Nature Note #150: Rambling on Roadsides

A flutter of wings caught my attention as I left Wegman's this morning. A Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) flapping furiously in a southwesterly direction skimmed past my peripheral and into the bright morning sky. So small and under appreciated, yet this butterfly is simply doing what tradition has commanded it to do for thousands of years.

What I've been missing the past few weeks has been an opportunity to escape the city to see the wild spread out and away like in a forest or a marsh. This is a silly idea of course, as nature doesn't simply exist solely "out there", but all around us. As one tuned into the natural world, I cannot help but notice the constant changes the world experiences day by day and season by season. With the autumn equinox having passed midweek and the prospect of leaves emblazoned against the branches that once funneled nutrients back and forth between sky and root, one can see clearly that change has arrived.

As I've come back and forth from work, I watch the urban landscape I drive through remain largely the same. Buildings like economic cliffs loom in the nearby downtown, while starlings whir and jeer in the trees that line the nearby railroad tracks. I've noticed more squirrels now as well. Hopping back and forth looking for freshly dropped walnuts and acorns, they offer to opportunity to glimpse one of their melanistic brethren. As I've mentioned in a post back in late June, they are common sight in Central New York and are a color morph of the eastern grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis).

All of these roadside observances, all of these noticings, these glimpses are tantalizing in their brevity. Most of us experience nature in moments whether it be a heron in a pond or butterfly on the wing or even just noting the quiet diversity of flowers in a field. We rarely stop to experience it as a center of being, a point of reference in a rock flying through space and time. Even I need to stop more. I've been stuck inside for too long. I need to be free once more. But where and how?

Where else but the roadside? A place where you can see nature popping through a world sculpted for human use. A constant battle between convenience and chaos, between structured security and life's uncertainties. As constant as the gulls that patrol the parking lot for discarded morsels and people traveling well worn routes through a habitat of our own creation. 

Sometimes I write on here to explain some aspect of nature to an audience I hope is there, but increasingly I've been wanting to write to figure out some thoughts I've been having lately. 

I tried to do this on a separate blog called Sparrow's Eye, but increasingly I'm aware of the fact that in my observance of natures passing, I notice those reflections within myself. Ideas and thoughts about the world around me that are influenced by an atmosphere of concern and worry. I worry for myself, my girlfriend and family, and for a planet left wondering about its own future. 

It's no coincidence that when I drive by these streets I see waste, garbage, trash piled up and waiting to be taken somewhere else. Out of sight, out of mind. Where does it go? What happens to it? We know the answer. Landfills and dumps. I remember reading the side of a Waste Management truck that claimed that they had provided several thousand acres of new habitat for wildlife. 

"Psh. For the gulls and rats more like", I scoffed at this notion. 

Not that rats and gulls aren't important ecologically, it's just that do we really need more reminders about how we favor some species over others? Well in Waste Management's case, it seems that they've jumped on the conservation and sustainability bandwagon with claims that they manage their landfills for wildlife habitat. Landfills as wildlife habitat. Edward Abbey's bones are rattling in the desert somewhere as we speak.

I've come a long way from what I started this post about, but like any good conversation, it ambles from the mountains of lofty intentions and bottoms out in the deltas of new perspectives and conclusions. I'll try to update at least twice a month from now on and while it might not always be about my opinions on birding or a critter I saw somewhere, I will at least strive to be consistent. As for the roadsides, I'll keep watching, like I always do. Who knows what might show up next?