Carl Safina

As I ready my kayak, birds are gathering over our bay. They know what’s coming. So do I. On many summer afternoons, packs of surfacing bluefish chase up small fish, drawing excited flocks of diving terns. The terns carry the little fish a few miles to hungry youngsters waiting eagerly on small, unpeopled islands. As it has been for millennia, so it is this very afternoon.

Having long studied—and sautéed—this aspect of our neighborhood both formally and at leisure, applying both statistical models and garlic as appropriate, I can report that this relationship—prey fish, terns, bluefish, and me—shows scant sign of failing anytime soon.

Contrary to all the gloom in the news, the future is by no means doomed. I’m continually struck by how much beauty and vitality the world still holds.

But beauty and vitality isn’t the whole story either. Even in the panic among the fishes and in the frenzying terns, it’s also so evident that nature has neither sentiment nor mercy. What it does have is life, truth, and logic. And it strives for what it cannot have: an end to danger, an assurance of longevity, a moment’s peace, and a comfortable death. It’s like us all, because we are natural. What any sapient Homo needs to know about sentience and mercy, one can learn by watching nature strive, seeing people struggle, and realizing what a compassionate mind could add to the picture. So I’m also struck that we self-declared wise humans haven’t quite realized that nature, civilization, peace, and the human spirit are all facets of the same gemstone.

Each time science tightens a coil in the slack of our understanding, it further elaborates its fundamental discovery: connection. Because the greatest thing a human being can experience is a sense of connection, this is a joyful coincidence. What we need to do is also what our souls yearn to do: connect, connect, connect. And because all things are linked, almost anything can unite us with almost everything. Even a fish suffices.

My neighbor’s cottage is right on the bay, and where I launch my kayak I find him wading waist-deep with a spade, digging sea-worms for bait. Bob hopes to slide a few porgies into his frying pan by sundown. I ask how the worm-digging’s going. Squinting against the angled shards of summer light jabbing upward from the water, he says, “S-l-o-w.” Wiping his forehead with his forearm, he adds, “Even the worms are getting scarcer.” He further comments on a dearth of clams. He needn’t tell me. Until just a few years ago we could wade out right here and, using merely our feet to detect buried clams, emerge in an hour lugging four-dozen. The hour now yields perhaps half a dozen, and the trend isn’t encouraging. Nothing too mysterious; a few too many people from elsewhere, having raked-over their spots, found our spot.

I don’t pretend to speak for the sea-worms or clams. The voiceless among us got on for millions of years without saying anything, much less hearing from me. That they had so long succeeded suggests that we who chatter incessantly about so little would benefit by listening to clams; their silence speaks volumes. It’s true that a lot was gone before I got here, and, as you’ve just heard, worms are waning and clams are counting down. Butxxx there’s quite a lot left. Not quite a lot of clams (though I’ve found a couple of decent pockets in the northeast corner of the harbor, and another neighbor, Dennis, has generously clued me to a heavy set of littlenecks over in—well, I probably shouldn’t say). I mean in general, there is quite a lot left. You’ll see. As watching those terns and fish and the activities of my human neighbors continually reminds me, the world brims with the living.

This is the contrast in my life and work. In travels, I see people and the natural world up against some serious trends. Yet along my home coast, in the cycle of seasons and the waves of migrating fishes and birds that come and go, I still find sanity and solace, delight and hope—more than a few fresh meals—and the power and resilience of living things. Resilience enough, perhaps, to keep the world for those who’ll follow.

This is a chronicle of a year spent partly along local shores, partly exploring the world from the arctic to the antarctic and across the warm belly of the island tropics. In some ways, this could be any year. In some ways, it couldn’t be any other.

The world still sings. Yet the warnings are wise; we have lost much, and we’re risking much more. We’re borrowing heavily from people not yet born, dictating the terms of their loan to us. Meanwhile, the institutions by which we run our lives and our world—our philosophy, ethics, religion, and economics—can’t seem to detect the risks we’re running. How could they? They’re actually ancient and medieval institutions, out of sync with what we’ve learned in just the last century about how the world really functions. So, how to proceed? I’ve come to see that the geometry of human progress is an expanding circle of compassion. And regardless of how we got here or where we’re going when we leave this stage, I’ve come to see that—if the word sacred means anything at all—the world exists as the one truly sacred place. Simple things, right? Actually, I often think they are. As we walk the shores and launch our travels, several axes of possibility—decline or advancement, indifference or compassion—will form the north, south, east, and west upon which we’ll plot our course.

August, 2009

Amagansett, Long Island