YES, THESE ARE EDIBLE. AND QUITE TASTY.Every year in the fall, my friend, Nate, and his family invites me to Chama to go mushroom picking. We look for Chanterelles, a bright orange species that is considered a delicacy. I don’t consider myself a big mushroom fan, but each year the trip is amazing. The scenery in northern New Mexico is epic; the hiking alone is worth the three and a half hour drive. Each time I go I am thrilled by nature’s resilience. Packs of deer move silently through the trees, hawks and eagles quietly patrol the skies, and the streams are full of river trout. How can these animals arise out of the chaotic elements and thrive without human intervention? I see dogs that look ratty and starved trotting through streets, the obvious result of bad owners. But the deer looks powerful and frightening, the eagle is clean and graceful, and the fish are abundant. It is then that I realize that mongrels are not foreign elements in a city, but that cities are foreign elements in nature. The superiority complex that is taught to us by everyday observations tells me that the health of animals is dependent on human intervention. This is far from the truth. It is during these trips, or any exposure to raw nature, that I realize how ignorant I have become.
NORTHERN NEW MEXICO--YOU CAN SEE WHY I DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE MUSHROOMS. THE HIKING ALONE IS AMAZING.
Nature is essential to a healthy life. Nearly everyone you ask will mention that exposure to its beauty is soothing. In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, animals are rare and coveted, and to own one is as satisfying as it is dangerous. “[People] will knock you off to get a hold of [your animal],” describes one character[1]. It is hard for us to imagine people killing each other to get an animal, but in the future it may not seem so extreme. Even today rare animals sell for thousands of dollars, and lucrative businesses are tapping into this strange market. So why is nature so important to us? One thing that I think many people fail to realize is that humans are still animals. The definition is pretty clear, “anything living,”[2] but we sill forget. Intellectually we may be superior to our fellow inhabitants, but our instincts are still the same. Like Derrida explains, the only difference between humans and animals is that we think they are “naked.”[3] The irony is that by dressing ourselves and building shelter from the elements, we are not only protecting ourselves from nature but separating from it as well.
IMAGES LIKE THIS MAKE ME REALIZE HOW EXTREME OUR MANIPULATION OF OUR ENVIROMENT HAS BECOME.
Separation seems to be a common theme when it comes to animals. Yes, we yearn for nature hikes and walks through the park, but we also separate ourselves from the parts of nature that we don’t like: consumption. I do have leather belts, and when I received it I was more impressed by the stamps in it that by the cow that produced it. However, my lack of disgust is not the result of a lack of compassion-it is the result of our society’s lack of exposure. Breaking tails, starvation, and the tragic working conditions at Indian tanneries is depressing to watch. After witnessing these things on film, I have a different outlook on leather products. I do have “the desire to alleviate the suffering” of the cows[4]. So where am I going with all of this?
I’m not even sure myself. I am in a position where I know the horrors of animal cruelty but am powerless to stop it. Even if I bought cloth belts and never ate meat again, the inertia of our culture would be unchanged. People do not see the logic in Bentham’s argument, that though we can dominate animals, there is no “reason why we should be suffered to torment them.”[5] We are quickly approaching a point where our actions will have irreversible consequences, but I have this hunch that we will merely react to the situation. That is, we will desperately try to fix the problem after it appears instead of taking measures to prevent it. I may have a defeated view, but it is not an unreasonable one. Maybe the solution is to get people to see the same way as me. Instead of images of chopped up pandas, what if we focused on images of pandas in the wild? What if we made efforts to get people to love hikes instead of sitcoms, parks instead of restaurants, and cows instead of hamburgers? Maybe, just maybe, that would make enough of a difference. We’ll see.
THIS IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE SONGS, BUT THE IMAGES ARE ALSO A REMINDER OF WHAT IS AT STAKE IF WE DON'T START RESPECTING NATURE.
BUILDINGS ALWAYS REMIND ME OF WHAT PEOPLE ACCOMPLISH WHEN THEY WORK TOGETHER.
