Author: Dunrie

And yet if we persist in believing that we alone, living in whatever culture we’re from, are right, and that we therefore have no need to listen to anyone else’s stories, stories that we often can’t quite understand and so are unwilling to discuss, we endanger ourselves.

Barry Lopez, Horizon, pp 45-6.

Right now, I’m reading Barry Lopez’s latest book, Horizon. I am struck by its relevance to the present moment. Lopez’s quote continues:

If we remain fearful of human diversity, our potential to evolve into the very thing we most fear—to become our own fatal nemesis—only increases.

Barry Lopez, Horizon, P. 46

My prayer for myself and for our nation is to remain open to each other. To avoid the traps of echo chambers and vilification. We must listen to stories that make us uncomfortable, then grieve, and then do better.

But since Clark’s triumphs were those of a war leader, that is, the products of fear, pain, and opportunity, they were not stable. Clark’s mistake was to think them the larger triumphs of alliance.”

Richard White, The Middle Ground (20th anniversary edition, 2011) p. 371

I’m reading, at Dave’s cousin Toby’s excellent suggestion, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815. The quote describes George Rogers Clark, one of many who overinterpreted their success in making war as leadership for other situations.

The book lists battles, betrayals, and atrocities. Yet, this history tells a parallel story of the peace leaders, the alliances, and diplomacy that avoided or slowed even more torture and murder.

The title of the work refers to a middle ground made of blended and new customs, sometimes based on shared misunderstandings. In this middle ground, mediation rather than coercion was the more productive form of leadership.

The French were at their strongest when they appeared, at least to themselves, the most weak. When they offered goods freely, when they mediated quarrels, when they stayed Algonquian hatchets and covered the dead, then they achieved a status that no other group could rival. They were, conversely, at their weakest when they appeared the most dangerous and powerful…[When they] abandoned mediation and deployed force, then [their] special status began to dissipate.”

White, The Middle Ground, pp. 182-3

Of course, I read this book through the lens of the fear and pain of this current moment. While White describes the history of a particular time and situation, he also describes the human condition.

Fear and pain may get valued results, but only temporarily.

When the pandemic crisis subsides (we are not there yet), let us build communities, maintain alliances, and foster respect among peoples instead of division, blame, and worse, revenge.

Let us hold up peace rather than war leadership as a metaphor for our actions and hopes for the future.

In a difficult year, trees may increase their mass by less than one gram! During this time, the tree devotes its limited resources to maintaining the status quo. Like an eternal optimist, the tree concentrates on keeping itself alive until such time that conditions improve.

Peter E. Kelly and Douglas W. Larson, The Last Stand: A Journey through the Ancient Cliff-Face Forest of the Niagara Escarpment p. 75

This eternal optimist tree is the eastern white cedar, Thuja occidentalis. On the cliff-faces of the Bruce Peninsula and the Niagara Escarpment, some white cedars survive hundreds of years. There, these ancient trees form a scraggly and gnarled old-growth “forest.”

Challenged by gravity, root-limited, and exposed to weather, the cliff-face cedars escape competition from other trees. While they grow exceptionally slowly under these challenging conditions, other trees cannot survive at all.

For me, this shelter-in-place is not the time for productivity. I’ll take my cue from the cedars: persist, wait, and remain optimistic about better times ahead.

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The Last Stand: A Journey Through the Ancient Cliff-Face Forest of the Niagara Escarpment is a great guide to these fascinating trees.