The Transition Zone

Here in the craggy mountains just off the Pacific Coast of California, it’s generally not hard for me to spend some time with nature. I just have to wake up in the morning. Alternatively, it is not hard for me to wake up in civilization, for we live in a transition zone.

My wife and I chose to settle with one foot in each of two worlds. One side of our cabin-home descends via a narrow path to a relatively narrow valley floor, within which is just enough room for a river, many other cabins and homes, and a two-lane road that served as one of the first thoroughfares north towards the San Francisco Bay area. With this road came the two-edged sword of civilization, with all of its benefits and troubles. On the other side of our home’s little perch, descends another path, a little wider, that reaches a couple of other old cabins and a rich narrow gulch. A couple of steps down this trail and the sounds of the road – civilization – disappear, and one becomes enveloped in the softer sounds of nature.

It is not so much that nature’s sounds do not exist on the ‘civilizational’ side of our little ridge, though I don’t spend a lot of time there, I’m sure that they do. However they are more difficult to hear. Even though the fairly good-sized river next to the road flows with a substantial amount of water, the croaks of its frogs can’t be heard, especially near the road, over the drone of vehicles. In the same way, the birdsongs from the surrounding trees along the roadway, though probably chirping and warbling, cannot penetrate the thick glass and metal walls and exceed the roar of engines, to otherwise delight the many commuters going to and from the nearby towns and cities.

It is true, that there is less structural interference between us and the birds on our dwelling’s ‘nature’ side. Even the calls of small crickets in the early evening easily reach us on the top of our ridge. And the creek, so small yet flowing year-round, plays its delightful array of tumbles and splashes so that it fills up the narrow gulch with mesmerizing music.

As my wife and I labor on this land these first several years, shoring up and coaxing our cabin into a home that can keep us warm and dry in winter, I am reminded of the struggles that fresh shrub and tree transplants go through for their first several seasons. It is sometimes said, as I have read recently, that “For the most part, humans, particularly those in Western societies, tell sociocultural histories, rarely do we consider our natural history.” (Terrestrial Tales: the story of the place: natural history, by Katie MacDowell). This observation got me thinking, as I, like a newly transplanted growth, struggle to extend my roots into the local soil.

For one, the members of my family as well as my wife’s have been for generations a series of transplants, carried as children, infants or genetic threads by mothers and fathers for thousands of miles. Or perhaps viewed in another way, we have sprouted like seeds blown by the wind of civilization as it swept from the European continent to the soil of the Eastern seaboard. From there, the winds carried us further across North America’s wide prairies and towering mountains until we found ourselves here on the far Western edge of the United States. Either way, as a seed or as a transplant, neither mine nor my wife’s ancestors sprouted from this particular corner of the Earth where we now live.

In one sense, I can see that ours has been a migratory lineage, though not such in the season-to-season manner of so many other peoples and life forms, but in the bigger picture of our families’ lines over many generations. Perhaps amidst changing economies, they picked up and moved looking towards the possibility of work, or perhaps for personal safety during times of social upheaval, or maybe they were in search of spiritual freedoms: who knows the many reasons that over 10 or 15 preceding generations convinced so many of my ancestors to move to a new place. As for my wife and myself, we chose to come to this land because of a deep fondness for the color of redwood bark, the clean sea-washed and forest-scrubbed air, the bats at night and the black and orange butterflies during the day. To come to rest here, with at least one foot planted firmly in nature, was a call that however quiet, spoke to us deeply.

Yet I wonder, where is my natural history? I can’t produce long-heard tales of our history as descendants of this place. There are no family legends that spring from here, extending back before grandparents. Far less, are there myths that might trace our people back as offspring of the towering redwoods and firs that force the spindly oaks to extend awkwardly skyward. I can’t recite stories of how my family learned to forage from the deer, or gathered its nobility from the silent advice of huge forest trees. I can’t claim a natural history as a part of this place, as well might even the soil horizons that descend below my feet... if they could speak. If I stop long enough to consider this, these thoughts leave me feeling a little sad.

I wonder if I am alone. Perhaps there is a deep sadness that accompanies much of civilization as it has migrated from place to place, sealing itself off from nature within cities, cars, and double-paned windows. I suspect it is a feeling with which we are so accustomed that we don’t even notice it until it is brought to our attention.

It seems I live in not just one transition zone, but several. One zone is our beloved cabin atop the narrow hogback ridge, looking out one side at the flow of civilization, the other side melting into the mysteries of the forest. As our human population grows, how many must find themselves further and further distant from nature! Our families’ stories describe another transition zone, as they moved from place to place over generations. How few of us are actually a part of the natural history of the place in which we live! Yet, there is a third kind of transition zone in which I find myself. Whereas the other two leave only sadness, this one inspires me with a kind of hope. This is my own consciousness, a transition zone shifting from a noisy civilization of ideas and human structures into the softer sounds of the natural world. It is as though I am remembering something crucial that was forgotten. Something that was at one time, so obvious.

We sprang from the natural world. This is our home, our lineage, and our origins. This is the place of our myths, legends and family stories. I did not move away from anywhere.

I returned.