The sun creaks through the gray dusk, etching the branches of a tree I
did not plant. The branches are orderly but not symmetric, each fork
with its own story of past light and winds, crafted from air and rain.
Every tree is different. Every branch is different.
Every tree is the same thing, whatever that same thing is, being a tree.
I am, for a moment, wordless, as I watch a world etched by purpose but not understanding. Wildness everywhere.
There is nothing to understand, but there is something to remember. We did not arise from wilderness.
We are wilderness.
We have as much purpose as a leaf on a tree. No more, but at least as important, no less.
I suppose it’s a bit much to ask students to ponder their closeness to plants in a culture where humans barely recognize other humans. Things have broken down.
Yet this much is true:
Humans and plants share the same genetic code–we can make their stuff, they can make ours.
We both reproduce sexually in a spectacular dance of the chromosomes, mixing us up every generation, so that even the perfect among us are perfect for only a generation.
We both rely on ribosomes to build our proteins, microtubules and mitochondria to get us through the day, and an innate will to do whatever we need to see the next sunrise.
Humans and basil share a common ancestor. We share a quarter of the same genes. Many of our proteins do exactly the same thing, others not so much.
But we’re pretty damn close at the most basic levels of life. Which is pretty cool.
Swallowtail on the backyard dill
We’re even closer to insects–we share about 60% of our core genes with fruit flies.
If something effectively kills plants or insects, and you see no connections between plants and insects and humans, then you likely do not contemplate the tons and tons and tons of herbicides and pesticides poured on our food in our “war” against weeds and weevils.
Basil after a week or two of wild sex
If you don’t contemplate about food or water or folks in your neighborhood, it’s unlikely you contemplate much about anything that matters.
I found Honfleur by accident, though apparently lots of people a whole lot smarter than me have known about it for centuries.
I followed the Seine on a map, saw where it slid into the sea, and for no better reason than that, decided I wanted, maybe even needed, to go there.
I was not disappointed.
Artwork seen on a street in Honfleur
Despite the Germans, despite the English, and probably along the way despite what few Oirish staggered through these streets proclaiming their love “pour les francaises” in awful French, Honfleur remains Honfleur.
It’s not that Honfleur is particularly special (although it is to me). And it’s not that the French (even les Parisiens) are particularly special (even though they are to me).
It’s that there are other ways to live (really live) besides what this great land of ours here has to offer.
(I’m not being fair–we got quahogs free for the raking, trees for the cutting, bees for the hiving, and squirrels for the…OK, not for hunting, tasty as they are, too fookin’ cute.)
It poured one day while we were in Honfleur. We say a class of school children walking from the park, in their yellow vests, soaking wet, as though this was normal, and in France maybe it is.
I miss it.
Marina in Honfleur
(Should you go, the folks in Honfleur do not laugh when you attempt French, and will go out of the way to make you feel comfortable, and it goes beyond being part of the tourist invasion taking over their streets in the summer.)
I think they know what they have in Honfleur. Maybe the rest of us trampling through their town remind them of this.
Traveling is a self-indulgent activity; writing about it may be more so.
