Here is the horizon

On being a lizard. Or is it a canary?

They talk about the lizard brain, that part of our brain that is so ancient, the part of our brain that existed in our distant ancestors, the ancestors that are so distant that both us and lizards share that branch on a family tree.

Lizard brains haven’t evolved much. But our brains have. And yet, we still keep that little lizard brain. It must be good for something, right? For it to have stayed with us all this time. Or is it like an appendix, a vestige that doesn’t really do much except when it goes wrong, and then it causes an emergency.

And so I think about, what would my lizard brain allow me to do, as this ancient creature?

I think I would be an excellent midnight watch, scanning the environment for problems, for changes, for movement.

Just me, hanging out, scanning the horizon.

I have years of practice spotting creatures out the car window: deer hiding in trees waiting to dart out onto the road. Red-tailed hawks soaring from one high perch to another or perhaps a bald eagle soaring above the Klamath River.

I am the first one, always, to spot sleek sea lions moving through the surf—the only time they can be described as sleek. I spot the dolphin pods between the crests of swell, in between the surfers.

My eye just jumps at movement, at a pattern that deviates from its background. I don’t search for the difference; I study the pattern so that the differences jump out at me. I scan the horizon because the horizon is beautiful and worth scanning, and then call out when it is interrupted by the spout of a whale.

Or maybe it wasn’t the spout of a whale, but the splash from a diving pelican, and that, too, is worth crying out for.

But my lizard brain isn’t scanning the horizon of a vast plain or an endless ocean that I am trying to survive in. It is scanning this modern world of humans, trying to find the pattern that can serve as my baseline, in order to then have the ability to spot the slightest movement.

The problem seems to be that there is no baseline, only movement. There is only news and social media and AI and genocide and cruelty and capitalism and all the isms and disconnection and technology and despair.

I am scanning, scanning, scanning. I am told I am anxious, depressed, a perfectionist.

Aren’t these normal things to be, when the horizon is so cluttered? And I can, at times, actually see it—it is in the form of care and mutual aid and art and what I’m trying to say is that the horizon is love—and I try to cry out, look, something’s moving! Not because it’s beautiful but because it’s a beast threatening my tribe, and by tribe I mean the entire universe, and I’m calling out, watch out! And the very people and societal norms that are cluttering the horizon tell me not to worry, not to be so dramatic, join us, conform, stop being on alert, we are the beast and there is no longer reason to watch for it.

These days, I know I have found my people when they hold my hand, follow my finger to where I am pointing on the horizon, and say, “Yes, I see it too.”