The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre said that the greatest art is about the passage of time. Recently, I watched the movie “Summer With Monika” directed by Ingmar Bergman. The film is based on the seasons. Young lovers meet in spring. They share a blissful summer together on a wild, deserted island. They are disillusioned in autumn. They part in winter.
City life in “Summer With Monica” is marked by claustrophobic, cramped spaces. Island life is a childlike paradise, a place where civilized time stops and another sort of time reigns. The journeys to and from the island are especially resonant. The beautiful sequences along the waterways of Stockholm capture the exhilaration of the lovers’ escape. The city clocks chime as they depart the city. Bergman returns to the images and sounds of clocks again and again in his films.
The island sequences in “Summer With Monika” celebrate open spaces surrounded by the sea. There is a shot across the bay in which Monika is hidden in the tall waterside grasses. When Monika says “I want summer to go on just like this,” she advocates cherishing the moment. The director Jean-Luc Godard, discussing “Summer With Monika,” said that Bergman’s camera “seeks only one thing, to seize the present moment at its most fugitive and delve deep into it to give it the quality of eternity.”
In “Walden,” Thoreau says that he wants “to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment, to toe that line.” Thoreau identifies two eternities, the past and future, but can visit neither. He can only stand on the fleeting, quicksilver present!
Spending time in the outdoors, especially in wild, open spaces, allows us to experience the “quality of eternity” which Bergman explored with his camera. Sea shores, lakes, and rivers convey a quality of eternity. They offer us a sense of calm and timeless beauty. You will find this idea in the opening pages of Moby Dick. “Yes, as everyone knows,” Ishmael declares, “meditation and water are wedded forever.”
In “Waterlog,” his celebrated chronicle of swimming through Britain’s waterways, the naturalist Roger Deakin describes swimming as having an Alice in Wonderland quality. “When you enter the water, something like metamorphosis happens,” he writes. “Leaving behind the land, you go through the looking-glass surface and enter a new world. You’ve crossed a boundary and the experience of life while swimming is intensely different from any other. Your sense of the present is overwhelming.”
The movie “Days of Heaven” directed by Terrence Malick also captures the “quality of eternity.” Malick sets the corrupt, flawed world of human beings within a natural world which is gloriously beautiful and teeming with life. We listen to the hum of insects as rabbits jump out of the grass and then disappear. The vast sky hovers over everything. The human characters play their roles mostly outdoors in the vast wheat fields of the great plains. We feel as if we are watching the human drama unfold from a great distance.
One morning, looking outside my tent in springtime, I see patches of tiny purple flowers. I see bees busily moving from one purple flower to the next. I watch the bees at work, hear their buzzing sounds, and suddenly it feels like I am suspended in eternity. Sitting quietly in the natural world slows time and focuses our senses. Perhaps the quality of eternity could be described as that moment when one fully embraces the present. Presented in this way, eternity is simply the continuous, unfolding present.
I experience the “quality of eternity” most often when nature is in motion. This motion, of course, occurs in the present yet somehow suggests the “quality of eternity.” The lapping of waves on the seashore, a rushing creek, wind patterns in the waving grass on a hillside, a hawk soaring overhead, these are the experiences most likely to suddenly make me aware of the “quality of eternity.” These experiences remind me of the way music seems to slow the passage of time. Music, like the natural world, is constantly in motion. I am also constantly in motion. The beating of my heart, my breathing, and my pedal strokes join the natural symphony that surrounds me.
Ancient Pathways
Many roads and highways follow ancient pathways. The Natchez Trace Parkway, for example, follows animal paths and Native American trails. In earlier times, travelers were vulnerable to bandits and even today one can see that the parkway follows the high ground with good sight lines. I stop and look at the old “Sunken Trace” where horses and wagons left their mark on the land. I contemplate the Indian burial mounds along the parkway and I experience a feeling of reverence for those who went before.
America is dotted with farms and towns and roads. These man made features cannot, however, obscure the natural contours of the land, the silhouettes of hills and mountains, the ocean shores, the sky and clouds, or the starry nights. These natural features remain unchanged from ancient times. I often look toward the horizon and remind myself how beautiful the hills, the blue sky, and the clouds are.
Contemporary roads and bridges are often very beautiful. I am grateful for the smooth payment that allows me to travel great distances to places of great natural beauty. It surprises me that I can circumnavigate America by bicycle in six months and visit many of our beautiful National Parks. If I were traveling on dirt roads, it would likely take at least twice as long. Along the way, I stop to rest at coffee shops, to fill my water containers, and to buy groceries. Civilization is vital to all of us.
While I am greatly concerned by climate change, loss of biodiversity, and polluted air and water, I can never accept the idea that America’s natural beauty will someday disappear. Alarmist news articles would have you believe that our children will not be able to enjoy the natural world, that somehow all that natural beauty is being irrevocably destroyed. Those of us who spend our time outdoors know this cannot be true. The natural world is incredibly resilient and in many ways is still beyond our comprehension.
I power my phone and tablet with a small solar panel. I do my best to “leave no trace” as I camp and picnic my way across America. I have learned to live without refrigeration. I will never own a car. I believe each of us has a moral responsibility to maintain as small a footprint as possible. Environmental awareness should be taught in our schools starting in elementary school.
I believe that technology will likely play a crucial role in solving environmental problems. I believe we will be able to eventually live in harmony with nature. In many ways, these are the best of times for the environment because there is a greater awareness of the dangers we face and because we have new technologies that will help us preserve the natural world.