Nature’s Tricks

Nature is truly a come­dian. Per­son­ally, I am amused by the sub­tle ways it gets me. No mat­ter what I do, I can­not hide from most of its traps. Every time I turn around, it gets me again. For exam­ple: you can­not mow the grass until the heat of the day, because of the dew; about the time you can afford the things you like to eat, you have to avoid those same items, due to cho­les­terol, fat con­tent, sugar lev­els, or chem­i­cal dyes; you mas­ter one grade only to be cast into another; your his­tory text­book is out of date by the time the ink dries; your body changes size just enough each year to make your clothes fit too loose or too tight; a genius some­where is about to make your new com­puter obso­lete; no mat­ter where you travel, you brought the wrong clothes (freak storms are for the freaks that for­get the weather poten­tials of other parts of the country).

I am not com­plain­ing. I have pulled a few pranks on nature myself: I stopped snow ski­ing when my bones began to get brit­tle; I never took up scuba div­ing, so it is still Dale 1 — Shark 0; hang glid­ing will wait until the day before I face an empty retire­ment account (which is also how I plan to beat the nurs­ing home indus­try); some­times I dare my body to get sick, with the threat that if I get sick I will join a monastery, con­se­quently I have not been sick in years; I have chased tor­na­does, sought out hur­ri­canes, watched some really neat for­est fires up close, and stood on high places dur­ing light­ning storms — thus the lethality/mortality score is now: Dale 11,526 — Nature 0. Nature gets me on the lit­tle things all the time, but on the big score I am still win­ning big.

Nature tricks you into think­ing you will live down here for­ever, and then it lets you face your mor­tal­ity in a car wreck or by hav­ing a stroke. I am ahead of the game on this one too. I know I won’t live down here for­ever, and if it takes more than aspirin to stay here, then I am prob­a­bly going to pack it in. It feels good to be a guest of nature, but nature expects you to pay atten­tion to its tricks. Just how many times do you have to feel a cac­tus to get the feel of a cac­tus? Grav­ity can­not be fooled — no mat­ter how many times you test it.

Life is a game. Nature both hides yet reveals its hand (in sub­tle cues). Play fair but be shrewd. You can even beat nature’s nas­ti­est trick — death. I hope by now you have stud­ied the game enough to know just how that is done.