Plague Journal, The Zoo
Yesterday was spent at the Brookfield Zoo. I recall visiting some thirty years ago… Eager to visit again, I was taken by surprise at the feelings that came when viewing the animals in captivity. I am no longer a child, able to experience the zoo environment with magical delight. I remember what that was like, the thrill of seeing an animal for the first time which lives naturally in another part of the world. Even the diminutive penguins were majestic. I enjoy observing children viewing animals and playing. One photo is of a group of children playing about a sculpture of a loon. Another is of our daughter and grand daughter posing in the pouch of a kangaroo sculpture.
I felt a mixture of sadness and nostalgia while visiting the zoo. The sadness came from knowing that these birds and mammals belong to a expansive habitat that is disappearing, if not disappeared already. The press of burgeoning human population, the incursion upon the wild, ingress into open plains of the Addax, into mountain habitat of the Brown Bear mean that fewer and fewer of these animals live as they have always lived, — free. I felt nostalgia for what once was, what is now impossible. Make no mistake, given the present trajectory of things no place will be left for these animals, except in captivity, a zoo. In this country, in the most out-of-the-way places, grand homes are built and “property” is claimed for our use.
These pictures are a reminder of what civilization destroys. I believe there’s a Buddhist saying that you cannot pick up just one end of the stick. The other end will inevitably be picked up too. There is a consequence to civilization, especially one that is driven by an ideology of wealth and excess. Care, mindful use of the land is logically precluded by capitalism which valorizes profit and ownership above all else.
The final photo is of an giant oak in the zoo picnic area. Surely the tree was there thirty years ago upon my first visit here. Perhaps it will be here as witness when no wild habitat remains for the animals.
