gathered more evidence that there truly was something wrong with the world, something fundamentally amiss. Life was a continually deferred promise of happiness, a lie that no one dared expose simply because the alternative seemed worse.
It was early December, as I recall, and I was browsing the stacks at the American Library when I stumbled upon Ernest Beckerâs The Denial of Death ; it had only recently been published. Leafing through the pages, my eye fell on the following passage:
             What are we to make of a creation in which the routine activity is for organisms to be tearing others apart with teeth of all typesâbiting, grinding flesh, plant stalks, bones between molars, pushing the pulp greedily down the gullet with delight, incorporating its essence into oneâs own organization, and then excreting with foul stench and gasses the residue. Everyone reaching out to incorporate others who are edible to him. The mosquitoes bloating themselves on blood, the maggots, the killer bees attacking with a fury and a demonism, sharks continuing to tear and swallow while their own innards are being torn outânot to mention the daily dismemberment and slaughter in ânaturalâ accidents of all types: an earthquake buries alive 70 thousand bodies in Peru, automobiles make a pyramid heap of over 50 thousand a year in the U.S. alone, a tidal wave washes over a quarter of a million in the Indian Ocean. Creation is a nightmare spectacular taking place on a planet that has been soaked for hundreds of millions of years in the blood of all its creatures. The soberest conclusion that we could make about what has actually been taking place on the planet for about three billions years is that it is being turned into a vast pit of fertilizer.
As a child growing up in the American Midwest, the woods and streams and fields had always been, for me, a place of comfort. At an age when my friends were staying after school to play team sports, I treasured the solitude and silence of the small, forested area near my suburban home. I couldnât comprehend why anyone would want to stay at school longer than necessary when he was free to roam outdoors, away from teachers and coaches and all the exhausting social games. The smell of damp earth in the early spring, the crackling of leaves under my feet in late October: this was my refuge.
As an undergraduate I hiked and backpacked in the Smokey Mountains, the Adirondacks, and the Rockies. Later on, after Judith and I weremarried, we went together on camping expeditions. All my life I had turned to nature in order to escape the drudgery and nonsense of human society. It had never occurred to me that nature could be viewed as a ânightmare spectacular.â Beckerâs words opened up a new and unsettling perspective.
I passed the remainder of that afternoon and the next few days moving from one troubling book to another, from one bibliography to the next, following a trail of words that led like breadcrumbs ever deeper into the dark recesses of the natural world. I read of murder and cannibalism among lions, hyenas, and a seemingly endless number of other vertebrate species, many of which routinely organize in warring packs, maiming and killing their enemyâs young and battling each other to the death. But what I found most distressing were the unspeakable horrors of the insect world. There was Fabreâs Sphinx Wasp, capable of performing âthe most delicate and exacting nerve operation on its grasshopper prey,â immobilizing the insectâs legs so that it can be sealed up alive in a darkened chamber with an egg deposited on its stomach. The egg releases a tiny larva, which begins, shortly after birth, to feed on the paralyzed grasshopper, chewing methodically into the living body of its host, avoiding essential organs, preserving the life of its benefactor for as long as possible. Ammophila wasps
It was early December, as I recall, and I was browsing the stacks at the American Library when I stumbled upon Ernest Beckerâs The Denial of Death ; it had only recently been published. Leafing through the pages, my eye fell on the following passage:
             What are we to make of a creation in which the routine activity is for organisms to be tearing others apart with teeth of all typesâbiting, grinding flesh, plant stalks, bones between molars, pushing the pulp greedily down the gullet with delight, incorporating its essence into oneâs own organization, and then excreting with foul stench and gasses the residue. Everyone reaching out to incorporate others who are edible to him. The mosquitoes bloating themselves on blood, the maggots, the killer bees attacking with a fury and a demonism, sharks continuing to tear and swallow while their own innards are being torn outânot to mention the daily dismemberment and slaughter in ânaturalâ accidents of all types: an earthquake buries alive 70 thousand bodies in Peru, automobiles make a pyramid heap of over 50 thousand a year in the U.S. alone, a tidal wave washes over a quarter of a million in the Indian Ocean. Creation is a nightmare spectacular taking place on a planet that has been soaked for hundreds of millions of years in the blood of all its creatures. The soberest conclusion that we could make about what has actually been taking place on the planet for about three billions years is that it is being turned into a vast pit of fertilizer.
As a child growing up in the American Midwest, the woods and streams and fields had always been, for me, a place of comfort. At an age when my friends were staying after school to play team sports, I treasured the solitude and silence of the small, forested area near my suburban home. I couldnât comprehend why anyone would want to stay at school longer than necessary when he was free to roam outdoors, away from teachers and coaches and all the exhausting social games. The smell of damp earth in the early spring, the crackling of leaves under my feet in late October: this was my refuge.
As an undergraduate I hiked and backpacked in the Smokey Mountains, the Adirondacks, and the Rockies. Later on, after Judith and I weremarried, we went together on camping expeditions. All my life I had turned to nature in order to escape the drudgery and nonsense of human society. It had never occurred to me that nature could be viewed as a ânightmare spectacular.â Beckerâs words opened up a new and unsettling perspective.
I passed the remainder of that afternoon and the next few days moving from one troubling book to another, from one bibliography to the next, following a trail of words that led like breadcrumbs ever deeper into the dark recesses of the natural world. I read of murder and cannibalism among lions, hyenas, and a seemingly endless number of other vertebrate species, many of which routinely organize in warring packs, maiming and killing their enemyâs young and battling each other to the death. But what I found most distressing were the unspeakable horrors of the insect world. There was Fabreâs Sphinx Wasp, capable of performing âthe most delicate and exacting nerve operation on its grasshopper prey,â immobilizing the insectâs legs so that it can be sealed up alive in a darkened chamber with an egg deposited on its stomach. The egg releases a tiny larva, which begins, shortly after birth, to feed on the paralyzed grasshopper, chewing methodically into the living body of its host, avoiding essential organs, preserving the life of its benefactor for as long as possible. Ammophila wasps
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