Outlier

Aug 16 2019

Mid-August

and I couldn't help but notice

a sprinkling of yellowed leaves

along the densely wooded shore.

It seems unfair, this portent of autumn

in our too short summers

that seem to end before they've begun.

Fall approaching
and I'm still looking forward

to that deliriously bone-sapping scorcher,

when you can barely move for the heat

and air is too heavy to breathe

and simply shifting around in your seat

has you in a sweat.

But this is the resilience

that diversity confers  —

the outlier leaf

turning unnaturally early,

the durable one

that persists through fall.

Nature prepares herself

for whatever calamity happens;
adapting

to infestation and weather

the malignant presence of man.

So if uniformity is death

difference is strength.

Like the straggler, we also saw.

A gaggle of healthy ducklings

paddling furiously after their mother

as our lone canoe approached.

Except for one,

who remained on a small glistening rock

surrounded by water

intently watching us.

A singular bird

who is either stupid or slow

or curious and brave.

Reassuring, in a way

for those who don't fit in.

That we are nature's advance scouts,

out testing the margins

and carrying the seeds of survival

whatever change transpires.

Out paddling with the pups again, after a few days of unwelcome weather. I found myself a bit demoralized, seeing that scattering of yellowed leaves. But also reassured when we encountered a big brood of healthy ducklings: a 2^nd clutch this summer, which tells me that the lake is healthy, and that good mothers count for a lot. There was also a rinsed-clean rainbow – something I haven't seen in forever – arcing through the sky as the sun set at our back and the storm clouds cleared.

I somehow managed to shoehorn the first two into a poem. I guess the rainbow – really, an inexcusable cliche anyway – will have to wait for inspiration.

Paleontologists have identified a population bottleneck near the beginning of human evolution when our number was reduced to as low as 100 individuals. We big-brained home sapiens alive today owe our existence to those outliers: the ones endowed with some quirk of body or mind that allowed them to survive some environmental catastrophe. It is this great reserve of diversity, hidden in our recessive genes, that has allowed our line to carry on – no matter what.

The poem mentions “the malignant presence of man”: once again, I couldn't help my essential misanthropy coming through! I have little doubt our species will survive anthropogenic climate change, as unprecedented in speed and scope as it is. But I certainly have my doubts as to whether our civilization will. Culture, I suspect, is not nearly as durable as nature.