An Ocean Beach Halloween Starise

Walking towards Ocean Beach right after sunset, singing sparrows congregated in the trees along Judah and 46th Street. The ocean was a rich shade of baby blue and an orange rim blanketed the horizon. Clouds were in the distance, low lying and gray on the horizon and pink to the south. I had been late not to any sunset, this was Halloween night, 1999. While costumed revelers gathered Downtown and in the Castro, I headed to the beach which stretched miles south giving a wide view of the sun setting in the sky.

On the sand I sat to watch the remainder of the light disappear, to be replaced by the star filled sky. No longer part of civilization, but not really that far away. After the sun goes down it can take as long as an hour for the sky to go dark. The waves rumbled towards the beach, some sanderlings gathered by the water, and pedestrians walked along the shore.

It is here I chose to think about the past and the future of environmentalism. There are distinctions between people who work to protect the ocean and preservationists-who seem landlocked at times. In some organizations they are the same, but some groups seem devoted to the land or the ocean. Maybe someday all groups will have competencies in both. But soon space may also beckon for the environmental movement. Space may need to become a new environmental imperative so we can be different about these new territories in our future. They may be upon us sooner than we know.

I expected a frightful experience being out on the beach alone on Halloween night. I came here to reflect on our traditional fears of the wilderness, whether it be the unknowns of the ocean or imagined terrors from space. But it is fear of ourselves, of other people, that predominated.

We have explored the ocean and uncovered its "monsters" to find that we were worse than them. Even the ferocious creatures of the sea can be tamed or killed. The "monsters" of the sea were imaginary and exaggerated.

In groups people walked down the beach, how festive and civilized they were. But it is at our root, at our core, our desire to overcome what causes us fear. It has made us devouring monsters that would rip the land aside in our desire for peace of mind.

Recently Richard Wrangham & Dale Peterson wrote in Demonic Males, Apes and the Origins of Human Violence that we need to acknowledge our true nature, our true propensity for violence, in order to control our violent tendencies.

As they contend, a violent disposition is at our core, and we dress up, as if it is Halloween everyday, in a civil disguise hiding it. That behind our pleasantries is a subconscious that is reminded of the claws, teeth, rocks and sticks we had wielded in the past. But these tendencies are now attached to knives, guns, missiles, and atomic weapons.

Wrangham and Peterson contend that we need to acknowledge this hidden destructive anger in order to better control it. Civilization being just a masquerade ball that doesn't always work. That pleasantness and courtesy were just disguises under which we hid our craven predilections.

And in our desire to foster our security we have tamed the land and its wild beasts, parading civility, but in actuality being the new untamed beast. But fear must have been an essential element in our desire to tame the wild. Imagine the American homesteaders building meager shelters to protect themselves from the weather and the wolves that howled in the night. Imagine our first encounters with the giant wild beasts of the ocean, or H.G. Wells writing about a martian invasion in The War of the Worlds that we had no defense from at the turn of the last Century. Add also the Tragedy of the Commons, and political and economic systems that produce competition and exploitation.

The mysteries of the ocean and space have been of concern, but here on the beach as it was getting darker and the stars were coming out, people were leaving the beach in groups or with their dogs. Most had left by 6pm.

Soon I would be out here all alone under the stars, the grand show of the evening, with the rumbling waves for music.

I had come out to the beach more often last year to watch the Winter sunsets on my days off. But I grew wary of being out here alone. But such beauty is hard to give up. There are few sights that compare to watching the sun set over the ocean, and the rising stars of the night are the grand finale of these trips.

In revery I would walk around under these stars beholding the awesomeness of Nature's vastness. The Natural Universe mentioned by Arthur C. Clarke in The City and the Stars. But I was wary of the strange people you could find on the beach. Here we believe come some of our awkward, our strays, and it is easy to imagine our dangerous and criminal. Here in the dark they could be of danger. Away from the street lights that remind us of civilization, but close enough for the denizens of the city to visit. But there have always been dangerous members of society. Society creates and mistreats its excess, creating a sub culture that is rightfully disgruntled. Providing an excess to send to war or into unchartered lands. But there are not unchartered lands left. Only wildernesses that need to be protected.

By a few minutes after 6pm the beach seemed almost empty. The stars were coming out but they didn't shine too brightly due to the light pollution from the city. I could still see the remnants of the sun's shadow on the horizon, but I was waiting for Orion the Hunter to form in the sky. Earlier this Fall I saw Orion with its leg in the ocean.

Will space pose a danger as we have envisioned in so much science fiction? Or will we be the new danger in space in the future? Though space is viewed as a frontier isn't it better to view it as a wilderness? Will we not bring our predilections into space? If we see space as a frontier we are less likely to want to defend it. We can see ourselves as the overwhelmed underdogs if it is a frontier.

But if we view it as a wilderness are we not more inclined to defend or respect it? Sovereign interests have set their eyes on space. There is an American flag, not a Earth flag, on the moon. There is International cooperation in space exploration, but the missions are organized by individual nations. There are no international space agencies of note. Space debree should be considered pollution and therefore an environmental problem. The planets are new wildernesses. Until we get there they fall into the category categorically.

My thoughts are disturbed by new visitors to the beach, but this time they are in groups or they have their dogs with them. It is illegal for dogs to run around in certain areas of Ocean Beach because they bother threatened birds. The Western Snowy Plover Winters here and Ocean Beach is a National Sea Shore. But there the dogs go running around the beach within city limits. Imagine what it will be like if bad astronauts are in space where civilization is very far away.

The sounds of the waves rumbling remained the same, but there were all kinds of things in the sky: blips, flashing planes, twinkling stars.... But the sky was clear of clouds. It was a good night for viewing the stars.

Often I have visited Ocean Beach. It is one of my favorite nature spots in the country. Where else can I, without a car, hike for miles along the ocean at sunset. I wondered what lessons the ocean could teach me, and I have formulated one so far. The ocean reminds of the worthwhileness of persistence. Over time the ocean has carved down mountains.

The night sky reminds of the vastness of Nature, a Nature defined as the Universe. Though not a pressing concern, we do need to think at some time about what we will do when we go out into space. We will probably have human settlers living on Mars by the middle of the 21st Century, if not 25 years sooner.

I believe we need to apply the values and perspectives of environmentalism to developments in space commercialization and exploration. We have polluted space with debree. The fuels used to project the probes and shuttles into space are poisonous. It has been reported that we punch ozone holes into the atmosphere every time we send up the space shuttle. If there had been a problem with the recent Cassini space probe we would all be breathing plutonium in our air. Many in The Mars Society see Mars a frontier, and the Artemis Society wants to go to the moon for fun, and SpaceDev, a private company, may have the technology to do mining operations on nearby comets. Everybody likes to forget or ignore or downplay that there is a body of International laws protecting space from exploitation by sovereign interests. The military views space as a new ocean and they are preparing to battle for the high ground. But will the United Nations be able to control nationalistic endeavors in space. Some people in San Francisco are not even willing to keep their dogs on leashes to protect threatened birds on a national sea shore.

Sitting on the beach alone I worry about people visiting from the city behind me. Is it not that which we would take with us into space. The greed, the sometimes misguided idealism, the crime, the mismanagement, the anger: our violent predisposition, whether it be due to our innate nature or the conditioning of our societies. I think we are greedy because society makes us struggle against each other to meet our basic needs. We are forced to fight by political, legal, and economic systems. Many of us need to put on this warlike costume over our more serene selves. The land and the ocean becomes a new resource to exploit in this battle, as may the resources of space.

Though not as pressing as the issues that most environmentalists focus on: air, water, habitat destruction, endangered species, etc... space will be a concern in the future. It is worthwhile to think about, so we can plan for a healthy future. We need to think about it now so we can proceed in a healthy direction. So we can avoid making the same mistakes again. So we can do better by the next place. Space offers us a shot a redemption. A new try at a new place. Now, as the new Millennium is upon us, it is a better time than most to make the decision to do better by the next place we have access to. So far we have failed by letting space be polluted.

Looking into the night sky in the West I see a new vast wilderness which will be out of our reach for a long time, but Mars is on our horizon sooner than we may think. Lets agree to do better by the next place. We need to think of it as something we need to accomplish, rather than something we think we agree on. Though not ready, the mainstream environmental movement of the future could share the message. Though not involved in these issues, the environmental movement has the traditional history to help guide the preservation of the territories of space.

It has gotten dark and I need to sign off to walk along the shore under the vastness of the night sky. I don't want to be out here alone too late. But people need to be resolute about protecting Mars and space. Space is like a new ocean which will need to be explored, but also hopefully protected in the process. Unfortunately it is ripe for exploitation and military use. It is a new ocean that the military sees as a future battleground. Maybe environmentalists could use our "inherent" destructiveness for the purpose of protecting space from exploitation and military use. Walking along the shore at night the rumbling of the ocean reminds of the power of persistence.


San Francisco
November, 1999