"Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful" states a dirty blue road sign by the bridge near the stone ruins. I've never noticed it before, and I've been down this road several hundred times since I live right around the bend and down the road. Pennsylvania is beautiful. From my perch under the tree, I'm surrounded by green, and there is something so uplifting, so perfect about being surrounded by green. It is as if the human psyche, after being restrained by telephones, remote controls, and wireless internet can breath again as it returns to Eden from where it first came. It's hypocritical for me to say that though, for I have my iPod resting in my lap. I'm addicted to it. In fact, it contains my entire life. My personal calendar, my contact list, my dictionary, my work, my notes, my music, my countdown to graduation, my menstrual cycle, my favorite art, my games - everything except my books. One can't truly enjoy a book unless it's there in one's hands; tangible, real, and earthy.
A caterpillar catches my eye, and it surely is one of the most ugliest things I've ever seen. It looks like a naked mole rat, except it's a caterpillar. I watch, fascinated, as it inched along a rock, marching in a dictated pattern: slide rear up, lift head up, lean to the left, place head down, repeat. A curious thought hits my mind. Nature is considered beautiful, natural, a place where humans should belong but have been driven away. Insects, though a part of nature, seem to conjure up ugly connotations. Of course there are a few exceptions: the lovely butterfly, the charming bumblebee, the cute and tiny spider - but insects are seen as ugly. Perhaps it is because they drive humanity away from where they are supposed to be. Perhaps they are the excuse humanity uses to lock themselves up with their iPods and laptops. Nature would be more tolerable to humanity if that pesky fly wasn't buzzing in your ear or that mosquito wasn't sapping up your sweet blood. Sure, bears may eat you and snakes may poison you, but there is something more picturesque about them than bugs. Bugs, like flys and maggots, bring up gruesome images of rotting carcasses, but that's just part of nature, right? Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, and into the ground we go to that mighty sepulcher William Cullen Bryant talked about. We need to become one with the earth somehow, and those flesh-eating insects do the job well. What a shame it is, to see humanity driven away from God's own creation because of the gnats frittering away in front of their face. Perhaps humanity is repulsed, because those obnoxious, flesh-eating insects, who decompose our bodies into part of the earth serve as a reminder for one thing; death is coming.
