2/4/20
When I think about connection to nature, my instinct is to stop thinking about it and go outside. All the real living I’ve done, has been outside. I’ve been lucky enough to have spent many days in the wilderness, where I didn’t think about my connection to nature until I returned to my modern house, with electricity and running water and thick walls and furniture. To engage with nature from a more intellectual, classroom setting, feels counterintuitive, but I believe there is much to be learned. The reading has made me reflect on my own experience, as well as gain insight from others.
In “Mind in the Forest” by Scott Russell Sanders, he describes falling into the habit of following his breath, but then soon after, following the babbling of the nearby creek, and watching the bright leaves. This resonates with my experience of moments of stillness in the natural world, away from other people. How the breath of the natural world becomes more powerful the the rhythm of my own breathing, and I sink into the world around me, as a piece of the whole.
Sanders also speaks about the human capacity of sympathy, curiosity, and love, toward other, non-human species, and the earth. I have lived both deeply connected to the earth, and deeply disconnected. In the times of connection, I could see how our human experience is similar, and reflected in all of life. I felt how my ego and identity were only a part of my reality. I could feel how my ego wasn’t just feeling connected, but that all of life is connected to each other. I could see that things I feel, as a universal experience of a shared earth. I was reminded that all of our basic human needs, shelter, and food, and water, come directly from the earth. Today, many of us live in a world where our food, and water, and shelter, are far removed from the earth by the time they reach us.
In the piece by Sanders, he recounts an experience he had with one particular douglas fir. He talks about feeling a sense of calm seeping in. A feeling all of us readily welcome. I can’t say in words why I think us humans find that feeling among trees, but I feel that it is true. Maybe their steadiness, their unwavering strength. Or perhaps that they do waver, and persevere. Sanders shares that he didn’t check a clock or hurry, during his time with the douglas fir. He says that he stays with the tree until it lets him go. This shifts the focus away from the human ego and more toward the tree. A thing I seek to do when I am among the trees.
Sanders also speaks about analogies from nature. Using human terms to try to describe nature. I have often been critical at the quickness with which people seem to assume that other things in nature have some likeness to humans, and human understanding. I like to think we can learn from nature without thinking we need to understand and describe it all. Human analogies can be drawn from nature without assuming that we are capturing its essence in our limited human understanding. The ability to look at the natural world, and draw out what we can, with the intent to learn, is one that I cherish.
When we are not actively engaging our thoughts with the natural world, just being with it, with no walls in between, benefits our whole beings. In a piece written by Oliver Sacks, called “The Healing Power of Gardens”, he points to studies that show how just looking at trees has a positive effect on us physically, as well as psychologically. I was lucky enough to go to a small private school, where I spent a lot of time outside. When I got to highschool, I would always ask to take my tests outside, at the picnic table. I could feel how much clearer my thinking was when I was alone. Outside. I would do my homework outside during our lunch break, even in the winter, because it was easier to think. The walls that separate us from the natural world, and the food, and money, and material goods, are deeply ingrained in our culture. And we are consumers, consuming it all.
From the moment we are born, many of us are distracted every time we cry, or express intense emotion. Babies are experiencing the whole world for the first time, and all the emotions that come with it, but with a limited ability to comprehend it all. Imagine how hard that must be? But parents so often distract a baby’s crying, the kind of crying that is just for crying, with food, or a pacifier, or TV. It seems so clear that this habit of distracting starts when we are babies, and doesn’t necessarily stop as we get older. This distraction disconnects us from our deep, authentic feelings. It connects us with a world of quick fixes, and band aids. This disconnection isn’t just to ourselves, but also to the world around us. To the parts of ourselves that are one with the earth. One with the earth because we are connected to all beings.
pondering sustainability 