Thereness - Oct 30 2025

 

Thereness

Oct 30 2025

I live on a big acreage.

But most of it is merely notional,

an abstract number

printed on a document 

I trust holds true.

My land,

a tangled forest

of dense bush and mixed boreal

I can barely penetrate.

Over-mature, for a landscape that needs fire,

it probably should have burned years ago.

So impractical as it is

 — at least according to Man’s grasping measure

of return-on-investment

and relentless control —

its the simple thereness of this land

that gives me comfort.

How looking out

from my small manicured clearing

at the dark wall of woods,

I’m stirred by its stillness

constancy

and unsettling air of threat.

But mostly, I sense the regal indifference

of virgin wilderness

 —  how it was here long before me

and will be when I’m gone.

It’s like knowing that polar bears exist.

That the mythic animals

on the plains of Africa

somehow still thrive.

And that the cliff-like glaciers

of Greenland’s frozen fjords

gleam as white as they ever did.

I’ve never seen a rhino

or travelled to the arctic,

and can only imagine

the upper Amazon

in the Andes’ alpine highlands,

but it’s enough 

to simply know.

It’s the relief

that this big beautiful earth

in all its diversity

complexity

and jaw-dropping awe

hasn’t yet been debased and defiled.

Or at least not as language has been;

where words like awesome

have been drained of their power,

and we're too jaded to be awed.

So I will not cut trails,

hunt or trap,

harvest its wood for profit

(as if harvest

meant the same as extract).

But will husband this small patch of wilderness,

do my best 

to keep it in trust

for an uncertain future. 

My acreage,

as if you could possess something

you rarely enter

and never use.

That doesn’t acknowledge your presence,

and even if it did

wouldn’t care.

It’s not really virgin. Although some virgin white pine have somehow been preserved. The property was likely logged at least once; and, of course, repeatedly burned (as nature intended).

Is there a better word than thereness? Am I missing a word that expresses this concept: the comfort we get simply by knowing that something exists; no need to see, touch, or experience it firsthand? Perhaps existential fact?

No metric equivalent to acreage comes to mind. Certainly none with the connotation of wealth, privilege, and legacy that the words big acreage convey. At least to me. What I immediately see is the big multigenerational estate of an old-money family:  a gracious but well lived-in home set in rolling hills of green pastureland and tracts of scenic woods. A wide veranda. Horses, of course. Expensive cars parked in front. And a working pick-up truck, even though it seems more for show than real hauling.