Is there a built-in ambivalence? We get our sustenance from Earth. We share its elemental composition. We return to those elements after death (“Remember, Man, that you are dust and to dust you shall return”). Sacred Earth. And yet, there’s something in us that is anti-Earth, some sense of being more than Earth itself. Earth that is self-conscious. Earth materials make up sentient beings who see themselves ironically “in touch” with their spiritual side, a side that could be contaminated by Earth. The ambivalence expresses itself in those who would get “back to nature” and in those who would separate themselves from it.
So, in the building of Acoma, the Pueblo went to forests in the San Mateo Mountains twenty miles away, cut 40-foot pine logs, and hauled them to their city in the sky—without letting the logs touch the ground. Dropping the logs to the ground would have, as they believed, neutralized, eradicated, or otherwise negatively affected the magical qualities in the logs. Trees that once grew from Earth and then designated to support adobe roofs as vigas were kept from touching Earth. For twenty miles and up a steep-sided mesa!
Were the Pueblo different from us? Reality check. We want to use Earth for its practical material treasures while we proclaim its sacred beauty. Are we hypocrites? We want iron, but we don’t want iron mines, coal mines, alloy metal mines, and limestone quarries to make our steel world. We don’t want the landscape altered. We see a beauty we don’t want touched. We touch because necessity drives us to touch.
So many of us have so little knowledge of the planet, its makeup, and our relationship to the physical world that there should be little wonder about our apparent hypocrisy. “I’m for saving the environment,” we hear. But what does that mean? Does the person intent on saving the environment not use Earth at all? No food. No waste. No energy. No excess like clothing or shelter from rain, snow, and wind. No pavement of any kind. No medicines. No vitamins and minerals. Where’s the dividing line between using and keeping sacred? It is a shifting line that depends on the person drawing it.
Go to a gas station. Pump gas. In replacing the nozzle on the pump’s holder do you let a drop of gasoline fall to the ground? One drop? According to Statista* there are over 263,000,000 passenger vehicles in the USA alone. Let’s say the owners of those vehicles stop to pump gas only once per week. At a single of drop of gasoline spilled onto the ground per visit (there are probably two, three, five, or more drops) per vehicle, there would be 263,000,000 drops of gasoline spilled. Probably more. At one drop per visit, Americans would spill about 3,000 gallons of gasoline per week. For every 90,000 drops, add another gallon. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that the country consumes 2.5 billion gallons of gas per week.** You can do the math to calculate gallons per vehicle and drops per fill-up. And many of the same people who drop the drops, want us all to drop environmental change to preserve the beauty of sacred Nature.
You can, like the Pueblo, carry your viga above the ground, keeping it sacred, but then, looking back at the forest from which you cut the log, you will see one less tree standing. Oh-oh! There’s a missing tree. Somebody changed the environment just to build a roof.
Be very careful the next time you put gas in your car. You might say you are for preservation of sacred and beautiful Earth, but your drop of gas says otherwise.
* https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/number-of-vehicles-in-the-united-states-since-1990/
** http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=23&t=10
So, in the building of Acoma, the Pueblo went to forests in the San Mateo Mountains twenty miles away, cut 40-foot pine logs, and hauled them to their city in the sky—without letting the logs touch the ground. Dropping the logs to the ground would have, as they believed, neutralized, eradicated, or otherwise negatively affected the magical qualities in the logs. Trees that once grew from Earth and then designated to support adobe roofs as vigas were kept from touching Earth. For twenty miles and up a steep-sided mesa!
Were the Pueblo different from us? Reality check. We want to use Earth for its practical material treasures while we proclaim its sacred beauty. Are we hypocrites? We want iron, but we don’t want iron mines, coal mines, alloy metal mines, and limestone quarries to make our steel world. We don’t want the landscape altered. We see a beauty we don’t want touched. We touch because necessity drives us to touch.
So many of us have so little knowledge of the planet, its makeup, and our relationship to the physical world that there should be little wonder about our apparent hypocrisy. “I’m for saving the environment,” we hear. But what does that mean? Does the person intent on saving the environment not use Earth at all? No food. No waste. No energy. No excess like clothing or shelter from rain, snow, and wind. No pavement of any kind. No medicines. No vitamins and minerals. Where’s the dividing line between using and keeping sacred? It is a shifting line that depends on the person drawing it.
Go to a gas station. Pump gas. In replacing the nozzle on the pump’s holder do you let a drop of gasoline fall to the ground? One drop? According to Statista* there are over 263,000,000 passenger vehicles in the USA alone. Let’s say the owners of those vehicles stop to pump gas only once per week. At a single of drop of gasoline spilled onto the ground per visit (there are probably two, three, five, or more drops) per vehicle, there would be 263,000,000 drops of gasoline spilled. Probably more. At one drop per visit, Americans would spill about 3,000 gallons of gasoline per week. For every 90,000 drops, add another gallon. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that the country consumes 2.5 billion gallons of gas per week.** You can do the math to calculate gallons per vehicle and drops per fill-up. And many of the same people who drop the drops, want us all to drop environmental change to preserve the beauty of sacred Nature.
You can, like the Pueblo, carry your viga above the ground, keeping it sacred, but then, looking back at the forest from which you cut the log, you will see one less tree standing. Oh-oh! There’s a missing tree. Somebody changed the environment just to build a roof.
Be very careful the next time you put gas in your car. You might say you are for preservation of sacred and beautiful Earth, but your drop of gas says otherwise.
* https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/number-of-vehicles-in-the-united-states-since-1990/
** http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=23&t=10
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