In nature, there is still some hope for man

Good news?
No way. We’re living in a Raymond Chandler novel. The “Lady in the Lake” is not a fetching mermaid. The lady in the lake is drowned and decomposed and washed up on the shore.
And the roguish detective we would like to solve the mystery of her death is not a charming knight errant. He’s a simple fool.
The only place to seek solace from the mendacity and idiocy of the great bulk of our species and our nominal leaders is in the natural world. The scholar Martha Be