Return to the Garden
Seeking Innocence in a Time of Turmoil
Believe it or not, I do read the Bible. The mash-up of various tribal creation myths found in the book of Genesis fascinates me. Of course, one of the main reasons religion evolved as our species progressed is we developed a burning desire to understand the world around us. We slid from the trees, picked up rocks, roots, stones and shells to make tools and developed language. The tools offered us a bit of free time so as we huddled around the fires at night we used our language to ask questions. To answer we manufactured stories.
I’m taken back to the mid-sixties and Boy Scout campouts. Around the fire at night the older scouts told stories to us quivering newbies. Tales of monsters lurking in the shadows and feisty snakes biting our necks in the tent at night. Then there was the inevitable call for a snipe hunt. I don’t remember the exact story but I do remember being led deep into the woods and left to follow the hoots and giggles of the elders to return to camp.
The symbolism of Eden seems blatantly obvious. It’s a bucolic place. A place of order and comfort. A place of peace. A place where we feel one with the natural order. Eden is a good description of the natural world. Our position in the garden was one of living in close harmony with nature. The jungles of our innocence offered food and shelter to our species for millennia.
After the expulsion from the garden Adam and Eve were left to live off the land. Toil and trouble was their punishment for that brief moment of disobedience. As the legend goes full circle, their story is the answer to the question, “Why do we have to work the fields?”
Our inheritance from the first couple is not only a life of burden it is also a separation from the garden. Sedentary agrarian culture changed forever our relationship with the natural world. The gates to Eden were closed. We continue to desire to return to that place of peace and beauty. We are genetically wired to seek the garden.
I visit gardens wherever I go. I also find gardens wherever I am. I spot tiny gardens in cracks in pavement and decay in walls. I find magnificent gardens on a desolate shoreline or on hard-to-find mountain paths.
A found garden at Table Rock, North Carolina.
Tom’s Creek Falls, Marion, NC
I search the internet for gardens when I travel. Some are better than others but more often than not I find solace in these planted places.
Duke Gardens on the campus of Duke University in Durham is one of the most magnificent gardens I’ve seen. It’s large enough for the visitor to have a lively jaunt covering all the paths yet intimate enough that a quick stop-by is still satisfying. It’s free and open to the public pretty much all the time. Parking is the only charge and that is minimal.
I’m in Durham often and make a point of going to the gardens on a regular basis. It’s obvious that Mary Duke Biddle and her family’s generosity endowed the gardens enough capital to not only fund the building of this magical place but also to keep it a work-in-progress. Every time I visit I see new projects and continued maintenance and replanting of existing beds.
A glimpse of Eden.
We end the first quarter of the twenty-first century. We are lightyears away from the proverbial Eden. The airwaves are flooded with the boisterous cacophony unleashed by the antics of bullies and clowns who have usurped our systems. They profit from our disbelief. They seek kingdoms of doom.
Do we let them take us on a wild snipe chase? Do we go further into the wilderness? Or do we plant a garden of our own design? One of peace and harmony. Our new Eden.