What we call development is destruction

What Sequoia National Park taught me

being reborn by a Sequoia monarch tree

At the beginning of last week I was at Sequoia National Park, which is why you haven’t heard from me in a while. Yes, I'm assuming that all of you wait for the arrival of my newsletters in your inbox like it’s the next Rihanna album. Unlike Rihanna’s next album, this newsletter will keep coming and is not capitalist propaganda. Anyway, we spent two days at the park and then drove down south to my friend’s wedding. I’m really happy my friend chose to get married in California because if it wasn’t for this I might have never gone to Sequoia. Sequoia changed my life. I know that sounds dramatic, especially coming from a person who believes that cocktails can be life changing. I really mean it this time. Which is surprising because I didn’t even know Sequoia National Park existed before this year. 

My partner asked me if there is anything I would like to do when we are in California because we never go to the west coast and I told him I wanted to see some big ass trees. My roommate from college had posted a photo of her hugging a big tree on Instagram and living in this concrete desert called Brooklyn, hugging a tree seemed like a life changing event. This is the only time Instagram has ever brought any good ideas to my head and I doubt it will ever happen again. We  were at first considering going to the redwood forest near (not really) San Francisco but we changed our minds because it would require lots of driving and we hate driving. I think we hate driving more than root canals. At least a root canal is over after a day of misery, driving is forever. Anyway we ended up picking Sequoia as our back up plan. Wow, if all my backup plans are this great, I will never have a main plan. 

Fast forward six months after we booked the trip, we are driving up the hill to reach 6000 feet so we can see the sequoias. I’m scared and excited the whole time. Scared because one silly move and we plunge to our deaths. This is not the fast and the furious. Excited because for the first time in a very long while I’m completely surrounded by nature. In Brooklyn grass is the most I can look forward to on any day and sometimes I don’t even get that. Once the terrifying drive is over, we park and start our first hike. I can’t explain to you the feeling that hit me when I saw my first sequoia monarch. Full grown sequoias are called monarchs which I think is gross because trees don’t seem like the feudalist type. Anyway when I first saw a monarch I was filled with awe and a bit of sadness. 

I was awed because I have never seen such a big ass tree. I was awed because I have never seen any living thing that was thousands of years old. I was saddened because the land I stood on was stolen land. I was saddened because I realized that if this land and all the other land in the so called united states was never stolen, we would have different variations of this everywhere. It’s at that moment that I truly realized that what we call development is actually destruction.

Mowing down nature to build roads and skyscrapers is not development. Terraforming the planet for cars (that’s what I called roads), is not development. It’s not development to me because being surrounded by concrete and buildings does not bring me a fraction of the calmness and joy being surrounded by nature did. My usual interaction with nature is usually some bug in my apartment and that brings me neither joy nor calmness. 

Now I’m not saying we should stop building homes for people to live in. I’m just saying that maybe we shouldn’t completely destroy the planet for other living things. There’s a better way. The only problem is that capitalism will never let us find a better way because capitalism is built on destruction. Trying to preserve nature without destroying capitalism is like trying to get a bodybuilder to stop using steroids. It won’t work because they know they’ll lose.

Seeing those trees didn’t just change my mind on what development means, it also convinced me that in order for me to be happier, I have to spend more time in nature. Dad, if you are reading this, don’t worry, no one hacked into my computer. It’s really me saying that yes I want to go camping and hiking as often as I can. What’s saddening is that parks are owned by the state, and they are expensive, which means they are not accessible to all. Yes, you can always count on me to go from describing something joyful and finding something depressing about it. What’s additionally sad is that even if the parks were free, most people don’t have the time to spend in nature or the money to travel. I barely do. I was only able to be there for two days and it completely changed my perspective on things. I can only imagine what would happen if we destroyed capitalism and we could spend more of our time being in nature. What if we could spend all of our time growing food, cooking food, taking care of each other and hugging big ass trees? We would be so happy and so calm that no one would spend all their time tweeting Rihanna to release a new album. 

❤️

Your favorite anarchist comedian,

Marcela

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