“If you’re still laughing, you’re not getting it.” I heard a respected elder in the environmental movement make these comments several weeks ago. I bow to the wisdom of all our elders: Thoreau, Leopold, Muir, Lao Tzu. But this appeal for us to stop laughing and get on with the environmentalist revolution bothered me. I thought of Emma Goldman, who must have had her fill of the male-dominated, old left when she said, “If I can’t dance, i don’t want to be in your revolution.” Right on, Emma!
I understand the frustration that inspires such a comment. People are going about their daily lives, trailing their carbon footprints and garbage. Yet spending time in the US and abroad working with movements for social change, I’ve come to believe we all need more dancing and laughing, not less. This is not to make light of the cause but to remind ourselves that life is worth fighting for, and maybe sometimes even worth dying for. Don’t call on me to give up my time or freedom for a future of grim apocalyptic speeches, poorly planned militant actions, or another version of China’s experiment in snuffing out culture.
I’m coming across more and more calls for nature writing to show some humor. I like David Gessner’s plea:
“Nature writers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your daisy chains.”
Like Gessner, I believe one can find humor in all that it means to care passionately about sea turtles, butterflies, cougars, manatees and coral polyps. And laughter might win more support for the cause than whining or dictating a personal vision of utopia.
Every culture and every movement must have its comics, its tricksters: coyote, jackal, crow. We need characters to humble us; to expose our naked emperors; to laugh at our earnest efforts to control nature, ourselves, and each other.
I’m drawn to contemporary writers who probably don’t call themselves nature writers. I think of them as coyote writers, writers who capture the wildness of human experience with warmth and compassion without turning away from the ugliness and horror: Luis Alberto Urrea, Sherman Alexie, Junot Diaz, Kiran Desai, Salman Rushdie, ZZ Packer, Wally Lamb, Louise Erdrich and many more. They make me laugh and cry, sometimes on the same page. They lure me into play, ruffle my fur and grab me by the throat. Sometimes they gut me and gnaw on my bones. And just when I’m swooning under the weight of so much heartbreak, they invite me under a full moon on an August night and show me how to do what matters: keen for the dead and howl like hell for the marvelous joy of living.
