Trees, seasons, and uncertainty

By Erik Hogan

A week and a half ago it snowed. Temperatures did not rise above freezing for three days. Experts sang of potential disaster and schools were closed. Gangs of coyotes roamed the powerline cut behind my house, screaming in the austere moonlight. I looked at trees, seeing form and structure beneath settling soft white.

Now the calendar slips into February. Daffodils are beginning to erupt from the dormant earth and afternoon temperatures flirt with 70 degrees. Birds sing in the pre-dawn dark. I must remind myself that this is still winter. The trees I see stand in stark contrasts of light and shadow; their unsheathed branches threatening the placid blue pool of the sky above.

Such is the climate of the American South. Long soul-searing summers and all else a tumbling progression of unpredictable contrasts. Temperature chaos, in fact. And so, of course, thoughts of trees and seasons lead me to consider the existential nature of humans and how we relate to nature as a whole.

It occurs to me that much of what we consider to be the human experience centers around how we stand before and operate within uncertainty. Our point of view from two small windows within our skulls suggests that we are each distinct and separate consciousnesses, living our own self determined lives. Yet, every moment we look ahead into a whirlwind of the unknown and unknowable future, an apparent outside world that we cannot fully understand or predict. What can we make of that?

The ancient Stoics recognized a rationality in the structure of nature. They conceived our own rational capacity as a piece of, or perhaps an extension of this larger whole. The separation we perceive from our point of view is thus an illusion. We are an integral part of our world.

Within the context of their understanding in that age they described this rationality in nature as deliberate design. Possibly even divine design. I think it highly likely that our view from inside our skulls causes us to anthropomorphize rationality in this way. Today we have a more sophisticated understanding of natural laws. We know of the workings of evolution and even have some kind of conception of the mysterious actions of quantum particles and forces. They are all rational phenomena in that they are consistent from day to day and eon to eon, and also in the fact that they apply equally to everything in existence. In fact, it is these rational processes of natural law that have molded all of nature into the form is has today. Is there a conscious design in that? We will never be able to say with certainty.

Nature is a complex system, and its in this that our paradox lies. As rational as nature may be, as many natural laws we can describe and codify into mathematical formula, we will never understand it all. Humans cannot comprehend all of the potentials, factors, and forces that have come together to make this present moment and set its course for the future. That’s the opacity of life.

Classical Stoics were determinists and would assert that the unfolding of the universe actually had to happen this way according to all of these factors, and will continue to do so into the future. Cause and effect. All is fated. But perhaps this view is only useful in describing the past? In retrospect? Future potential, what happens from the present moment forward is impossible to know with certainty. In a complex system we cannot look to the past and say definitively that because that happened, this must happen next. There are too many unforeseen factors, black swans lurking in the shadows. And human decisions have their influence on events. So whether life is fated or not is a moot point; irrelevant even. We humans still have agency in our lives and must constantly make choices amid uncertainty in order to live authentically.

What is a person to do in a world that is rational, but impersonal? Of which we are an intimate part because evolutionary forces have shaped us into the image of what we had to be in order to continue to exist within the nature that is, and yet we cannot ever know, predict, or logically describe to our own satisfaction?

The Existentialists may be correct in observing an absurdity there. Without clear answers from the void of the universe we are left to create our own sense of meaning.

So where can we look for authenticity and meaning? The way, as Epictetus tells us, is to focus entirely on what is up to us. Our judgments, our desires, our impulses. These we can control, can come to understand, and can reliably guide us on the correct path to a life that flows well amid chaos and the unknown.

People crave understanding, but I am left wondering how much is necessary. Can the contradictory behavior of photons, whether observed or not, describe to me the damp texture of sun brushed moss on a riverside boulder? Do eons of evolution matter to me when I listen to a chorus of tree frogs in a swamp in early spring?

Perhaps it is enough to know that we, as humans, exist and belong in this world and that can determine through our impressions and actions the type of individuals that we become. To live life with this authenticity is to fiercely embrace the unknowable and all of the pain and fear that attends it. In doing so we create our own fire to hold aloft and light our way in the darkness.

Slick seasons slip through my grasping fingers, but I’ll continue to look at the trees and marvel at the change. There are unfathomable depths of forces, infinite probabilities behind their existence. And just maybe it is exactly this absurd mysterious paradox that paints the world with a sense of awe. Trying to know ourselves as we stand within an unknowable universe; connected to nature in ways we do not readily see. It ignites all of existence with sublime wonder.

Well, it’s just a thought. Brought on by a change in the weather.

Erik Hogan is an Athens police officer whose photography focuses on capturing the beauty of nature.