In talking about the--
what shall we call it?
Natural world is such an awful phrase, and non-human life,
they all sound like something out of some PR trip
or little glossy booklet or something.
Non-human life, that's a putdown.
We ought to have better phrases for these things.
But I'm talking about the natural world.
I'm talking about the--
I was born in New York City.
I grew up across the river from it.
And the passion from before I could write, almost
before I could talk, had to do with other things that were
alive, with trees, for example.
And I tried to figure out where that could have begun,
and I don't know.
I suspect that it probably begins in all of us
very early when we get rid of it, that this is--
Taliesin has a line.
In one of his terrible prophetic poems,
he said, "cold death shall be the lot of the muse.
It is natural to love her."
I think it's natural to love these things.
EO Wilson wrote a beautiful book called
Biophilia, one of the great living biologists,
saying that it is natural to have this feeling
and that we've suppressed it.
We've deliberately made this detour which leads us
into terrible blind alleys.
Anyway, I was trying to figure out where it began,
and I'm not going to go into a lengthy, boring, personal
anecdote.
But I know that there was one tree in the city backyard
which was one of the--
I suppose the feeling of some complete, unsayable trust
was something that I felt first in the presence of that tree.
Obviously, I felt it in the presence of my mother too,
but it was different.
I think if I hadn't felt it in the presence of my mother,
I wouldn't be here, so I know that that's true.
"Touching the Tree."
"Faces are bending over me asking why.
They do not live here.
They do not know anything.
There is a black river beyond the buildings,
watching everything from one side.
It is moving while I touch the tree.
The black river says, no.
My father says, no.
My mother says, no.
In the streets, they say nothing.
They walk past one at a time in hats with their heads down.
It is wrong to answer them through the green fence.
The street cars go by singing to themselves, I am iron.
The broom seller goes past in the sound of grass.
By the tree touching the tree, I hear the tree.
I walk with the tree.
We talk without anything.
Come late echoes of ferries, chains, whistles, tires
on the avenue, wires humming among windows, words flying out
of rooms, the stones of the wall are painted white to be better.
But at the foot of the tree in the fluttering light,
I have dug a cave for a lion, a lion
cave so that the cave will be there among the roots,
waiting when the lion comes to the tree."