11 april

lost in nature

I take the binoculars to my face again. I tell Chantal, I describe what I think is a barrel anchored as a buoy, bouncing in the current of the apparent quiet sea. Chantal uses a telescope placed for the use of turists like us, and tells me that is not a barrel, it’s a dolphin! I look again, my pulse fails, the thing goes underwater, floats again, moves in curves: it is a big fish indeed! is than an orca turning and churning!? I look again, Chantal looks again, the time pass, the heartbeat goes up, and down, we see nothing more. Apparently the current goes down and there it floats again. It is a barrel, a buoy. 

We walk on along the shore, we bike a bit more, we look at one bird, or another. A fairly sober woman comes at us and tells, in a barely contained voice, that after the curve of the road, by the creek at the side, there are a couple of spoonbills. We spot one, doing his thing with his flattened beak searching for whatever it is that it eats in the shallow water. I haven’t seen one of those in the real before. But I am no birdwatcher. I actually don’t care, I don’t believe I go all romantic with the idea of seeing an eagle or a strange hummingbird, let alone a spoonbill in this Rhin delta called The Netherlands. I think of myself as an ecologist, a persons delighted in understanding patterns and connections, systems of living things interacting with each other. That “thing” of going all excited for a bird, or for yet another swimming thing, is not “my thing”. 

Yet here I am. Carrying along this super expensive and more heavier than anything in my bag binoculars. Looking at the clouds and at the sea to peek on something that I have not yet seen. A bird, a fish, a dolphin. A seal! We seat in a bench looking at the water. Across it we can see the naval basis of Den Helder, not so far away from this island of Texel. I begin to wonder about few hundred years ago, when this piece of water was heavily fared by all sorts of merchant ships, modulating the economy of whole europe and her colonies. That was an amazing ecology! With predators and preys, with slaves and colonists, with great evils and unbelievable inventions. I start remembering the thesis of McCloskey, when she proposed that the basis of a compassionate capitalism, the real capitalism that might be sustainable, was invented here. But look at that! is that a crested grebe? That can’t be! This is the sea, and those are fresh water birds. Once again I take the binoculars, I argue with Chantal, we tell to each other the colors of the crest. And look there, there is another! Even three! There is no doubt, there are grebes in the sea. How beautiful they are, their elegant neck diving to appear later with a fish, of not, in the beak. What beautiful things they are. 

And this is pretty much it today. It really does not matter what I think I am, what I think I care for. Call it ecology, call it political history or the philosophy of economics. I think about these things and about some more. But let only another bird cross my sight, let a thing that might or might not be a dolphin jump in the water in front of me. See then how many milliseconds takes me to forget all my interconnections, my theories and my politics, see how little it takes for me to be lost in the contemplation of that spectacular thing.

Another living thing.