On a trip through the high Sierras John Muir came upon a
particularly lovely glen with a river running through it. He climbed a large
boulder in the river, which he likened to an altar. After musing upon the power
of spring floods to move boulders he rhapsodized about moss, the clear pool,
blossoming lilies and light coming through overarching leaves. “The place
seemed Holy,” he concluded, “where one might hope to see God.”1
Muir was hardly the first to equate nature with holiness. His
descriptions of wilderness experiences often bordered on spiritual ecstasy and yet
they were paired with keen phenomenological observations and precise taxonomic
identification of plants and animals he encountered. Muir clearly was
comfortable blending empirical science with personal theology. His rigorously
analytical mind was open to mysticism.
I recently picked up a volume of Muir’s writing, thinking it
was time for me to revisit his perspective on nature. I’d been asked to talk
about the spiritual component of my urban wilderness escapades. It was not the
first such request I’d received and, like Muir, I recognize and welcome the spiritual
dimension of my own examinations of nature, urban and otherwise.
When I first began to explore the Menomonee River for my
book, Urban Wilderness, my impulse
was analytical and documentary. My episodic travels would take me nowhere that
hadn’t been thoroughly mapped as well as completely altered by hundreds of
years of human activity. Nevertheless, in a very real sense it was a journey of
discovery. Among the many surprises of that endeavor was the spiritual presence
I felt in undeniably compromised remnants of nature.
No matter where I went in the watershed I could find pockets
of blessed tranquility, whether a grove of stately trees, a marshy oxbow in the
river, or a sunny meadow enlivened with a chorus of birdsong.
Unlike Muir’s, my wilderness has been interwoven inextricably
with an urban fabric. My spiritual experiences may not have been quite as
ecstatic as his, but they are no less real. I discovered that I didn’t have to
travel to the high Sierras to encounter the sublime or to consider nature
sacred. As I wandered along the rivers I did occasionally have to ignore the
sounds of traffic from a freeway somewhere out of sight. However, this was not
only possible but became an essential element of my spiritual practice. Muir,
undisturbed by the mosquitoes in his wilderness, said, “Imagination gives us
the sweet music of tiniest insect wings….”2
Now, however, the request to speak of the spirit inherent in
my artistic practice made me pause. Fifteen years ago, when I “discovered” the
Menomonee Valley it truly was an urban wilderness. It’s wild state and my
imagination enabled me to savor the sublime. Today, I find those same places
transformed and “civilized.” In my role as resident artist in the Menomonee
Valley, I suddenly realized, I had relinquished the very wildness that had
first attracted me there.
The original Valley environment, a broad marsh of wild rice,
had been first trampled, then tamed and, finally, abandoned by human industry. Wildlife
had gradually re-inhabited the vacated landscape. In the shadows of viaducts a
forest grew up around crumbling buildings. Coyotes prowled through meadows of
wildflowers. A peregrine falcon perched atop a disused chimney, terrifying
songbirds in the bushes below. Ironically, of all the places I visited in the
watershed, the unlikeliest, the industrial valley, was among the wildest. That
wildness was both muse and spiritual touchstone. This was my Sierra!
Fifteen years after my first explorations of it the Valley
is in the midst of yet another transformation. The forest has been trimmed to a
riparian fringe. A conventionally landscaped industrial park has replaced the
meadows. The newly created parklands and the rehabilitated river are lovely, of
course. They also are vital and inspiring. But only with an exceedingly generous
imagination can they be called wild. Reluctantly, when describing the Menomonee
Valley I now resist the term, “urban wilderness” that so motivated my earlier
artistic practice.
But, in the absence of wildness, what has become of the
spiritual dimension of my practice? In the current issue of Orion magazine Paul
Kingsnorth wrestles with the same question: “On wild hilltops…I have pulled at
the edges of some great force that seems way beyond me, a force that seems
embedded in the world itself; the wild world of beauty and complexity and dark
magic that my kind are busy destroying and replacing with a culture of
future-worship and straight lines. If anything is sacred…surely it is this
thing we call ‘nature.’”3
Of all places in Milwaukee the Menomonee Valley arguably has
suffered the most from this tendency to replace a wild and fertile nature with
the straight lines of mechanized “civilization.” Clearly, the chance to
experience a sublime version of wild nature, in the tradition of Muir, is now
more remote. And yet, I am not discouraged. Far from it!
The Valley no longer is a wild rice marsh, but neither is it
the unrelieved industrial zone that replaced that marsh. More importantly, I
believe, we citizens of Milwaukee no longer are the people who tore down the
limestone bluffs to crush the marsh. We are beginning to envision a city where
industry and nature can coexist. Not only here in Milwaukee, but across the
globe, we are part of a nascent but burgeoning movement, a shift in thinking
away from the binary either/or of wilderness vs. civilization. We see a “third
way” of integrating the two.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy New York City has been
forced to grapple with the need for an integrated approach to rebuilding. In
the same issue of Orion Meera Subramanian asserts, “It seems increasingly clear
that there may be a third way: an approach that blends a trace of conciliation
with an abundance of creativity, using hints from the ecological past to design
the coastlines of the future.”4
You don’t need a hurricane-ravaged coast to appreciate the
wisdom of this new approach. Hints from our ecological past and, yes, an
abundance of creativity have informed the redevelopment of the Menomonee Valley.
What has made this new transformation possible is as old as the origins of
human culture: a concern for community.
In modern Western culture the human community, beginning
with its so-called “Enlightenment,” has been led away from natural communities.
The separation of humankind and “nature” was always artificial. No, the
ecologies of cities and of forests are not comparable, but at its core ecology
teaches the importance of interconnections. Although Western cultural tradition
led us unilaterally to disassociate ourselves from nature—with tragic and
global consequences for both sides of the equation—we can never really sever the
human from the natural. Global climate change is teaching us that human
communities are not sustainable without reintegration with the ecological
community.
Have I digressed from my theme of finding something
spiritual in my work? Not at all. Like a voyage of discovery, a spiritual quest
veers in directions dictated by winds of contingency and circumstance, rather
than a predetermined plan. Just as my earlier exploration of the Menomonee
River watershed led to unforeseen spiritual insights, so too has this new
endeavor. I too am “pulled at the edges of some great force that seems way
beyond me.” But the windswept hilltops where I feel this power are not wild but
bulldozed into shape, engineered by imagination and human agency.
That great force is embedded in the faces of the people;
people who care deeply about this place. Some of them are visionaries boldly determined
to create a future worth worshiping. Others are newcomers to the Valley, welcomed
into it by the latest transformation. In their eyes I see the marvel of
discovery: that the straight lines of civilization can intersect with the
lyrical curves of nature.
And so my spiritual quest turns full circle; my faith in the
human community complements and deepens my enchantment with the earth. The
sacredness of nature isn’t diminished when we recognize our own worth. If
anything is sacred, surely it is this thing we call ‘human.’
Science and industry have granted us the power to shape the
world in ways previous generations couldn’t imagine. But in order to wield that
power for the benefit of the community it takes a human heart and human spirit.
As with the coastal modifications being done along the Long Island shore, the
transformation underway in the Menomonee Valley integrates the human community
with a restored natural environment. Urban, economic redevelopment is
complemented with sensitivity to ecological systems.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. envisioned a Beloved Community “in
which all people can share in the wealth of the earth.”5 People
yearn for that inclusive and joyful community, consciously or not. In the
Menomonee Valley there is a conscious attempt to create it. That community is
not only visionary, it is sacred.
Notes:
1. Muir: Nature Writings, 1997.
2. The Wilderness World of John Muir, 2001
3. Kingsnorth, Orion Mar/Apr 2014
4. ibid.
5. TheKingCenter.org
The two photos at the top are from Urban Wilderness: Exploring a Metropolitan Watershed, Center for American Places, 2008. The other three are Adam, Laura and Omar: 2014.
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