Natural Beauty

California Oak Woodland Community

I remember my grandfather once commenting that a long time ago, there were so many ducks back on the ranch, that when they took flight, the sky was dark. Once on a field tour hosted by the Yolo County Resource Conservation District - Yolo RCD - plantings of native California grasses stood out on ditch banks and along the shoulders of country roads. When I was a laboratory assistant for a professor teaching range management, I looked for a few specimens of the perennials in the Sierra foothills in eastern Fresno County. The natives had been displaced centuries before by annual species that hitchhiked on the back of imported livestock or on bales of hay from the Mediterranean basin in the 1600's. Seeing large areas covered with the natives was an emotional moment - something in my mind's eye, but not realized for more than 20 years. Good Nature Publishing Company sells a poster of what the California Oak Woodland would look like, if it remained in 

A winding look of a place in the past

more than the few remnant areas the length of the Central Valley. I remember once ready that the last wolf seen in Sequoia National was in 1954 - at the beginning of my lifetime - the last of its kind that walked in the valley was in 1922. The wolves are making a comeback in other parts of the state, but it may be a long time until specimens walk about in the mountains, much less the valley floor as far south as Tulare County, if ever - displaced by people and towns and even memories. My dad once found a dismembered cow on the bank of the Saint Johns River where are cattle grazed in spring - he thought a cougar had killed it. As recently a black bear had traveled down a dry drainage that made its way from the foothills to the center of the valley. It was shot near a dairy that bordered some of the last pieces of grassland prairie in that part of the state - untouched then by earth-movers and land planes that leveled the gentle rolling hills into table-top flat fields where corn, alfalfa, winter grains, and cotton would grow when water was channeled down straight furrowed rows that converge in the distance.

The lyrics by Neil Young for Natural Beauty have always been in my head when I think about how landscapes used to look - untouched my hands and plows.

On the roller coaster ride

That my emotions have to take me on

I heard a newborn baby cry

Through the night.

I heard a perfect echo die

Into an anonymous wall

of digital sound

Somewhere deep inside

Of my soul.

A natural beauty should be preserved

like a monument to nature

Don't judge yourself too harsh,

my love

Or someday you might find

your soul endangered

A natural beauty should be preserved

like a monument to nature.

Amazon

You had so much

and now so much is gone

What are you gonna do

With your life?

What a lucky man.

To see the earth

before it touched his hand

What an angry fool

To condemn.

One more night to go

One more sleep

upon your burning banks

A greedy man never knows

What he's done.

A natural beauty should be preserved

like a monument to nature

Don't start yourself too short,

my love

Or someday you might find

your soul endangered

A natural beauty should be preserved

like a monument to nature.

Went to the rodeo today

I saw the cowgirls

lined up on the fence

A brand new Chevrolet

A brand new pair of seamless pants.

We watched the moment of defeat

Played back over on the video screen

Somewhere deep inside

Of my soul.

A natural beauty should be preserved

like a monument to nature.

Neil Young, 1992
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A review of Natural Beauty: Over the years, Neil Young has been known for either long, drawn out epic album closers (i.e.: Cowgirl In The Sand and Words) or short little ditties that discretely end the albums (�* la Cripple Creek Ferry). Natural Beauty is a long (clocking at over ten minutes long) acoustic eco-ballad seemingly recorded live. After some rowdy fan applause, the epic tale begins, with Neil proclaiming that “Natural Beauty should be preserved like a monument” and how the world is going to hell. Great harmonica and words and that still ring true today fill this song and even though it’s extended length can seem like a lot to fill in without numerous distorted guitar solos and thousands of verses, the song barely gets boring, and the album goes out like Rust Never Sleeps, fading out over the sound of the audience applauding, but this time cross-fading into the sound of a cricket chirping, on this Harvest Moon. 5/5