Nature Notes: Enough Is Enough

When whippoorwills call and evening is nigh

I hurry to my blue heaven

Turn to the right, a little white light 

Will lead me to my blue heaven. 

I’ll see a smiling face, a fireplace, a cozy room

Some human domiciles are 1,000 years old or more. Several on Long Island date back to the late 1600s. Most houses, however, have lost their sense of permanence. Fifty years ago, one would never raze a house to build another one unless it was severely storm damaged or ravaged by fire. Nowadays, houses built in the last quarter of the 20th century are falling to new, larger ones right and left. Houses have lost their sense of permanence just as we who live in them have lost our sense of immortality.

There is another trend afoot, especially in the richer suburbs conveniently located near our larger cities. While families have become smaller and smaller over the years, houses have become bigger and bigger. On the North Fork, where I grew up in the middle of the last century, one would never think of building a big house in a neighborhood of modest-sized houses. It just wasn’t done. Now it seems, just the opposite is becoming the rule, build a house as big as will fit on a lot as per building and zoning regulations.

There was a good reason for building smaller houses in the past and that was so the rest of the building lot could be used to grow food, keep livestock and chickens, and still have room for young ones to play hide-and-seek, hopscotch, tag, and other pickup games that have been replaced by organized sports, computer games, and other more regimented activities. The land around the house was as important as the house itself. You may still be able to raise a chicken or two, but in most modern villages and towns here on Long Island that is verboten.

Humans are, perhaps, the only species that makes its domiciles progressively larger with each generation. In fact, the tendency in evolution is for a species to become smaller as the area it lives in becomes more crowded. Deer that live along both coasts are smaller than their counterparts, which live in the less populated interiors. Deer, raccoons, squirrels, and chipmunks don’t seem to be interested in the “more-and-more,” “bigger-and-bigger” credos. They want to go on living and raising their families in the same manner as they have practiced for thousands of years. 

Something is happening, however, with respect to blunting this trend of “bigger is better”: Local citizens are beginning to say enough is enough. Peace and quietude are becoming more and more sought after. Sag Harbor has recently passed a law limiting its basic house sizes to 4,000 square feet. East Hampton Town has been considering a similar plan of action. The North Fork doesn’t have the ocean and although it’s busier than ever with each progressive summer you can still get around and sleep a full night’s sleep.

So enough of this materialism! It is growing tiresome. It all started with “the gracious living” attitude that set in after World War II. Bigger abodes, more toys, furniture, TV sets, bigger beds with bigger mattresses, even one or more kitchen islands, swimming pools, tennis courts, and the like — too much, too much, too much. Our children just out of college are beginning to feel the pain of what we have collectively created. Churches should be the biggest buildings, not houses. A little house on a little lot with some trees and wildflowers, that should please most of us.

A little nest that nestles where the roses bloom. . . .

The domicile is the basic space to raise a family. Whether it be a cave, tree cavity, burrow, nest, fiddler hole, tepee, yurt, McMansion or something akin, it is that permanent or semi-permanent spot that is a centerpiece of a community. It can be a community of one, like the watery lodge of a beaver or treetop nest of an oriole, or it can be a community of many, like a group of close-lying prairie dog holes or a simple purple martin box atop a tall pole. For every organism, humans on down to insects and other invertebrates, there is a special home in which to raise a family.

In that respect (and in many others), we Homo sapiens are not so different from all of the other millions of species in the kingdom Animalia. We are not the only species to have more than one domicile per family, a trend that has gained great momentum among humans in the new millennium. House wrens often occupy several bird boxes, while raising a family in only one of them. Gray squirrels may use more than one tree hole, rats more than one burrow, mountain lions more than one grotto.

Among the primates from which we derive, most apes and simians raise their families in a roofless communal area, an encampment as it were. It can be on the bare ground, the side of a mountain, or in a tree canopy. It is a territory that is defended from use by other communal groups, sometimes groups of the same species, as with chimpanzees. For modern humans, the domicile has become the “house” or its equivalent in other languages. It is generally a roofed structure with doors, windows, internal partitions, and floors, and in most modern societies its size and general makeup are regulated by a municipality’s building and zoning laws.

Humans have contrived the most complicated of rules governing domiciles. They are generally owned and thus are deeded. They may be rented for long periods or short ones. They are generally in neighborhoods with streets, utilities, and other infrastructure. In America and most other modern societies, an outsider — be he stranger, officer-of-the-law, member of the armed forces — cannot enter such a building without just cause and a warrant.