There I was, minding my own business and smugly content in my cozy bubble of humanity, when all of a sudden I found myself witness to nature red in tooth and claw. What I saw was a struggle both brutal and commonplace, a struggle that reminded me of how willfully indifferent we humans are to the relentless and merciless drama of nature. I was also startled by a realization that we are, despite our thoughts to the contrary, but minor players in that drama.
I was taking my customary early-morning walk with my dog, quietly mulling over the possibilities of the day while my dog mulled over the possibilities of flushing out a rabbit, when my eye was caught by a commotion as we wandered along the side of a wood. I stopped to observe. An unfortunate wood pigeon was pinned to the ground by a severe-looking sparrowhawk and a riot of feather and flap was underway. The pigeon was struggling furiously to escape while the hawk, cold and focused, simply gripped tightly and waited for yet another pigeon life to ebb away. It was all routine for him, a moment's work.
But pigeons are made of sterner stuff, it seems, because just as I was beginning to think that his battle was over our brave underdog gave one final furious flap and was free. He stood for a moment, bloodied and shaken, then, sensing his chance, took to the air and flew rapidly away both from me as fascinated onlooker and hawk as outraged predator, outraged no doubt by the audacity of his prey. I gave the brave bird a cheer, hoping that his flight to freedom would allow him time to recover, but the hawk was having none of it.
Our cold killing-machine took to the air and set off in pursuit. I watched as he gained impressively, even majestically, on his prey then rammed sickeningly into it, pigeon feathers flying. The pigeon dropped like a stone and landed further along the wood's edge while his killer circled, no doubt gathering himself for the final kill. I walked on, grimly eager to witness the coup de grace.
When I reached the pigeon I winced at the sight before me. Our courageous underdog, still alive, was bloodied and broken. He struggled pathetically to crawl into the undergrowth but his wing was smashed and all he could do was flap hopelessly in a circle. He was mortally wounded, doomed. The hawk perched on a tree branch above, no doubt waiting for the human interloper to leave the scene. I did, but not before saluting the underdog one last time. As I put distance between myself and the bloody drama I looked back briefly, only to see the hawk on the ground finishing off his prey. My last thought, or hope, before continuing on home to begin the business of the day was that shock might spare our brave pigeon the more acute agonies of a violent death.
Yet what I witnessed was not unusual or shocking. It was normal. Nature was simply going about its mundane business like I was about to go about mine. In fact, my business was as much nature's business as the avian struggle by the wood. I was not special simply by dint of being human, nor was I removed from the drama any more than the trees overlooking the scene. Why is it, I wonder, that we insist on setting ourselves apart from nature and seeing ourselves solely as its protector or persecutor?
The obvious answer is, of course, that we have evolved sufficiently enough to have lifted ourselves out of the dog-eat-dog world of brute survival that most living creatures inhabit. We humans still happily prey on each other but we are free from the threat (with the odd unfortunate exception) posed by predators of other species. We have dragged ourselves out of the food chain and have become smug with the comfort of it all.
And we stand aside, arrogant and imperious, still a raging maelstrom of natural impulses, still very much nature's children, but deluded enough to see ourselves as important, as extra. At no time in our long human story have we been more removed from nature yet more conscious of its workings; so much so that nowadays many well-meaning souls have dedicated themselves to 'saving the planet', as though all it takes to tilt this globe and re-calibrate this biosphere, is for we all-powerful members of the human race to indulge in some navel gazing mixed, perhaps, with just a dash of self loathing and guilt. We are none of us so grand and omnipotent as all that!
If we were to remove ourselves from the shackles of our individual egos and rise up from the city streets a mile or two into the air we might see ourselves as we really are. Instead of being individual little Caesars plotting our individual routes to world domination we are instead like corpuscles collectively racing, fascinated and compelled, through an artery to some inevitable fate, to some primeval beating heart. Individually we are... nothing. Collectively we are little more than nothing... in the great natural scheme of things.
Perhaps the ancients were not so far wrong: perhaps we really ARE the playthings of the gods. Well, if we are then we'd better get used to our inevitable fates because, as it was way back when, the gods don't care for us. And perhaps that is no bad thing. Perhaps we are better opening our eyes to our mortality and individual insignificance and seeing ourselves as just corpuscles in a whole pint pot of blood. Perhaps then we can really live our lives significantly, nor dreaming of ego rampant but rather embracing our ongoing collective existence and for once trying to realize it.
Humanity is, after all, just a temporary conceit, wild and magnificent, yet fleeting nevertheless. Reality is not in flesh and blood and beating hearts; it is not limited. Reality is that indefinable something, that core consciousness, that lies behind, propelling and compelling. So let's leave the feather and flap of fleshy existence to Mother Nature and set our collective sights on more enduring pastures. After all, nature's dalliance with humanity is like the hawk's dalliance with the pigeon; it is but a moment's work, cold, clinical and, above all, indifferent.