Monsters on the Landscape
Humanity has a complicated relationship with monsters. We seem to want them to exist, these embodiments of danger and violence. Like a love of storms or fascination with historic tragedies, we are drawn to these powerful forces. This attraction invites us to ask: why, in a world full of fearsome things, have we populated it with monsters? In this age of information, why are some of us still so invested in their existence despite the paucity of evidence?
While building the serpent sculptures “Champ” and “Winnie” at NBNC, I saw that people seemed thrilled by the whimsy of the project, eager to get their hands on a dragon. I get the appeal. My sketchbooks have been filled with dragons and monsters since childhood. Monsters gave me a creative way to interact with the natural world, liberated from the limits of taxonomy by the chaotic anatomy of chimeras. They helped me transition from the fantastic world of dinosaurs to our seemingly more mundane ecology. I suspect they played similar roles for the cultures that dreamed them up, and gave me a window into their societies.
Humans are, of course, animals, a part of nature, yet we have long questioned where to draw the line between nature and society. This hazy median is perhaps where some monsters are born — natural forces given names and human attributes. These stories may function as mnemonics, too. Aquatic kappas and kelpies remind us to use caution around water, regardless of how placid the pond may appear. Some creatures are byproducts of our innate curiosity and creativity, artifacts of early attempts to catalog the natural world. Depictions of unicorns, for example, drew from a variety of sources: encounters with rhinoceros, narwhal, and even Pleistocene fossils.
In 1971, a police sergeant in southeastern Massachusetts filed an odd report; he claimed to have seen a monstrous bird, later described as a thunderbird, a being with a storied legacy across Indigenous America. He saw the bird in the Hockomock Swamp, the largest freshwater wetland in the state, which has a reputation for the paranormal. At the same time, naturalists were observing another incredible phenomenon: a host of extirpated creatures — Great Blue Herons, eagles, loons, and ravens — began to return to New England. I see herons often, yet am always struck by their presence. I can’t imagine seeing one for the first time, in a dark and storied swamp, no less. While I don’t believe the sergeant’s encounter was supernatural, I have no doubt it was powerful.
Despite the world being ever more cataloged, many people exist at a further remove from nature. Without this familiarity, natural phenomena can be misinterpreted. Monsters, for all their ferocity, are a sort of balm. If a beast like Champ can evade detection in Lake Champlain, then maybe the Ivory-billed Woodpecker survives in the swamps of Louisiana. Urban legends may help us grapple with the enormity of forces like extinction or invasive species. Even without belief, they are a sandbox for our imagination, priming our minds for a complicated world.