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And then it happened: for the first time in six weeks, I experienced a silence so deafening it stopped me in my tracks. It took me a while to figure out what was happening. I had become so accustomed to the white noise of the ocean’s roar that when it stopped I found myself surrounded by an eerie quiet. I thought for a moment. What could possibly stop the ocean’s waves from crashing against the shore? Even on a calm day, there was the drone. Then it struck me: the tide had changed during a lull, and for that brief moment, there was no crashing wave to hear. It lasted 15 to twenty minutes in my remembrance, but until September 11, it was the loudest sound I had ever heard. It was to become a touchstone for me as my life continued past that turning point over thirty years ago. I spent the last trimester of my first year of college living at Cape Alava on the Washington coast. I was reading Henry David Thoreau’s work and studying inter-tidal life while living in a remote setting. It turned out that I was less than a mile from where a major archeological dig would soon take place. A native village covered by a mudslide eons ago was my closest neighbor. Silent as the changing tide, the voices of the ancestors played with me as forces of nature played with them. During that time, the tide of my life changed as well. I determined that I would not live "a life of quiet desperation" as described by Thoreau. Suddenly, I could think of nothing the university could offer me that would provide anything but desperation for my future. I realized then and there that I would determine my path, not a culture bent on destroying itself, and so I have! From that moment, I have been walking away from the culture into which I was initiated. At first, it was a reaction to all of the "bad things" the culture stood for. Slowly, over time, as I continued to live close to nature and take my lessons from her, I began to see that I was actually moving toward something — something so hazy and unclear that there wasn’t even a language to describe it. Something invisible, yet with soundings in so many places that "the song of that which is becoming" was beginning to have resonance in wide parts of the world. I have spent thirty years of my life in training to the invisible yet common world that is becoming. I truly hope it becomes a reality many will choose. I have studied earth-based cultures and earth wisdom from many sources, and practice many rites and ceremonies daily and seasonally to develop a genuine ability to hear the earth. I now believe that the ancestors in the neighboring village of my youth had somehow infused an understanding of the importance of working with the forces of nature in my consciousness. (Their village was devastated by the mudslide because of tree removal on the slope above the village, thereby destabilizing the clay earth and creating their own demise.) For the past several years, something new has begun to emerge from the very depths of our human soul, what some people are calling an emerging "civil society." Imagine that we finally have the tools, resources, and understanding to see and measure what is happening on this beautiful planet, this place we call home. We even have the capability of implementing technologies already developed to ensure that this home will be habitable by our children’s children. September 11 brought me the second great silence of my fifty years. I am moved to tears when I realize the incredible juxtaposition we inhabit at this point in the ever-evolving human drama! We are at the point between the death of a dissolving culture and the birth of an emerging one. As in spring and fall, the change is fitful and filled with tension. The new life is pushing hard; the status quo is resisting fiercely. I hope we can respond to this call in a way that our relations in the future will be excited and grateful to tell of. The day was sunny. We worked outside, spreading wood chips in the barnyard in preparation for the rainy season. A grandmother called with news of the Trade Center and Pentagon strikes, but I really had no sense of the magnitude of the disaster until I saw the towers fall on TV while picking up chips at the yard. When I returned to RavenCroft, the eerie silence began to seep into my consciousness. There were no planes in the air. Until that time, I had not noticed how much I had come to accept the constant drone of air traffic and all the white noise that is this culture’s voice. This time I was blessed with two full days of the silence, as if the bigness of this event was being transmitted with each passing hour. The tide has changed again; this time it is not just about my life but also about life as we know it. I have a strange feeling in my body every time I hear an airplane now. It is not fear that I feel; rather, a longing. I long for a world that moves more slowly, one that relishes what is close and has time to develop sustained relations with many diverse facets. I long for a world where money is renewed with reverence for life and people know the benefit of working for the good of all beings and seven generations. I long for a world that has been described by every one of the world’s great religions, a world where gratitude, compassion, and love find easy residence. I long for a world where my 19-year-old son’s life is more revered than his death. I long for a world that recognizes the insanity of causing the possible deaths of seven million people to atone for 5,000. Quite truthfully, I am afraid. I’m afraid that if we can’t find the pathway, the stories and the songs to lead us to that world, we may all hear a greater silence. In this, the season of light’s return, I dream of a people so resolute in their love of life that they return to the garden. The greatest gift we can share is presence with one another. The task before us is deciding that it’s worth it, in the moment and for the long haul. Blessed be. EagleSong, C.C.H., director of RavenCroft Garden in Monroe, WA, is a nationally recognized herbal educator. She is dedicated to keeping herbal wisdom within reach of all people and connected to the healing wisdom of nature. P.O. Box 229, Startup, WA 98293; (360) 794-2938; <ravencroft@earthlink.net>. |
The day was cold
and wet, the ocean roar a constant drone in the background. I
had been two and a half months at Great Ocean’s edge, living
in an old three-sided log shelter built by the Civilian Conservation
Corps or the Works Project Administration; I can’t remember
which now. By afternoon, the drizzle had given way to broken
clouds with sun breaks. Finally, I could gather firewood without
getting drenched. I appreciated these moments walking the beach,
having nothing but time to contemplate and observe life happening
in a place so remote the animals weren’t even afraid of
me.