These Heavenly Trees
I found myself a bit cold. I was underdressed and frightfully aware of the sun’s waning ability to hold its head up. All around me was a field of tall, flowering grass being whipped back and forth as the seawinds jockeyed for position.
I stood perched on the edge of a cliff with only a thin rope before me, swaying; an undependable barrier between me and a delightful deathfall. I imagined I could hear the lighthouse, upheld yet decommissioned, beating to the rhythm of forward momentum.
As the frigid blasts of air ripped through me like they were warning me to move back and tempting me to step forward all the same, I stood there, teeth chattering, staring into the sun as it bid me goodnight beneath the ocean.
I was broken by the beauty.
This is all a playful way of painting my visit to the Yaquina Lighthouse which stands proudly on a headland of the same name. I don’t know what it was that prompted me to jump the dead battery in my 2003 Toyota Solara and kick it to Newport, but it felt right so I went for it.
(Groceries — I jumped my car because I needed to go to the store and get groceries).
With the government reopening and all, I seized the opportunity to don the Nature Writer’s cap and spend some time experiencing the environment of a federally maintained nature area and historical site.
Now, before we get to the Yaquina Head and related Lighthouse, you have to understand something. I’m a believer of cosmic interjection, in the energy of a divine power capable of laying influence on this mortal and material plane.
Either way, I’m getting tangential because as the jumper cables did their thing, I stumbled upon an article on my phone. One I found both topical and revolting. My thumb hesitated over the link, seeing the clickbait and wondering if the dive would be worth it: “A travesty to this nation: People are destroying Joshua trees in Joshua Tree National Park.”
Written by Allyson Chiu, a reporter with a BA in journalism, and published in The Washington Post, it’s a tough argument to call this article “nature writing” and to analyze it as such. However, when you unfold the layers and start looking past the non-superfluous use of language, you can see it for what it is — an easily-consumed, written-for-this-age, piece of nature writing that has a social ecologist ring to it.
Chiu opens by describing the trees with powerful imagery: “Feathery-looking limbs topped with spiky green leaves twist skyward, completing the gangly succulent’s striking appearance.” She gives us an opportunity to get in the scene, describing for us what’s at risk.
Immediately following these flashes of trees that, “tower above the earth,” the author begins to discuss the way the national park has been vandalized as a result of the government shutdown. The trees, “have been felled and are lying on the dusty ground — and Park Service officials say, people, not Mother Nature, are to blame.”
The contrasting depictions of towering trees and disrespected natural spaces set us, the readers, onto an obvious side: the author’s. Her rhetorical moves, while perhaps heavy-handed, are effective. We are emotionally stirred to see such lack of love for our historic landmarks, for our natural areas.
Furthermore, all her work grounds us in a space of social ecology. She measures the way we interact and relate to the natural environment during certain social situations — establishing both stories of deliberate malintent and hopes to restore the park.
Chiu, through her research, creates an argument that permeates politics and discusses the line between social and ecological issues.
At this moment, however, I want to return to that little promontory on the Oregon coast which is, on most days, cast in a grey shroud of fog. An hour from where I call home, the Yaquina Lighthouse is run by the federal government and has subsequently been shut down for the last month-or-so.
When I drove out there the other day, I wondered what I’d do if the government was still shut down. Would I have gone anyways? Do I not have a right to the land? They’re still taking taxes from me, so can’t I access it? Would I ditch my car before the little gate, unmanned for now, and sneak into the head? How many people did sneak in when the government was shut down?
Would this place be defaced like the Joshua Tree National Forest?
Well, to resolve tension, it wasn’t (sorry for the buzzkill, but we have enough stress in our lives as it is).
The natural area was gorgeous, as illustrated earlier. However, it’s been incredibly tainted by man. There are paved roads up and down the head, a few light poles here and there, and walking paths, one that leads down to the coastline and another in a loop around the head.
There is even a sign on the patch of long, grain-like grass, jammed into the ground that reads, “Don’t step on grass.”
In the beginning, when this land was forfeited to man, it functioned as a high-point from which to emanate a light source, a message; it was something considered necessary from geological and geographical concerns.
I find it funny how some of us see our society and the environment as two completely separate things. It’s pretty evident that the environment would live on without us (it would probably thrive on without us), but we’d be nothing without the environment.
Without the hardened rock holding up the promontory and the restless waves licking away the soft clay, there wouldn’t have been a natural location to establish a lighthouse. Without the lighthouse, trade is not plentiful. Without plentiful trade, well… you get the idea.
Nowadays, however, I’m not sure if the lighthouse still rests atop this head for functionality, for those geological and geographical concerns. Instead, it has become a historic marker. A placard to examine. This environment was forever claimed as something that would function for us, regardless of its necessity or the inherent beauty beneath.
I aim to say: perhaps the head has already been defaced, long before the government shutdown.
One of the last moves that Chiu makes in her article for The Washington Post, is also the most interesting and abrupt points. About halfway through her piece, Chiu shifts from depicting horrific images at the Joshua Tree National Park to discussing global warming and climate change.
It was such a shocking switch for me, but somehow it works in an odd way. The way I read it, Chiu has already set up the sides: those who like the heavenly trees, and those who knock them down. It’s really simple, really consumable, and, as I said earlier, it’s perfect for this day in age.
As she digresses, she makes the comment that the national park, “is on track to lose most of its Joshua tree habitat to rising temperatures by 2100,” sourcing a study from an Ecological Society from UC.
For me, I saw this as Chiu, in an incredibly obvert way, helping certain readers admit that climate change is an issue by walking them through a simple equation.
A Knocked Down Joshua Tree = Bad, Disappointing, Unreligious.
Climate Change = A Lot of Knocked Down Joshua Trees.
Therefore, through the transitive property (please, someone stop me if I’m wrong here; I’m wretched at math) we can assume that:
Climate Change = A Lot of Bad, Disappointing, Unreligiousness.
I like to think of these gusts of winds, these seaborn breaths, as forceful hands teasing me. As I stand just off the edge of this rocky crag, a slab embraced by eons of the ocean’s touch, I feel the push and the pull of the world.
Chiu is right. There’s something in the way we treat our natural parks, these “havens of nature” our government works to protect, especially when the government is not there to protect it.
When there is no one to punch tickets at the gate of the Yaquina Lighthouse, is there someone to protect it?
When there’s no one to sign the bills to regulate our relationship to this planet, is there someone to protect us?
