What’s that in the tree beside a very busy highway? Is it a plastic bag which blew up there and got stuck in the branches? Is it a squirrel’s nest? Nope. It’s a porcupine. Kudos to Kate for finding out with the help of her grandmother. When I saw the dark shape in the tall tree in that roadside scrubland, my instinct said porky, but then I thought it couldn’t be, not there. Perhaps it was a gray squirrel nest instead, and I mentioned it to Kate, who put me straight. I’ve seen plenty of porcupines over the years, but never in such an exposed spot. They love the reach down by The River where pines and hemlocks grow—hemlocks are one of their favorite trees. Here’s a large pine branch which fell during a heavy snowstorm with strong winds:

 

 
The bark was stripped by a hungry porky who wasn’t about to let such a treat go unappreciated. Normally they have to climb to the tops of trees where they nestle amongst the branches and have a meal of bark. That’s what the fellow at the head of this article is doing, eating dinner. They’ll sleep and eat in the same place, and when they eat their fill, then climb down and go on about their business elsewhere. Here’s a close-up of a porky’s gnaw marks:

 

 
Look carefully and you’ll see the parallel toothmarks on the pine branch.

You don’t need to go far away to be close to wildness. Wildness is everywhere. Yes, even on the grittiest urban brownfield site and in the middle of vast parking lots. And as Porky shows, it’s beside the busiest roads. The wild gives ground reluctantly, and it’s quick to reclaim anything it loses. The Roman poet Horace summed this up about as neatly as anyone has: Naturam expellas furca, he wrote, tamen usque recurret. “Chase nature out with a garden fork if you will, but don’t be surprised when she comes charging back.” (That’s not an exact translation, I’m afraid, but I think it captures the sense of the Latin.) Of course, we’ve moved on a bit from Horace’s country garden. Even the Roman engineers—and they weren’t slouches; some of their roads and aqueducts do good service even today—would probably be amazed at the scope of our planetary tinkering. Still, Horace had been a soldier before he took up poetry. He understood turf wars, and he knew that nature is a patient adversary. Cracks appear on newly paved parking lots within weeks, and weeds spring up through those selfsame cracks soon afterward. These first green shoots may not look like much, but they’re the advance guard of nature’s army. And nature can afford a long campaign. Just check out this reclaimed auto dealership:

 

 
The woodland above is young and vibrant, despite the wrecks and old buildings which slouch on the old parking lot. In a few weeks, this woodland will resound with the songs of returning birds as they establish nesting sites and begin families.

I got an education in the resilience of the wild when I worked in the stones-and-bones trade, as an archaeological geologist documenting the remains of old homes, abandoned mills and crumbling factories, as well as the alignments of disused roads. America’s recent past, I learned, is often hidden just below the surface. This wasn’t a complete surprise. “I am the grass,” wrote Carl Sandburg in one of his most-quoted poems, “I cover all.” Given time, whole cities — whole civilizations — can been swallowed up by forest. Just ask any archaeologist who’s ever worked in Mesoamerica.

My conclusion? Man-made “wastelands” aren’t forever, and nature’s campaign to retake the ground she’s lost begins even as the concrete cures and the asphalt cools. The same thing is also true when nature herself redraws the map. Some of Europe’s most fertile soils are found on the slopes of Vesuvius, the volcano that destroyed the Roman city of Pompeii. And closer to home, the landscape devastated by the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980 is already showing signs of vigorous recovery. Not even clouds of superheated steam, torrents of acid fog, and moving walls of abrasive ash can sterilize living earth past all hope of recovery. What remains will be a graveyard, to be sure, but no matter how absolute the devastation, life comes charging back. Just ask this fellow:

 

 
He’s a snowy egret, and his home is within sight of a naval base on one side, and a superhighway and office complex on the other. The wetland which feeds him is littered with the trash of Chula Vista, California, but he thrives. We should be ashamed to allow our landscapes to become so filthy. There’s no excuse but laziness. But Snowy endures, and like Porky, he brings wildness close to us. All we have to do is open our eyes—and some of us do. Just ask Kate and Shana, who noticed the porcupine across from their office and cared enough to wonder if he was healthy and well. Read more…

 

 

 
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