OCR Text |
Show 251, THE SNAKE IN THE GARDEN It has never been easy to acquire a biocentric outlook. One thinks of Herman Melville, who was enraptured by the loving kindness of mother whales suckling their young, and who was also horrified by the stupid, violent Maldive Shark, "pale ravener of horrible meat." He could never decide whether a man needed to reevaluate himself or his vision of Nature. In The Encantadas, Melville looked upon the Galapagos and decided "In no world but a fallen one could such lands exist." Desolate, solitary, unchanging, the world of the Galapagos seemed like the aftermath of a penal conflagration. "Little but reptile life is here found . . . the chief sound of life here is a hiss," he said. In Melville's nightmare, there were many snakes in the Garden of the World, and Man would either have to take dominion or be reduced to a horrible existence in an unredeemed Nature. Muir found himself "naturally" repelled by alligators and snakes as he wandered into a realm of reptiles in Florida. But he was also sure that these beasts were "beautiful in the eyes of God," and were not mysterious evils. The alligator was present more in his imagination than in person as he walked through the tropics. So when he tried to reconcile himself with this saurian in the garden he was wrestling with inherited ideas and fears. While guessing that men were naturally repelled by these creatures, he decided that he would need to transcend his |