Black and White, She Is Life, She Is Death

    

     There are several items I carry with me through each day of work. Most of them are simple tools I require to perform my job each day. One of them is more important. It's a conservation bracelet marked only with the word "zebra". I look at it every day.

     Nature is equal parts life and death. I see both very clearly in the zebra, which is perhaps the secret inspiration for my hands-off approach to nature and my complete acceptance of its unwavering and unapologetic brutality. Many people find some of my philosophies somewhat hard to swallow, and that's because they likely have not had their arm pried from the mouth of an animal that was merely "supposed" to provide a child a moment's entertainment. Make no mistake: I believe the zebra to be the most well disguised version of death that Africa, a land specifically and uniquely identified with death, has to offer.

     Zebras completely terrify me, and I love them for it. They keep me honest. They embody what Emerson taught me of nature, of its indifference to mankind. This is not merely a fact, but one that carries with it a purity and clarity. People just don't understand that nature makes no concessions for man. So much of our conflict with nature, our rejection of nature's methods, and our terrible need to subject nature to our rule is born the moment we fail to understand this. But I understand. I understand because nature humbled me at a young age. A zebra showed me my fragility and demonstrated that our intentions and assigned purpose for her meant nothing. She taught the same lesson to the earliest of Africa's Dutch settlers, who tried in vain to tame her. And to the many unassuming hunters that have died beneath her terrible slashing hooves, bewildered that their lives would shortly end because they failed to recognize Death. The hyena and the lion betrayed death by reputation, but the zebra did not. But at the same time, she is the embodiment of life. She thrives in vast numbers in the harshest of lands with one of the highest predator to prey ratios anywhere in the world. Like the blend of her black and white stripes, each allowing the existence and creating the purpose of the other, she embodies both life and death. People see nature's wonders and horrors in many places. I see them in a zebra.