In fact, my botfly larvae suggested
that the Creator of the Universe is more interested in biological diversity --
more focused on the production and sustainability of a vast rainbow of mutually
interacting species -- than in the momentary comfort or dignity of any
individual organism, such as me.
During the years since my botfly
revelation I have seen nothing to contradict that insight.
We all can see how human activity
is impacting the Earth at this moment. Are not most of us in some kind of
trancelike state of denial, believing that if we hike into the land of
botflies, somehow we shall be exempt from getting bots ourselves? That if we
spoil our Earth, somehow angels or a benevolent Creator will save us? Or even
that spoiling the Earth is OK, because, when we all die, us good folks will go
to Heaven?
One also wonder's how the current
Administration's attitude toward the Endangered Species Act and environmental
protection in general squares with the nature of our diversity-loving Creator.
*****
CALLUSES
This week I've been grubbing Red Buckeye saplings from the hayfields and this
has hardened the very slight calluses on my hands. I do just enough hoeing,
scything and shoveling to keep respectable hints of calluses on my fingers and
palms. These calluses got me remembering and thinking.
For two or three summers during the
80s I worked in Ulm, southern Germany, home to "Europe's
tallest cathedral." During my Ulm
days, whenever I visited the cathedral I always went right to an obscure little
carving in an out-of- the-way corner portraying a naked man absolutely shaggy
with long fur. Apparently he was a famously pious hermit back in 1377, someone
who swore off clothing and other of man's conventions, and in reaction to Germany's
habitually cold and rainy weather grew long hair all over his body.
So, the body can react to harshness
in some surprising ways. Corned feet once served our barefooted ancestors well.
Long before humans had tools and worried much about clothing, maybe all humans
looked like the shaggy hermit in Ulm's
cathedral. For, the time since humankind emerged from the Stone Age is just a
tiny flash at the end of many millennia of humans evolving in the context of
small family or tribal units, on the open savannah and in the forest.
It's logical to think that today
our inherited human genetic code continues producing humans meant to function
in our ancestors' long-enduring world, not our recently appeared one.