A Photo Essay
Larry L. Dill's
New Hope Journal
Personal Essays and Public Opinions since 1979
August, 2005
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Dog Dancing on the Creek Bank
March 23, 1980 (Nacogdoches, Texas)
Some people say we live back in the woods. And yet our house, primitive as it is, is too comfortably civilized to harbor the necessary atmosphere that it takes to satisfy my thirst for wilderness. Periodically, Elaine and I talk about going to British Columbia. I doubt we’ll ever go, but moving to the Canadian frontier somehow symbolizes for us the ultimate move back to nature. I’m not sure why we even entertain such an idea. Perhaps we simply want to escape responsibility or perhaps it’s just a yearning for greener pastures. But it seems more likely that we share a common longing for something rooted deep in our nervous systems that has never quite succumbed to the centuries of civilized existence we inherited from our parents.
Man is above all else an animal. But having said that I don’t think it makes him less spiritual. In fact, I think it is precisely their spirituality that makes animals such great teachers and such friends of man. Man has all but lost his spirituality, even as he has all but lost his animal instincts. Scientists, educators and public officials no longer consider the ordinary powers of observation on the unmistakable superiority of human intuition to be sufficient evidence for fact and yet wild animals, where they are undaunted by man’s intrusions, and primitive men where they are unspoiled by civilization, go on living in perfect harmony with nature and with each other in the same way they have for apparently millions of years.
What is there about civilization that makes it so destructive of itself and of the environment? A columnist wrote recently that all the furor over saving the lowly snail darter at the expense of a multimillion dollar hydroelectric plant was “insane.” It seems to me that what is insane is the way mankind has taken upon itself the role of God, deciding what species will survive and what will not, developing an insatiable appetite for luxury that can only end in the ultimate squandering of the humble resources we were given by the real God.
I’ve been accused of being naïve for wanting a return to simpler ways of living, for being against automobiles and nuclear power and corporations and progress, for considering the snail darter important. Naïve is the French word for natural. And we can than the industrial age for bringing us the idea that nature is incomplete and that “progress” is the only way to a better life.
I don’t believe in any kind of golden age of history (the so called good old days). But I do believe that nature will prevail, with or without us. The human race stands like an angry man on the ledge of a skyscraper. All that our civilization has brought us to is the brink of our own destruction. And we look foolish and tragic standing there when all we need do is climb down and never again get any higher off the ground than the trees our ancestors climbed down out of.
It is obvious to all but the most spiritually impoverished that our salvation does not lie in technology, and yet it seems that even many of those who call themselves Christians put more faith in the economy, in the future of science or medicine or industrial development, than they do in the immeasurable power of a spring afternoon or a starlit night or a pulsating forest floor. Ultimately we cannot know. And we cannot conquer. We have been given the gift of life and we may share, we may love, we may pray.
I’ve wandered far from what I started out to say which is that I enjoy being around animals. My dog and I went to the creek today and I was like a stranger there, looking but not really feeling anything. The dog sniffed around awhile and then made a dance of running gleefully back and forth across the creek, leaping to keep feet dry, falling occasionally, trying again, obviously joyous beyond reason.
Suddenly I realized I felt the same way she did about the creek but I couldn’t express myself quite so well. What shall civilization say to the dog? That she was naïve? That the creek’s permanence made it unworthy of awe or inspiration? That its slow meandering made it essentially useless in a fast paced, mechanized world? That an expression of joy over the mere existence of such an insignificant trickle of water was the height of animal ignorance and human stupidity? Civilization has virtually destroyed our ability to express the sheer joy of living. Staying in touch with animals, observing the way they get on in the world and the simple pleasures they discover, can do much to bring us back to ourselves, back to nature and back to God. Take your dog dancing on the creek bank.
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Copyright 2005 by Larry L. Dill
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