nicely dressed scrub jay shifted away from me into the shrubs, as if it didn't want me to see it, or that he didn't trust a man with a stick. That caution is warranted when you consider that there are people who will throw a rock at wildlife, or shoot them with a gun. I would like to approach close to see that feathered beauty and take a picture, but long periods of hunting have forever embedded fear into their instincts, leaving the wildlife watcher separated from wild species.

 

Also, there is practically no mingling between wild animals of different species, since some, like predators, take advantage of their fellow animals to obtain a meal. Even some of the same species don't completely trust their kind, much like humans of different races or status keeping defensible space in their midst.

 

So the lamb doesn't lie down with the wolf, although I have seen some exceptions in videos of orangutans and tigers, and even dogs and cats, playing together in an altered environment where both are well-fed without stress. But generally speaking, each animal does its thing in its habitat, remaining separate as much as possible, unless it involves a flock of geese, or a colony of cliff swallows, and even then there are squabbles over nesting or feeding space and personal territory!

 

Likewise, honey bees and ants seem to be the ultimate in get-along community cooperation, and woe to an intruder. However, some bee and wasp species are quite solitaire, and as in various other animals, are forced to be together only for mating...and even then, some like black widows and praying mantis, are liable to eat their suitor after copulation!

 

Thus the wildlife watcher is forced to watch wild things through binoculars or telescopes. Photographers use telephoto lenses in an effort to obtain a portrait of wild animals and the natural beauty they admire, when it would be so much easier if the elusive ones would stay put long enough and close enough for a decent exposure. But that distrust looms like a wedge separating the species no matter how much joy would be generated if they allowed nature lovers a close approach.

 

First the meat-seeking Native Americans, and then the hungry Europeans, and then Lewis and Clark shooting their way west, and even I as a boy-hunter on the Missouri farm, have helped plant that distrust in wild animals and forever, it seems, create separation, even though we are all part of life on earth.

 

“Everything in the Universe is hitched together.”--John Muir

 

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears

a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.”

--Henry David Thoreau