You may have noticed that we live amid many ugly and cruel inhumanities in shockingly unexpected places, most weird of all, the land three religions call Holy. We seem to be getting worse. Last century was likely the most violent of our species long trail and this one is not shaping up well.
In 1940 Nazi-occupied Bordeaux, four teenagers stumbled across a cave near Lascaux that had been undisturbed for 18,000 years. One found it, looking for his dog, who had disappeared up on the side of an unremarkable hill, not mind-bending art. One of them was Jewish, living in the village hoping to be invisible. But the dog had gotten stuck in the entrance. Once all four crawled inside, they quickly realized they were in a limestone cathedral. They were the first humans in 18 thousand years to look up at Actual Intelligence.
I followed those boys along with TC and two grandsons and my daughter Lauren, who has written a play about the caves that will be premiered at the Roundhouse Theater next year. Ryan Rillette, the artistic Director, arranged the visit to the caves and walked in awe with us.
The painter prophets of Lascaux were us, minus IPhones, our plastic avalanche and 2,000 pound bombs dropped mindlessly on strangers. But they were probably no better or worse, smarter or dumber, than we. About the same size, same vocal chords, brains and posture with which to speak, sing, dance and do art of a very high order. They ate a lot of reindeer, which they did not think any more sacred than we do chickens, so did not paint them. Standing below the paintings, I see that while we’ve learned a lot, we have perhaps forgotten more.
The cave was painted by people set apart by such sophisticated nuance that they inspired Picasso. They painted animals so vivid they moved, swam and leaped on the walls. You can almost smell the breath of the bull and draw back from the bear’s claws. They didn’t just paint on the rock; they studied it so closely that they used its texture to give perspective and dynamism. It was part of their palette: the calcite in one place made the pigments leap; the limestone in another gave a different aura to the animals.
They seem to have chosen the cave partly because it was oriented so, at the summer solstice, it would catch the sun to make the cathedral vibrate and dance.
Why would they pour time and energy into something in the ground? It would be arrogant to think we know. But the auroch, buffalo, bear and elk our fellow humans painted shows it was important to them to know who they were as humans among a complex order of species. That is exactly what we have forgotten.
With such high technical proficiency, they would probably like our IPhones. But they would pity us for not knowing who we are and where we live.
Who are we? We are animals among a pantheon of other animals, from auroch to earthworms, who together keep the world fit for all. All of us—every one—is made for good and made to be good for all. That is the moral point of the painting that can’t be missed as we see it 18,000 years after the pigments were blown onto the rock so carefully.
There is only one human in Lascaux, an odd stick-figure missing the grace and detail of all the other animals.
These were artists of Michelangelo skill, so they could have made a human of monumental towering grace. Instead, they left us a fellow with an impressive erection, a bird-like head and staff, falling backward. Maybe he had disemboweled the charging massive buffalo, or maybe the other way around. Not triumphal; kind of pathetic and small, really.
If you laid just 200 of my lives end to end you’d be among those artists who saw a world of dynamic nuance, Spirit and energy. They knew they were as weak and slow as we are,but maybe also prone to exaggerated pride and privilege. So they said to stop and be still. Consider the creatures of grace and rippling power. See how they move and breath, swim and leap. Notice especially their breath that later Greeks would call Spirit. They—and dare we say even we—are alive.
The artists did not leave a single moral mandate, no ecological tips and tricks, no guidance on dealing with damaged tyrants, no user manual for the world. There are symbols among the paintings, but we do not know what they mean. But we can’t miss the point: pay attention.
Once we know with whom we share the world, we can figure everything else out, although it is late, frankly. There are no aurochs or cave lions left. We proud penis people have disemboweled entire continents, even turning ocean currents bent and flaccid. None of the species painted on the rock exist anymore. In only 200 of my lifetimes, all were killed leaving behind weak domesticated imitations. Maybe it is too late for us, too, and we should find a cave built for sorrow at what is lost so that some boys in 40,026 can begin again.
But maybe not because the natural world is coiled to spring back.
As we visited Lascaux I was reading about the movement to “rewild” the earth. The leading icon is Knepp Estate in southern England, that turned back toward life only a quarter century ago. And only three miles from where we sleep in our narrowboat, the Broughton Sanctuary turned onto the same path seven years ago. William the Conqueror (THAT one) gave the estate to the family in 1097. The 32nd “custodian” had a daughter and realized that she—the 33rd—needed a whole different plan. He knew who and where the family was. His daughter’s 3,000 acres is early in the process of releasing the wildness on land, nearly eaten to the root by sheep for centuries. I’ll write more about this in a later blog. But I’ll just say that the message written on the recovering moorland is the same as that on the Lascaux walls.
The ecologist, River Six, guided us through Broughton. We stood next to a 300 year ash that almost died down to its last leaf, now healthy and even casting seeds (one of which is already 7 feet tall). He casually noted that it lived on the mycelliar web that crossed over beneath a path to the nearest Ash about 200 feet away. He said that a normal tree in a normal season produces way more nutrient and energy that it consumes, so is happy for its excess to flow to kin species and then to others nearby, such as the Hawthorne. “Are trees made for generosity?,” I asked. He liked the thought and agreed, noting you can see it even in a violated and degraded landscape where you’d think it was every tree for itself. A normal open forest is a thriving web so generous it even welcomes–depends on–grazing animals and beavers to live.
Once we see where we are and who we are, we realize the big surprise is not the consequences of centuries of rapacious behavior, but the capacity of the natural systems to spring back with astonishing speed. Our intelligence can make us good partners—the biblical word is steward—to help the systems do what they are made to do. If the beavers are missing, a steward can go find some and introduce them to the the ruined watershed.
What if you, like me, have not inherited a three thousand of acres estate with capital and connections? My brother and brother-in-law have a quiet clue. Wild what you do have. David and Lisa live in a 150 year old Victorian home next to our canal in Skipton with a front yard about 20 feet by 40 feet. Half of it is now wild with the miniature riot of bees, bugs and volunteer plants—Broughton in a microcosm (without the beaver).
My older brother Ron invested 10 years to lead his otherwise normal Presbyterian church near Baltimore to restore their two acre overgrown back lot into a miniature native wilderness. Long lost birds have found it and raise their young. People from miles around come to walk its paths and remember who they are. Wild!
“Only a drop in the ocean,” you might say. But what do you think an ocean is?
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