Up Close with Our Plant and Animal Teachers
Everyone loves those phenomenal photographs of the earth taken from outer space. In them we see our blue and green planet with her wispy cloud-hair — not so immense as we thought, but rather, finite and vulnerable. No borders are visible, and we sense how we are all constituents, cooperators, members; how every person, every life form is a part of this seamless unity we call "Gaia." But on another level, the photos were taken from much too far away. To really know the earth, and thus to know ourselves, we must in time focus on but a single one of those brown-hued continents, and then a particular bio-region, estuary, or mountain range. On the Pacific Northwest, the Olympic Peninsula, or the Puget Sound. On Everett or Issaquah, a well-loved river, a select grove, a specific meadow, a much-appreciated yard. So close that we can see the sparrows nesting in hollow street signs, a secretive murrelet swooping down from park trees, or the pretty bugs and flowers best observed on our knees. As adults, we are likely to seek out those postcard-perfect views of great heights and wide expanses, but a child will look instead to those things up close, those things that can be experienced with more than the eyes, those that can be handled, arranged, tossed, rolled, or rolled about in! Kids know what adults often forget: that place is best understood up close, in microcosms nestled between hillocks, inside the hollows of lightning-struck trees, in the overgrown corner of the school playground, or between waving rows of sky-clad corn. There's no doubt that what we call "place" is really made up of myriad little worlds, inviting us to be little again within them, enlisting our patience and attention, enticing our sensual exploration. Place insists that if we're truly to experience it, we must first slow down and "smell the flowers." Behold the blooming present. Sample the unfolding miracle of life, up close and intimate. It is here that we find our purpose and our calling. And it is here that our plant and animal teachers meet and inform us. Truly they are more than our brethren, for they are an extension of us, and we of them. They're our "totems," instructive guides drawn not from a deck of cards but from the depths of relationship and the well of our experience. Even now we can feel them, if we pay attention. Even now, ensconced underneath layers of civilized habits, wrapped in protective clothes, shielded by the walls of our offices and homes. You'll note how easily they penetrate our every physical and psychological defense, pass right through our skin, meld with cell and self, impact our vulnerable psyches for life. They seek us out, seek parity with our spirits, lead us through dreams and visions to our true selves, and something deep within us, something deeper than our fear and disbelief, as deep as our bones, draws them unto us. They are the terrestrial "others," spirits of the winged and furred, bearers of talon and claw. They have served our kind for millennia as instructors and allies. They're our kindred spirits, fellow manifestations of this living, feeling Earth. They are playful creature reminders of our own innate animalness, our suppressed instincts and as-yet-unlived dreams. When we embrace rather than deny our animus, every sense is heightened, every skill sharpened, every act empowered with the strength and grace of our totem spirits. Certain species, such as whales and porpoises, are often singled out as "communicants," informing humanity in an exchange that goes back to the very beginnings of our time. We can cite the responses of dolphins to the plight of drowning sailors, but in a sense most of our kind are in one way or another foundering in the waters, in need of the guidance of other kindred species to help us back to the shore of our authentic being, back to the common ground of irrevocable interrelationship. I've often written about the complex echolocation of the sounding humpback whales, and yet all of life is reaching out to us, each in its own way sending probing signals of communion and connection. And each awaits those returning echoes that would indicate that we, too, seek to communicate. That we, too, care! Our search for our real selves, our quest to reclaim peak animal awareness, our effort to discover our home place among the whole of creation, is essentially a "rewilding": the reinhabitation of the sensate body and the vital present moment. It is in this enlivened state that we are most responsive to the needs of our lovers, our families, our communities, and all life. It is only thus aroused, and concerned, that we will make the necessary changes that could ensure the survival of not only our endangered animal teachers, but of our own kind as well. There are a lot of artful words like these that point us in the direction of healing and wholeness, but the journey begins in a moment of overwhelming quiet, when the tape loops of the mind dramatically snap and a world of stark clarity is suddenly revealed. The clamor of our own busy minds gives way to the subtle music of wind and water. The details of every little thing around us rise up in prominence out of what seemed like a common gray field. The rocks, the wind, and even the pen we write with all stretch toward us like cats in demand of attention. Whether through delirium or device, the once rock-solid mirage thins until fully transparent, and we're thrust back into the immortal world, where magic and the mundane are one. We experience ourselves existing not on the earth but with and in her; that this is our home, our context, our flesh; that our being is as a single cell of a corporal planet, our planet but a single cell making up the greater body of an unlimited universe. Our homecoming, our totemic journey, begins to affect our hectic schedules, as even the harsh pounding of industry seems to slow down into a simple and steady cadence. Listen for it now: a pair of steady beats one after the other, the second slightly quieter than the first, then followed by a beat of silence. Thump, thump. Thump, thump. No matter where we are, city or wilderness, we will find ourselves fully here. Here, at the perpetual beginning, at the center of experience, the center of now: the undying heartbeat of Grandmother Earth. It was this maiden noise that first greeted our developing ears, while we still floated blissfully in the fluid universe of a maternal womb, and it is likely the last sound to echo in our conscious minds when we die. You were always here. The atoms making up your being once shimmered in the breath of dinosaurs, and fueled the fearsome fires of creation. The same primordial lava courses through your veins as set the oceans to boil, and cooled to form the continent where you stand. You're a direct product of and descendant to the very earliest organic molecules. You carry in you the molecular memory of a blood-red sky tinted with rainbow bands of unmixed gases, the saltwater repeatedly pierced and stirred by amorous lightning thrusts, a great cauldron giving birth to the first living cell. All that follows is a part and extension of that ancestral cell. All of life, from ocean sponge to howling wolf, redwood monarch to questioning human, shares this single common progenitor. Encoded in the matrix of your being is a map of the evolutionary voyage, the dead ends we know as extinction and the continuous unfolding of new and fecundate forms. It is a process reenacted inside the uterus of every pregnant woman, from single-celled simplicity into a tailed fetus, on through the toddler's first upright steps. You are a permanent part of a three-and-a-half-billion-year celebration of life and sensation. You extend into every life form that has ever have existed, and even now, the spirits of those other life forms extend into you. Like skeletal antennae, your bones continue to pick up vibrations from the distant past, tapping the strength of mountains thrust up from the sea, the geologic remembrance of purpose and place. Your muscles recall waiting for the sun to warm your reptilian body before you could move, and your nerves are familiar with the giddy feeling of taking flight from the highest crest. A shared genetic memory lies just below the conscious surface, a protoplasmic record and engram, intimate knowledge of survival and bliss. What we today call "instinct" is actually the audible will of the planet: the willful living Earth speaking through the wild sentient self. In the totemic journey, we learn to listen to the text of intuition and the specific example/instructions of our allied species. Recognizing an affinity to particular totem spirits is more than attunement to our guides; it is the recognition of aspects of one's own self. Quick assimilation of their lessons can be the most empowering of all "magic" practices, bringing with it not only a more empathetic sharing of global suffering, but a boundless joy and certain purpose! No matter where you are, you, too, live in a land of totems. Fate stalks you in dim alleyways, while familiar spirits arm you from within. Elk hooves reverberate in heaving strata, well below the asphalt and the maze of gas and power lines. Expectant seeds shoulder their temporary concrete burden, patiently awaiting the return of sunlight. Birds sing of presence, celebration, and hope, and outlaw dandelions poke their smiling faces up through the cracks in the sidewalk at our feet. The great barnacled leviathans and the tiniest larks are enjoined in this effort to reenlist, reclaim, and welcome us back to the Gaian fold, and everywhere, the spirits of the "others" call out our names. Jesse Wolf Hardin is a deep ecologist, contemporary spiritual teacher, and author of Kindred Spirits: Sacred Earth Wisdom ($20 from SwanRaven Press, [800] 366-0264). Wolf is available for limited university and conference appearances. To be of assistance, or for information on enchanted wilderness retreats, quests, resident internships, or counsel, contact The Earthen Spirituality Project, Box 516, Reserve, NM 87830, <earthway@concentric.net>, <http://www.concentric.net/~Earthway/>. |
The future health and well-being of an entire planet depends on our re-becoming our most natural selves, our most authentic selves, in deep and conscious relationship with inspirited place. In this most essential quest, there are plenty of willing instructors, and none more effective than our plant and animal role models: the coyotes and raccoons of our alleyways as well as the eagles and wolves of unbroken wilderness. We come to know them as we come to know ourselves: up close, intimate, and personal.