A year ago, I didn’t know what a land ethic was. Aldo Leopold was just another name associated with some white guy who had done something somewhere. Land ethic? I just wanted to get out of the state I was living in. Away from being taxed for heavy rainfall. Away from owing the state money, no matter how hard I worked and how much money I let be held back from my paycheck. Away from a corrupt government. Away from a stale morale of where we came from and what we had built in the past few years. I knew I would miss Alton, Illinois, but that’s a given when it’s the only town you’ve lived in for the entire twenty years of your life. I had tasted my passion and the world, and I was ready for more.
I surprised myself in Wilderness and Civilization. As I looked deep into my soul with the journal entries, I was tackling things I had buried deep inside of me. There was no fear of running into people from my past. I was rediscovering myself in all the best ways. As I gained a new love for Montana wilderness and found my niche in the landscape, I was realizing the beauty of where I had come from. Missoula, Montana was a place I finally called home, but Alton never lost that title. While I never want to move back permanently, I look forward to going back to Alton.
But, right now, I am establishing my place in yet another landscape. When my heart belonged to sagebrush and lodge pole pines, and the river bluffs called me home, I was ripped from both when COVID-19 shut down Illinois and the university encouraged us to find alternate housing. So, I packed up my little corner of the world and, in twenty-four hours, moved in with my boyfriend and his family in Brush Prairie, Washington. And so, my landscape became their rural street and the temperate cedar swamps in their backyard.
Learning this new landscape has made Joanna’s lectures on land ethic weigh heavily on my mind, knowing there is an indefinite amount of time before I can legally visit home. I missed the crabapples blooming in the Miles Davis Square, the Mississippi is already past flood stage, and Maeva’s would have had their tables out on the patio by now. I miss Alton terribly. I miss Missoula. The bustling of Arthur Avenue has been replaced by mooing cows and blowing wind. The mountains cradling the valley became a cedar and broadleaf tree line. My extended family is in distress, but Oklahoma is miles away. Maybe even months. Everything I have ever known is at least an eight hour drive from me. I realize I have it easier than most people during this pandemic. I have plenty of food, I am with people who love me, I wake up and see the love of my life every morning, and I have wilderness.
Even as I write this, my land ethic is evolving. What would have been an overgrown tree stump became a throne for only the highest of royalty. A moss-covered post is transformed into the gravestone for a beloved family pet. The large, ancient cedar tree is the perfect place for a picnic, and the snags in the wetlands make fantastic painting subjects. I am growing to love and know this place, this climate, this landscape, just as I grew to love Montana. Field journaling has helped me to know the names of all the lichen and mushrooms we come across as we are walking. Just doing a watercolor of a photo I took helps me feel like I have control over something. I jumped off of an uprooted cedar and into the mud because…why not? Even though it is the most tangled and torn up thing I have ever laid eyes on, I took home a Steller’s jay feather I found in the moss. No reason, really; I just like that bird.
I do not really know where I intended to go with this post, but I think what I am trying to say is this is a time to realize what is most important to us. Yeah, we belong to this crumbling and monotonous system of being born, going to school, working, and dying; there is more to life than that. The thing our system/routine of life has in common with quarantine is the lack of spontaneity. We have to stop and think about things we are allowed to do. Make a list. Think of old hobbies you gave up because you didn’t have time for them anymore. Call someone you think about often but never talk to anymore. Maybe even just listen to a new musician you’ve never heard of before. I don’t care what you do, but look at your life and ask yourself: where’s the freaking spontaneity?
Wilderness & Civ 