“Call me Ishmael.”
That highly recognizable three-word imperative begins Herman Melville’s iconic American epic, Moby Dick. While even a casual listener might remember the opening line, the first few sentences taken as a whole more completely express the ideas of the book, turning readers toward the ocean and making assertions about human nature:
“Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.
Herman Melville, Moby Dick, from Chapter 1
The ocean, to Ishmael, serves as an “antidote” to the mundane calamities of life. Ordinary existence, accentuated by dismal surroundings and an aching sense of meaninglessness, can gnaw at the soul of any human being. Accordingly, Melville suggests that adventure, especially that adventure found on the wild ocean, can add a spark to life and remove the nagging itch to do something and escape from a painful, almost electrically-charged restlessness. Melville may be employing a hint of tongue-in-cheek humor here, evidenced by exaggerations (who really brings up the rear of every funeral in a town, after all?), but he nevertheless broaches an important thought:
Nature can heal pieces of the human soul.
Or, at a minimum, nature can reverberate within cloistered parts of the soul untouchable and inalterable by any other means. For Ishmael, the adventuring element of nature, rife with peril, freedom, vastness, and struggle called to him, particularly once mixed with the camaraderie of fellow whalers striving together to survive and conquer the ocean. Yet more than that side of nature promises to impact its observers. Nature certainly can create a sensation of peace and rest; imagine, for instance, the results of sitting in a shady forest grove with the sound of a trickling stream nearby, the tickle of scattered sunbeams, and the caress of a warm and gentle breeze. Most would find that situation more comforting and freeing than entering rush-hour traffic in Chicago or scribbling out a two-hour final exam by hand in a blue book, heart racing.
At the same time, nature can awe, inspiring a mixture of fear and wonder and lifting the soul “higher” by the presence of unadulterated grandeur, somewhat like Gothic architecture does. Assuredly, the Rocky Mountains (not to mention much of the American West) stand as examples of the picturesque–a combination of the aesthetically beautiful and the sublime–and dwarf any person who enters their shadow or attempts to drive up them on a single-lane, gravel switchback. The Mountains’ apparent permanence and transcendence resonate with the inner man, even as such “untamed” qualities also potentially terrify the “baby” souls of those unaccustomed to such real and tangible masses.
Nature is, after all, primal, powerful, stark, and horrible at times. A reader of the Jack London essay, “To Build a Fire,” knows full well the indifference and danger of the Wilderness; if a solitary man makes a single error in the Yukon expanse, even one as small as failing at the first attempt to forge a warming fire after stumbling into a frozen stream, Nature “takes its course” through the actions of cold, wolves, or worse. Experiencing the crash of waves at high tide reiterates the magnificence and power of natural forces. From the relative safety of a man-made pier or a bulwark of rocks, these incessant waves seem manageable and even fun, but on the open range of the northern Atlantic, the demanding majesty of the ocean steels souls and requires prudence. Nature tests and teaches all, from the casual whaleboat observer to the frontier mountain man.
Given this awful rendering of nature–with awful keeping an earlier meaning of “inspiring respect or dread”–one might wonder how nature can really be healing. So much of nature threatens to frighten and defeat man, or at least, remind him of his own broken world and his own unfixable, uncontrolled troubles of the mind, soul, or body. Beyond the capacity of nature to instill restfulness and elevate (or at a minimum, distract) thought, the answer of nature’s healing power lies in recognition of the “whole picture.”
That is, nature is an image of ordered harmony and reflects the give-and-take character or “dance” of life. For every terrible element or instance of nature, the chance for beauty and redemption also persists. After all, spring follows winter; welcomed water emerges from muddy, half-thawed soil; the death of a rabbit feeds a crow; the departure of a caterpillar brings a butterfly; the violence of a wave deposits shells from the deep; and so on. The particulars of a moment examined in nature may lean partially or wholly toward the negative or to the positive, but viewed using a panoramic lens, life and death somehow work in balance alongside each other under the guidance of Grace. An understanding of “the way things are” in the natural world at least partially translates to an understanding of the rest of life. The presence of this harmony does not mean that an individual’s struggle ought to be minimized, or that pain and suffering and loss do not exist; it simply offers another possible, more hopeful, and likely more complete perspective.
Returning to the idea of the ocean, water encourages this feeling of harmony and urges internal contemplation in an unusually strong manner. My own thoughts here primarily arose from two weeks on the beach of Georgia this winter break, with much of that time spent observing the Atlantic ocean. The rhythm of the waves and the multitude of living creatures, from sandpipers to hermit crabs, gave the impression of constant but ordered motion and abundant life–and death. I have always delighted in the ocean and nature in general; I have always looked for some sort of higher force to make sense of the chaos and challenges of life. In that affectation, I gladly join the company of many other authors who found inspiration and order in their observations of “the watery part of the world,” to re-quote Melville from above.
Two authors besides Melville especially come to mind. The first is Annie Dillard, who wrote a book called Pilgrim at Tinker Creek that I read in my Classical Quadrivium class to learn about wonder and science two years ago (as a side note, Dillard truly writes beautifully and astutely, and I would recommend reading more from her!). I have never forgotten one of Dillard’s metaphors that illustrated a similar harmony to what I myself have noticed and described:
Another time I saw another wonder: sharks off the Atlantic coast of Florida. There is a way a wave rises above the ocean horizon, a triangular wedge against the sky. If you stand where the ocean breaks on a shallow beach, you see the raised water in a wave is translucent, shot with lights. One late afternoon at low tide a hundred big sharks passed the beach near the mouth of a tidal river in a feeding frenzy. As each green wave rose from the churning water, it illuminated within itself the six-or eight-foot-long bodies of twisting sharks. The sharks disappeared as each wave rolled toward me; then a new wave would swell above the horizon, containing in it, like scorpions in amber, sharks that roiled and heaved. The sight held awesome wonders: power and beauty, grace tangled in a rapture with violence.
Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, from Chapter 1
Dillard’s quote needs very little additional explanation. The dangerous, rollicking sharks nevertheless fit neatly within the consistent ocean waves, an image of chaos constrained by order, in fact adding valuable dynamism and “life” to that overarching order. The concept of Grace allows for this unity in diversity, this life out of death. A philosopher may eventually deduce this understanding and achieve a modicum of inner peace, but nature proves a more vivid and far better instructor–and healer–than cold and hard reason could alone.
Walt Whitman’s poem, “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” also explores the balance of life and death and love and loss. Like seemingly most of Whitman’s work, “Out of the Cradle” does this using frustratingly complex and unintuitive language and imagery that is much less succinct than Annie Dillard’s poetic prose (and may merit an entire essay-post at a later point). Regardless of the challenge of parsing the meaning to “Out of a Cradle,” the poem’s multilayered resistance to quantification or stilted convention enhances its allegiance to reality and resonates within the soul, if not so easily within the intellect.
To summarize Whitman’s “Out of the Cradle,” as far as I understand it, the poem begins with a man reminiscing about a time during his boyhood when he observed a pair of mockingbirds on the beach. The female mockingbird died one day, leaving the male to sing a ceaseless elegy to her and to see her afterimage everywhere, from the whitecapped water to the moon. The bird’s love and earnestness, echoed by the noise of the ocean, speak to the boy and cause him to pursue the secrets of the ocean and the bird–to find what rocks or animates or undergirds the “cradle,” which symbolically represents life or existence. The ocean answers “death, death, death, death;” however, Whitman does not promote despair at this revelation. Rather, the teachings of nature voiced by the mockingbird and the waves transform the boy into a poet in a type of rebirth:
Demon or bird! (said the boy’s soul,)
Walt Whitman, “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” Lines 144-149
Is it indeed toward your mate you sing? or is it really to me?
For I, that was a child, my tongue’s use sleeping, now I have heard you,
Now in a moment I know what I am for, I awake,
And already a thousand singers, a thousand songs, clearer, louder and more sorrowful than yours,
A thousand warbling echoes have started to life within me, never to die.
While Whitman’s spiritual conclusions about the soul always warrant asterisks given his often peculiar, non-Christian beliefs, his assessment of life here seems insightful, or at least, corroborated in one way or another by other writers and philosophers. The boy’s encounter with nature, even including the idea of loss, unveiled his identity and purpose in life as a poet. His understanding of himself depended on the lessons from the grieving mockingbird and on the “death” of his old self. The entire experience showed the boy the repeating pattern–or harmonious balance–of death and rebirth that comprises the secret to life.
Such a balance is fragile, much like the soul. Pain and loss frequently coexist and mingle with love and life; the line blurs strangely readily between such logically opposite feelings and states of being. Lyrics from a rock song that draws its name and theme from Whitman’s own “Out of the Cradle” poem actually express this tension most effectively:
It’s a balance on the edge of a knife
Rush, “Out of the Cradle,” from Vapor Trails (2002)
It’s a smile on the edge of sadness
It’s a dance on the edge of life
To love and to exist is to teeter between joy and sorrow, to hold the potential for comedy or tragedy in both hands, to celebrate in the shadow of death. Life on Earth is transient, dynamic, and inextricably linked to real horrors and losses. Truths gleaned from nature about life never promise to erase such hardships fully or heal hurt souls magically. But, time in nature can provide that whisper of hope, restoration, and perspective that allows one to take the next best step forward.
Links to sources for further exploration:
Herman Melville’s Moby Dick
Jack London’s “To Build a Fire”
Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim of Tinker Creek
Walt Whitman’s “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking”
Rush’s “Out of the Cradle”