I rescued a toad. Somehow the beautiful little thing made its way into the alpine coaster garage next to the gas tanks for our lawn mowers. I was cleaning up, and there she or he (how can you tell gender in toads anyway?), pressed into a corner, trying to squeeze herself as small as she could, dry, skinny and clearly terrified.
We have a lake with a nature recovery zone about 400m away and she clearly got lost. I put on some cleaner gloves, got her into my hands and at this point, we were both terrified.
A) I didn’t know toads were disproportionately heavy and
B) I also didn’t know when they clench their legs around your finger, it’s a surprisingly strong grip.
Toad and I made our way out to the lake, I dropped her off by the shore and we both sighed with relief when she found the water. I imagine I saw her look back at me with a grateful nod, but maybe she was just reorientating herself.
Now that I have told you this, I violated the rule of Intoku. It’s a Japanese word for ‘good done in secret,’ born of Zen Buddhism. Intoku is mostly referencing the hidden jobs someone does without expecting reward or praise. Like someone emptying the office kitchenette dishwasher, or hikers picking up other people’s trash, or in my case, rescuing toads. I never told my coworkers that day, I just had a moment with the toad, and felt - better.
That day had its usual array of screaming children, hordes of tourists somehow missing the 6 billion trash cans we place all over and ride customers making stressed complaints about not being able to ride at full speed because it was busy (that’s what happens when you vacation with everyone else during school holidays).
I will never understand this attitude. This attitude of “consuming” nature, rather than visiting or protecting it.
By the lake, near my toad, are plenty of people trying to take pictures of her and her friends, so they can post online showcasing their “connection” to nature, forgetting that, as they are doing so, they are stepping all over the high grass she needs to hide under.
It hurts my heart.
It seems to me, that the majority of overly privileged, pampered, serviced and able folks (as we are in this part of the world), only realize their natural status of visitor and custodian, once they get humbled by nature. When they hurt themselves on a bike track, or a friend suffers lifelong consequences after being hit by an avalanche. I worry too. I worry that I am right and it isn’t just my biased impression because I work in the recreational industry, but that it is in fact, a majority who live by a credo of consumption more so than creation.
Tourists are primed for consumption by definition, of course, but what if they are also tourists in their own lives back home? People who, when they do do something good, like showing their kids the beauty of the mountains, or doing something kind for someone else, are unable to do so in secret?
If that’s the case, we’re fucked.
If you have to be seen to do good, won’t humility create resentment? And if you’re resentful of your purpose as custodian of creation, won’t you destroy it, rather than protect it?
Isn’t that what’s happening in the world right now? I asked my toad about it and she says:
“Qwaaaaaaaark.”
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