Nature doesn't know the rules

Enjoying life on the edges of I-495

The great thing about nature is that it doesn’t know the rules.

We do, of course.

Nature is supposed to look like this.

Photo by frank mckenna on Unsplash

Or maybe like this.

Photo by Karl Anderson on Unsplash

It does look a little like that sometimes. I’ve even been lucky enough to visit a few places that look something like these photos, though in my experience, I rarely can get the birds to lift off at the same time as the sun crests over the edge of the earth.

A couple weeks ago, I took a walk along I-495, the infamous DC Beltway. They’ve built out the sides of the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge connecting Maryland, Virginia, and, briefly, DC.

The trail transforms this extraordinarily trafficked roadway into a place for community, reflection, exercise, observation. But it’s the opposite of the birds-lifting-off-in-utter-purity vision of nature.

On the one side, the cars — which for better or mostly worse I drive often enough myself, heading to Ikea or the grocery store or one of innumerable clear starting points and ending points and directions along the way — and then there’s a pathway, a squeeze-in, a moment, a bird’s nest, a flight. Here? you think, your bones rattling in their sockets from the jump and sway of the bridge. Here.

(Excuse the “295 labels” — I was confused for a moment. I turn off I-295 to get on I-495 and the Woodrow Wilson Bridge.)

It was a beautiful day and, even near the end of it, bustling with pedestrians and bikers. Nature hadn’t gotten the memo that it wasn’t supposed to be there, so it squeezed in amongst the construction cranes and community gardens and historic cemeteries and “to your left!”s and the lava roll of traffic’s endless volcano.

The Woodrow Wilson Bridge passes right by St. Mary’s Cemetery, established in 1795. Across the street is the Contrabands and Freedmen Cemetery, “established in February 1864 by the Union military commander of the Alexandria District for use as a cemetery for the burial of African Americans who had escaped slavery, known as contrabands and freedmen.”(via Wikipedia)

How terrible, how ultimately futile slavery was, to try to restrict human growth, expansion, knowledge, serendipity, awe, wildness, flight, freedom. To imagine pure nature, pure humans. It’s worth a visit to the Contrabands and Freedman Cemetery on its own sometime, if you’re in the area.

Sunset photo of the memorial statue at the Contrabands and Freedmen Cemetery.

On the bridge, there were mocking birds and I think probably an osprey, definitely gulls, ravens, and sparrows.

Possibly an osprey?

I saw the gnats come out and the barn swallows burst from their nests under the bridge shortly thereafter, swooping in three and perhaps four dimensions and utterly impossible to capture on an old iPhone, through the bridge railings.

They’re difficult to spot, but if you look at the dark green of the trees, you can just about make out the swarms of gnats that were delighting the barn swallows.

It was nothing like how nature is supposed to be. Out past the sound barrier, the traffic noise had physical force. The gnats were not beautiful on an individual basis, no matter what their mothers tell them.

And yet life shuddered with the 18-wheelers there on that bridge, life flew and formed and re-formed and grew and shrank with the gnats.

Nature didn’t know its limits and so, not knowing, thrived.

---

If you like this post,

Also, if you’re not a subscriber, I’d love to have you.

Thanks, and hope you have a wanderful Memorial Day and week. Feel free to leave a comment below, I’d love to hear from you about the strange places you’ve found nature.