HUMANS VISIT ZOOS because we need contact with wild animals. We need the animals to remind us of the enormous complexity of life, to remind us that the world was not made just for us, to remind us that we are not the center of the universe. We need them to teach us how to live.

Children need this contact even more than adults. It is no coincidence that most zoo visits are instigated by children, nor that children are interested in animals’ anatomical features and names. Children want — need — to go to zoos because they understand in their bodies the developmental necessity of being in the presence of wild animals. They understand, but of course cannot articulate, that to fail to enter into these relationships with nonhuman others is to take a major and often irreversible step into the delusion-inducing echo chamber of human-centered thought. If, as ecologist Paul Shepard has said, “nature is the child’s tangible basis upon which symbolic meanings will be posited,” and if the child does not experience nature, then the child — and later the adult — will have a warped sense of meaning.

But a child who goes to a zoo is not encountering real animals. Like any other spectacle, like any other form of pornography, a zoo can never really satisfy, can never really deliver what it promises. Zoos, like pornography, offer superficial relationships based on hierarchy, dominance, and submission. They depend on a detached consumer willing to observe another who may or may not have given permission to be the object of this gaze.

Think of a pornographic picture. Even in cases where women are paid and willingly pose for pornography, they have not given me permission to see their bodies — or, rather, images of their bodies — right here, right now. If I have a photograph, I have it forever, even if subsequently the woman withdraws her permission. This is the opposite of relationship, where the woman can present herself to me now, and now, and now, always at both her and my and our discretion. What in a relationship is a moment-by-moment gift becomes in pornography my property, to do with as I choose.

And so it is with zoos. Zoos take a very real, necessary, creative, life-affirming, and — most of all — relational urge and turn it, pervert it. Pornography takes the creative relational need for sexual contact with a willing partner — and the intimacy this can imply — and simplifies it to the relationship of watcher and watched. Zoos take the creative need for participating in relationships with wild, nonhuman others and simplify it until our “nature experience” consists of spending a few moments looking at — or simply walking by — bears and chimpanzees in concrete cages.

Incarcerating animals in zoos is to entering into relationships with them in the wild as rape is to making love. The former in each case requires coercion; limits the freedom of the victim; and springs from, manifests, and reinforces the perpetrator’s self-perceived entitlement to full access to the victim. The former in each case damages the ability of both victim and perpetrator to enter into future intimate relationships. Based on the dyad of dominance and submission, it closes off any possibility for real and willing understanding of the other.

A real relationship is a dance among willing participants who give what they wish, as they wish, when they wish. It inspires present and future intimacy, present and future understanding of the other and the self. It nourishes those involved. It makes us more of who we are.

IN MY WRITING, I don’t often present tangible solutions to the problems we face. This is because, for the most part, these problems are symptoms of and endemic to deeper psychological and perceptual faults, which means “solving” a problem technically without addressing these underlying faults will simply cause the pathology to present itself in a different way.

That said, I think I see a straightforward solution to the problem of children needing encounters with wild animals and zoos providing only parodies of these encounters. The solution is to let your child explore nature. I’m not talking about getting in the car to hang out with all the other tourists at Yosemite, effectively exchanging your city-based traffic jam for a nature-based one. To drive through nature is not all that different from being surrounded on four sides by movie screens as the visuals of a road rush up to greet you. Throw in the rocking of the car and some pine-scented freshener into the air vents, and the simulation will be more or less complete: you might even think you’re there.

Hiking is not all that much better. You’re still a tourist. No matter how spectacular Yosemite and Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon are, they’re still spectacles unless you live there. Unless you call it your home. Unless it says it’s your home.

I’m talking about staying home.

Although I traveled extensively as a child, I gained my love of nature; learned how to think, name, and categorize; and, for that matter, discovered who I was mainly in the window wells and backyard of my home, and beyond that in a pasture, and beyond that in an irrigation ditch. I learned far more from toads and salamanders at home than I did from all the vacations, all the hikes, all the backpacking, all the four-wheeling — and, yes, all the visits to natural-history museums and zoos. My teachers were the grasses, ants, and grasshoppers in the pasture; the snakes and crawdads in the irrigation ditch. The lessons and encounters weren’t all that extraordinary. And that is precisely the point: we were just neighbors.

I can hear your voice, somewhat incredulous, asking, “Just go outside? That’s boring.”

Good, I respond. Boredom can be a good state; it simply means you’ve not yet found what you want to do. As such, boredom can be an important preparatory step toward new understanding or action, as long as you have the courage and patience not to bail out too early. If you’re bored and you don’t like the feeling, you’ll soon enough find something to do. Or maybe something, or someone, will find you. In fact, I don’t think it’s too much to say that boredom plus freedom often equals creativity.

Boredom can also help us slow down. We are so accustomed — from zoos, from nature programs, from television, and even more generally from the speed of this culture — to events occurring on command. I send an e-mail and expect it to arrive in Bangkok seconds later. I turn on the television and can be watching a movie in an instant. But snakes and spiders run on their own time, a slower time. If you see a spider on a nature program, she will most likely kill something — or, rather, someone — during her few moments of screen time. But right now I’m looking at spiders on my wall, and they sit for hours, sometimes days. I often wonder what they’re experiencing. I’ll probably never know. I certainly won’t know unless they communicate with me. And even if they do that, I won’t perceive it unless I’m paying attention, and unless I’ve learned at least a little of their language. And that, once again, is precisely the point.

Hummingbirds and whirligig beetles run on different time, too; they’re always moving, spinning, doing something. They always seem breathless, or maybe it’s just that watching them makes me lose my breath. And what are the hummingbirds conceiving of as they swoop above my head, chirping? What are the whirligig beetles conjuring as they dance? It’s the same answer as with the spiders, and the same crucial point.

As children know, boredom is a nonissue anyway. The one time as a child I came in from the pasture to complain to my mom that I was bored, she said, “Good. Why don’t you clean the dirty dishes in the sink? After that, the garden needs weeding, and after that . . .” It worked. I never again complained of boredom.

Now I can hear your voice again. This time you say, “That’s all very good for you, Mr. Hayseed Country Boy, but what about those of us who live in cities?”

I pondered this question while sitting on the grass between Highway 101 and the McDonald’s parking lot. The only interesting thing I saw at first was an encircled A (for anarchy) on a concrete wall. But soon I noticed the tiniest red flower on a short and slender green stalk, and the shoots of other plants preparing for next spring. No animals, though. Then suddenly a bumblebee crawled from beneath the weeds, made her way under and over twigs to the edge of the grass, began flying, circled the weeds two or three times, and took off above the McDonald’s. Something clicked inside, and I was then able to see and hear the animals all around: spiders hunkered in the grass; ravens squawked over the sounds of trucks on the highway; sparrows hopped beneath cars.

Life is everywhere. Even in cities we can see creatures who are still wild and free, who can remind us that not all creatures are slaves. There are parks; there are alleyways; there are vacant lots; there are streams, rivers, and ponds; there are birds; there are insects. This culture has polluted and harmed so much land that it’s easy to think of unspoiled places as sacred and polluted places as sacrifice zones. But the truth is that all places are sacred. Beneath the pavement life is still there, waiting for us to remember; or if we fail to remember, waiting for us to die off. In either case, life persists, even in seemingly barren places.

“But,” I hear you again, “bumblebees and sparrows are boring. My child wants exciting animals.”

I’m not sure how watching a bear pace on concrete is more exciting than seeing wild creatures flying, hopping, crawling, doing what wild creatures do. Why are the animals at home less worthy? Is it because these others are from far away? Is it because the local animals are not in cages, and therefore not under our control?

It seems pretty clear to me that if you want your children to see larger animals, then you need to live in such a way that those larger animals want to live near you. You have to work to give them habitat. You need to make yourself worthy of their presence.

But even if you and your child restore habitat to welcome the animals home, you may not always see them when you want. As a child I sat beside many holes, willing snakes to come out so I could get a quick glance, but they rarely accommodated me. I’d see them only later, when walking or reading or watching someone else. I finally learned it’s not nice to look at someone who does not want to be looked at.

And who could blame the animals for hiding? Most of the apes with clothes are at this point treating those who are not Homo supremus maximus pretty poorly. If I were not an ape with clothes, I would hide too. But I can guarantee from my own experience that if you sit long enough and ask nicely enough and work hard enough to do what is in these others’ best interest, you will see marks of their existence. It might be subtle, like alder saplings deep in the forest chewed at forty-five degrees by mountain beaver; or it might be overt, like fox scat wrapped in leaves, or the feathers and beak of a robin left behind by a hawk; or it might be unmistakable, like a big, furry bear butt pressed up against your sliding glass door.

But it will be there.

The important thing is to look where you live. No, it’s to live where you live. It’s to stop searching the world over — including the “world in a box” approach of a zoo — for some great new exotic animal experience that will somehow change your life forever, or maybe just be a spectacle novel enough to stave off the tedium for a little while. The important thing is to stop disrespecting the creatures with whom you already share a home, stop ignoring them, stop considering them uninteresting simply because they are not exotic.

YEARS AGO I HEARD a story of a Native American spiritual leader who was in a circle with several environmentalists who were drumming and singing. One of the environmentalists prayed, “Please save the spotted owl, the river otter, the peregrine falcon.” The Native American got up and whispered, “What are you doing, friend?”

“I’m praying for the animals,” the environmentalist replied.

“Don’t pray for the animals. Pray to the animals.” The Native American paused, then continued, “You’re so arrogant. You think you’re bigger than they are, right? Don’t pray for the redwood. Pray that you can become as courageous as a redwood. Ask the redwood what it wants.”

As it says in the Bible, “Ask, and ye shall receive.”

Ask the pandas what they want. They will tell you. The question is: Are you willing to do it?

TO TAKE A BREAK from writing, I walk to the pond and notice that something is different. I freeze, scan. Then I see her, a great blue heron standing on a small rise above the far side. Her head is up, and her chest is out, aimed toward the sun. Her wings are half extended, and she stands, warming herself. I look at her a moment, then back away slowly, not wanting to startle her.

I smile and ask, softly, “Who are you? What do you want?”

For now, a grizzly bear still paces rectangles in a cage in a zoo. An elephant still sways hour after endless hour, chained to a concrete floor. A wolf still strides inside an electrified fence. A giraffe still stands in a cell too small for her to break into a run.

Perhaps some of these animals still remember what it was like not to be a prisoner. Perhaps some were born in zoos and have no firsthand knowledge of what it was like to live free, to run, to live in a family, a community, a land base. Perhaps they know it only from what their parents told them, who knew it only from what their parents had told them, who knew it only from vague memories before their own parents had been killed. Or perhaps they — like so many of us — have forgotten. Perhaps for them, as for many of us, this nightmare has become the only reality they know.

They have the excuse of being literally confined. We do not. We can walk away from our own zoo, our own myth of self-perceived separation from and superiority to other animals, this nightmare into which we have pulled all of these others. If this horrific dream is going to have any end but death — for its individual victims, and for the planet — it is up to us to awaken.

I type those words and then look away from the computer screen, out the window and into the sunlight. There is no wind. Even the bright green tips of the redwood branches are still. It’s beautiful. And then I see it: a shadow the shape of a heron moving dark over the bright green. The shadow is there for only a moment, and then it’s gone.

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