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| Devil's Hole Pupfish, acrylic on canvas, 14" x 10 1/2", Steve Brown 2022 |
None of it is important or all of it is.
--John Steinbeck, Sea of Cortez, 1941
November 13, 2022.
"Is that it?" I asked my brother. We slowly eased past a pull-out off the gravel road and watched a few people walk up a jeep trail to a fenced-off area near the base of a brush-covered basalt hill.
"Probably," replied my brother.
There was a blue park sign that said, "Where are the fish?" in crisp, cream colored print. But I wasn't so sure this was the place. There was no sign saying Devils Hole. And the fenced-off area looked more like something that would surround a hazardous waste dump than a site in a national park, monument or wildlife refuge. Where was the fancy wood sign? The log fences? The boardwalk or gravel trail? -- the type of things we'd just seen down at the visitor center.
We scanned the hillside. There was a trail and a bridge with a brown handrail. Maybe that was it.
Then I noticed up ahead, further down the road, the usual sign-grandeur that accompanies federal and state parks. "That's it!"
I let off the brake. Gavel moved under the weight of the tires with that familiar pop. We were off towards our destination.
The problem was one of those signs we approached said, "Thank You for Visiting Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge," letting us know we were leaving. The grand sign I'd seen was an entrance to the park rather than a trailhead. Not our sign, not our place. So, we turned around at the wide pull out that showcased the sign that looked very out of place on such a lonesome, rough road. We headed back to where we'd seen the square of chain-link fence topped with coils of razor wire. We pulled in by the two cars.
Lloyd hopped out and put on his coat. I weathered-up inside the car, then got out. I knew a fierce cold wind awaited me.
And then we were off--walking down a jeep road blocked off by a gate that had a brown metal sign saying, "Official Use Only" and a paper sign taped to it saying, "Foot traffic welcome." No little wood sign saying something like "Devil's Hole .5 miles." No wood bench. Nothing that would indicate this place being a national wildlife refuge, let alone Death Valley National Park, which I would later learn, it is.
Why this strange behavior from the national park system? Why hide such a significant site in Death Valley National Park within the boundaries of Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, which has an incredibly impressive visitor center itself, and leave this most import square of parkland looking as inviting as a chemical waste dump?
The answer is reverence.
Reverence is a virtue, and as such, looks different moment to moment and place to place, depending on the circumstances, but always remains the same at its core. Sometimes it looks like an altar of gold in a room that smells of burning incense. Sometimes it's a pure white room with nothing but a small black polished stone in the center of it. When I was young, I learned it was a small child sitting in church with his arms folded waiting for the sacrament. Older now, I also know it sometimes looks and sounds like a comedian lambasting a dictator while riling up room of gleeful disdainers to rolls of laughter aimed at their oppressor. It also looks like a woman who won't give up her seat on the bus.
Here, rightfully, it looked like a place you want to avoid and keep moving on to somewhere else. Here, as I would learn, reverence is everything, and I was about to partake in one of the most sacred moments in my life.
So, what is reverence?
In Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue, Paul Woodruff says, "Reverence begins in a deep understanding of human limitations; from this grows the capacity to be in awe of whatever we believe lies outside our control--God, truth, justice, nature, even death." He continues, "The capacity for awe, as it grows, brings with it the capacity for respecting fellow human beings, flaws and all." He finishes this thought by saying, "This in turn fosters the ability to be ashamed when we show moral flaws exceeding the normal human allotment".
I love that definition, but I would make one change--a much needed change for the twenty-first century. I would scratch out the word "human," not because we aren't important, but because we already know we are important. In addition to our fellow humans, it's other beings that we so often treat irreverently.
Reverence: The capacity for awe, which as it grows, brings with it the capacity for respecting fellow beings.
I think I would also leave off "flaws and all". What we usually see as a flaw in others is really just a mirror brightly beaming back to us our inability to accept, let alone appreciate the is of the situation. My identification of your flaws says more about me than it does about you. Likewise, the role of the "big bad wolf" in European folklore says more about the society in which those stories developed than it says about wolves themselves.
So, here we were, at Devils Hole, a small square of Death Valley National Park inside Ash Meadows Wildlife Refuge, facing a savage wind as we silently waited for three people to exit the barred cage bridge suspended over the hole. I noticed all the panels and equipment bolted to the hillside. It was not unlike waiting to peer into an open casket at a viewing or waiting for the casket to be lowered at the cemetery on a brutally cold day in February. Except, here we were celebrating the miraculously still living rather than mourning the recently departed.
All but one of our fellow humans silently exited the viewing. It was now our turn. We walked out on the metal bridge and peered through the bars down at a black oblong spot deep down at the bottom of the hole in the stone. Without prior knowledge, it would be difficult to even tell we were looking at water--so hard and flat and black it was from our view. Yet, I could feel the significance of the moment. We were at Devils Hole! In that pool, there is a species of pretty, little blue fish about an inch long, the Devils Hole pupfish, which exists nowhere else on earth. That pool, 10 feet wide by 40 feet in length, is their entire existence, and this fence, this cage, the solar panels and satellite equipment and gages anchored to the stone hillside were there to ensure those little jewels could continue their way of life.
Reverence is, in short, action based on respect for life.
Reverence for something so small and special is an incredibly large indicator of our human capacity to mirror the divine and, Be ye perfect, even as your Father in Heaven.
The fact bombs were simultaneously raining down on Ukraine was a stark reminder of how terribly we fall short of following that command. Yet, to be an eyewitness at our capacity to do good was still humbling. To think people have dedicated their lives to preserving a fish that has no impact (other than spiritually) on them gives me hope.
In Calm Surrender: Walking the Hard Road of Forgiveness, Kent Nerburn says the following of that particular virtue:
Forgiveness cannot be a disengaged, pastel emotion. It is demanded in the bloodiest of human circumstances, and it must stand against the strongest winds of human rage and hate. To be a real virtue, engaged with the world around us, it must be muscular, alive, and able to withstand the outrages and inequities of inhuman and inhumane acts. It must be able to face the dark side of the human condition.
I think the same can be said of humility. The more brutal and inhospitable this world and the societies we've created become, the more we need a reverence that is muscular, alive, and able to withstand the outrages and iniquities of inhuman and inhumane acts.
That is what we were witnessing here: reverence hell-bent on respecting and preserving "the least of these," and in so doing, respecting the big I Am, the source of everything.
That some in this world still have the fierce humility to try and save a species so small and fragile gives me hope.
Hope is what this book is all about. Hope that we can save ourselves through humility and reverence to life as a whole. Hope is not reality, but it is perhaps fuel for a spark to create enough energy to change a trajectory, and therefore, perhaps, an outcome.
Reverence not only changes the world within the practitioner; it also has the very real potential of changing the world beyond the tidepool.
Awe is powerful. To be astounded has the potential to absolutely change everything, if we will but let it.
