I have said it before. I will say it again.
Steve Cotton is not a person of place.
I have never been the type of guy who claims a bit of soil as The Place Where I Belong. The sentiment is a bit too funereal for my taste.
But we are all a tribe of contradictions. And that lesson came home to me yesterday.
Since my return from China, I have spent a few afternoons on the shore of the laguna pulling out vegetation. Mainly water lilies. Their stems are strong enough to restrict the underwater movements of the crocodiles. Green anti-submarine nets.
But there is plenty of other flotsam to be hooked out of the pond, as well. Water bottles. Beer cans. The occasional pelican skull.
The most difficult are the coconuts.
The Spaniards brought the coconut palm to Mexico from The Philippines in the 1500s. For plantations. So they thought. As far as the palms were concerned, it was a great new land to colonize.
And colonize they did. Spreading like dandelions.
Some of the coconut palms around the area are cultivated. But there are plenty of volunteers.
The trees spread through an amazing nut. The seed is covered by a thick husk that is water-resistant. Water-resistant enough that the nuts can travel long distances on water. That is why there are coconuts on some of the most isolated Pacific islands.
For the cleaner of ponds, they present a problem. I could just leave them bobbing in the water like some reminder of a tropical Titanic. But they do not fit into the Monet landscape.
My usual vegetation remover is a pitch fork. And it is not the best tool for coconuts. Think peas and fork. Same issue. The nuts just roll off of the implement.
And once I successfully toss them on shore, they have a tendency to do as nature intended. They roll back down the bank into the water.
Yesterday, I managed to fish out the last of the coconuts. Exhausted, I wandered into the garden to sit down and bathe in a nice shower of hubris.
No more than thirty minutes passed before I heard splashes in the pond. My first instinct was that one of the crocodiles had nabbed a feline snack. But I was wrong.
Standing on the shore of the pond were two teenage girls. Tossing the coconuts into the water.
My first instinct was to admonish them. Until it hit me. The pond is theirs as much as it is mine.
I can hear the economists amongst you. Smugly mumbling: “Ah, yes. The Tragedy of the Commons.” And that would be correct. Whenever something belongs to everyone, its responsibility belongs to no one.
But my error was more basic. I have come to think of this portion of the laguna as mine.
It isn’t. The public pathway around it is proof enough of that. The work I do is not merely for me. It is for everyone who passes this way.
And so the pond teaches me, as Walden taught Thoreau, that we are mere sojourners in this world. We enjoy. And then, like the Moving Finger having writ, we too move on.
Steve Cotton is not a person of place.
I have never been the type of guy who claims a bit of soil as The Place Where I Belong. The sentiment is a bit too funereal for my taste.
But we are all a tribe of contradictions. And that lesson came home to me yesterday.
Since my return from China, I have spent a few afternoons on the shore of the laguna pulling out vegetation. Mainly water lilies. Their stems are strong enough to restrict the underwater movements of the crocodiles. Green anti-submarine nets.
But there is plenty of other flotsam to be hooked out of the pond, as well. Water bottles. Beer cans. The occasional pelican skull.
The most difficult are the coconuts.
The Spaniards brought the coconut palm to Mexico from The Philippines in the 1500s. For plantations. So they thought. As far as the palms were concerned, it was a great new land to colonize.
And colonize they did. Spreading like dandelions.
Some of the coconut palms around the area are cultivated. But there are plenty of volunteers.
The trees spread through an amazing nut. The seed is covered by a thick husk that is water-resistant. Water-resistant enough that the nuts can travel long distances on water. That is why there are coconuts on some of the most isolated Pacific islands.
For the cleaner of ponds, they present a problem. I could just leave them bobbing in the water like some reminder of a tropical Titanic. But they do not fit into the Monet landscape.
My usual vegetation remover is a pitch fork. And it is not the best tool for coconuts. Think peas and fork. Same issue. The nuts just roll off of the implement.
And once I successfully toss them on shore, they have a tendency to do as nature intended. They roll back down the bank into the water.
Yesterday, I managed to fish out the last of the coconuts. Exhausted, I wandered into the garden to sit down and bathe in a nice shower of hubris.
No more than thirty minutes passed before I heard splashes in the pond. My first instinct was that one of the crocodiles had nabbed a feline snack. But I was wrong.
Standing on the shore of the pond were two teenage girls. Tossing the coconuts into the water.
My first instinct was to admonish them. Until it hit me. The pond is theirs as much as it is mine.
I can hear the economists amongst you. Smugly mumbling: “Ah, yes. The Tragedy of the Commons.” And that would be correct. Whenever something belongs to everyone, its responsibility belongs to no one.
But my error was more basic. I have come to think of this portion of the laguna as mine.
It isn’t. The public pathway around it is proof enough of that. The work I do is not merely for me. It is for everyone who passes this way.
And so the pond teaches me, as Walden taught Thoreau, that we are mere sojourners in this world. We enjoy. And then, like the Moving Finger having writ, we too move on.
