All I know is that I don't know

My recent participation in the Tracker Evaluations and other events have left me feeling very small and humbled. All though I have heard and understood this before, it seems the recent lesson to focus on for me is:

The more you learn, the more you realize what you don't know.

The more my awareness of the world grows, the more understanding I gain, the more this wisdom seems to be hammered home. I feel like the closer I reach to mastery in nature awareness or tracking or whatever else, the more clearly I see that what I see is a single layer... barely a nail scrape on the surface of what is there.

My eyes just become open wider to the awe-someness of the mysteries all around, outside and in. When I am honest with myself, when my personal ego stands aside...sometimes all I can do is stand and stare in wonder.

Just when that part of me that wants to claim some kind of control over the world (the ego) feels like taking control, it seems an opportunity arises for me to open my eyes wider. To listen more closely.

Isn't it funny how it is at the edges of things that life seems to flourish most intensely?

In that place between joy and sorrow, that knife edge between pain and pleasure, selfishness and humility, it is there that life seems to shine most profoundly...

Many of my recent experiences and thoughts on our cultural and individual relationship to the land never formed themselves into words. They did not seem to want to be written here. So I have not posted for a while.

I picked up a book called THE ANIMAL DIALOGUES by Craig Childs. I have only read a little of it, but already it has my attention. Here is a great quote from the introduction, and is referring to the authors encounter with a great blue heron.

You can not look at this bird and decide who is superior and who is not. The encyclopedic vocabulary of a raven is no more admirable than a red-spotted toad's ability to drink through its skin. The human penchant for deciphering the world has no greater merit than the unusually large eyeball of a pronghorn.

This is essentially an animist outlook on the world of wildlife around us. I dunno if Craig Childs would bother calling himself an animist, but this statement fits the bill anyway.

We are the land

I struggle to put to words the great feelings of intimacy that flow from me to the land, and from the land to me. This understanding I have is largely intuitive and so personal that I find it a struggle to write out. But, I feel it is so vital that I want to try here.

In the book SPELL OF THE SENSUOUS the author, David Abram, describes well the significance of this feeling by saying that we are human through our relationships with the living, aware, and other-than-human land.

Since I was very young, I recognized that different places had different feelings associated with them that one could describe as the "essence of that place." Though I could not describe it back then, nor really even understand it consciously, it was always there. As clear and real as the rising and setting of the sun, or the beating of my own heart.

Part of that experience was what the landscape and all of its elements communicated to my senses. The land still speaks this way to me today. Every place I have grown to know and love, has a distinct swirl of smells, sights, sounds and more. The way the light dances across the forest floor in that very particular way. The way the bark on a particular Douglas-fir tree looks during a cloudy day. The distinct tartness of the huckleberries from this patch. The mosaic of sounds of the soft breeze rasping the salal leaves or scraping the Oregon grape leaves, or sighing and hissing through the tops of the hemlocks and cedars. Those peculiar pockets of cool or warm air that always seem to be around in certain parts of the forest, which I feel with my bare arms or the skin on my face and neck.

Each element, each individual other-than-human person in the landscape, whether rock, tree, animal, herb, fungi, stream or whomever else, shapes the feeling of that place. No two bio-regions are alike nor are any two locations within a bio-region exactly alike.

I think we all perceive these things quite naturally, though, as members of modern western culture we learn to tune these details out as more or less irrelevant. Not much more than the backgrounds noise and a setting for more important human activities.

Every aspect of the living landscape is part of the language of that place. Each species of bird, mammal, amphibian, reptiles, insect, crustacean, herb, shrub, tree, mushroom, mold and so forth has a very particular essence in and of itself. For instance, a white-crowned sparrow might have certain behaviors, songs, locations it prefers that are unique to its species. With time we might notice the individual differences of one or a particular group of birds from that species in the given location. It is easy to slip into the western perspective and see these individuals as separate parts of the natural world. Sometimes it is useful to do that. In a perspective were everything is separate, this obviously makes perfect sense.

If we step for a moment into another perspective, where everything is connected we might see things differently. Every gesture of an animal, a tree in a wind, the sun moving across a stone or the bubbling of a stream is the land speaking to us. This is our birthright, as human beings. It can be argued, that this is what makes us human.

Who I am right now is due to a very large degree on the places that I have gotten to know and visit, and especially those I have lived in, have shaped who I am as a human being and as an individual. I am still the white and black sage covered hills of southern California where I romped when I was a boy. I am heat waves shimmering in those hills, the rattle snake coiled on the road in the evening. I am the cougar that roams those hills like a shadow, and the deer that it hunts. I do not mean this as a metaphor, rather, I am an expression of those places.

Every molecules of my being is infused with the lands where I have been and dwelled.

From UBNA Adventure Nov. 16

In the same way, right now here in the cool, wet Pacific Northwest, I am also an expression of the rain and the forests right here. I am the dripping moss hanging from a big-leaf maple, and I am also the big-leaf maple. I am also the Douglas squirrel chattering from the limbs of that same tree. The air that fills these lungs is air exhaled by the trees and shared by all. There is no way for me to separate from these connections.

This is the essence of animism.

All my relations

Recently a video showed up at nationalgeographic.com about 2 Burmese fishermen who survived at sea for 25 days off of only rainwater and fish regurgitated by seabirds. The video can be viewed here:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/01/090121-survivors-video-ap.html


I am sharing it here because it exemplifies the typical western attitude of disbelief in the face of stories of other animals helping humans to survive.

This is in great contrast to the animist world view, where animals, plants, fungi, stones, stars and rivers are brothers and sisters all working together in cooperation to create a seamless and harmonious working system from which all benefit and grow. There are many stories told by tribal people of animals such as wolves, bears, dolphins, birds and even ants helping people to survive in times of dire need. In a world were all are working as part of the same community, such things are not really unheard of nor even terribly surprising. At least to people with a direct relationship to the living world.

Such stories are absent in our culture, or if they appear are generally labeled as fantasies of "primitive minds" and children, who we are told are both largely ignorant of the world around them. After all, our sciences tell us that nature is run largely by competition and violence. Better yet, animals are driven merely by instincts and can not act outside of the boundaries of what we believe to be the limitations of their behaviors, which are already pre-determined by the genes they carry. If an observation is ever made of something that might even imply to be outside of these limitations, we so easily write them off as being unlikely or random. As if animals were robots which for a moment had a glitch in their systems, and then returned to "normal" working function.

Even the meeting of an animal in the wild is to us a largely random event, to which we usually ascribe no great meaning other than perhaps as yet another reminder of the greatness and uniqueness of us as a species as a contrast to the other species of lower intelligence or lesser evolutionary developmental stage. We see animals so often not as they are, but as mere mirrors through which we can look at our own egos.

Our assumptions about our place at the pinnacle of evolution serves only to push us farther away from the relatives all around us.

From Herons and kin

To an animist, every element of the natural world, whether animal, plant, fungi or some other form, is an other-than-human person. Encounters with these others are taken very seriously and observed very carefully. Since these other-than-human people are seen as equals, there is no room for ideas about or feelings of superiority.

All the persons, human and other-than-human, have a role to play in the web of life that is flowing all around us and through us. How can one say that 1 piece of that puzzle is more or less important, than another?

Finding wonder in the everyday world...

I wanted to share some of my thoughts on the finding wonder in the everyday world.

Two of the many hats I wear from time to time are that of wildlife photographer and wildlife observer. I would argue, you can not really be one without being the other. Both can often be subject to the whims of cultural biases, even regarding wildlife observation.

For instance, in the region of the Puget Sound where I live there are many common species found in urban and suburban areas, which might include: American crows, feral pigeons, European starlings, mallards, Canada geese, house sparrows, ring-billed gulls, glaucous-winged gulls, raccoons, Norway rats and a handful of others. These species are generally ignored by people, and it might not surprise you, also generally ignored by wildlife watchers/naturalists and wildlife photographers.

It is easy to understand why if you consider how people in western culture view the natural world. If the creature in question does not inspire awe or fear or if the animals importance in the natural world is not immediately clear and of obvious benefit to humans, it gets ignored or worse.

Let us take Canada geese as an example. Though Canada geese have been native to the region for long before the white settlers arrived, a majority of the population you see around the greater Puget Sound that is present throughout the year is introduced by humans in 1968. Unlike the Canada geese that migrate through the region in Fall and Spring, this population stays put. It so happens that the urban/suburban areas around the Puget Sound with their plentiful waterways and adjacent mowed green spaces are very much to the liking of the geese. With few predators, lots of food and nesting sites the goose population has increased considerably.

People complained about the noise of the geese, and largely about the scat they leave behind on lawns, playing fields and walkways. The city of Seattle had so many complaints that since the year 2000 over 5,600 geese have been put in gas chambers and killed. The geese are still seen by many in Seattle as over-sized rats with wings.

Not many wildlife watchers in the Seattle area pay much attention to these geese, and some times they are even not mentioned when people are out doing bird species counts.

I have had the pleasure on many days to get to hang out with - and sometimes among - a flock or gaggle of Canada geese. As with many of the other species I mentioned as being largely ignored in urban areas, the geese have provided me with some of the most amazing wildlife encounters in my life.

From Urban Wildlife

From Urban Wildlife

The photos of a Canada goose drinking happened during one of those wonderful moments where things just come together beautifully. If we are observant and attentive, those moments are to be found all the time.

I was practicing a Taoist-inspired meditation in which you mindfully observe everything around you without judging. In this case, as I sat near the edge of an urban pond, several geese came slowly swimming towards me. One of them started to bob up and down in the water, and throw water over its back and wings. Like so many pearls of silver, the water drops rolled over and off of the goose's back. It took my breath away. Time seemed to slow down.

I was in the middle of getting my camera adjusted and did not capture that moment. Also, I did not want to be looking at nature from a "what can I get out of this" attitude that is often assumed as a necessity for successful wildlife photography. Instead, I wanted whatever came to me of its own accord to be what I would photograph.

As I slowly pointed the camera at the geese, one of them started drinking the water right in front of it's chest as it floated placidly. The light was perfect, and the camera allowed me to capture what I saw, exactly as I would have liked. The shimmering drops of water falling from the gooses bill are frozen in space. The painted ripples stopped in their graceful path. The moment is captured, as is the feeling that expresses so perfectly the simple wonder in the everyday world.

This photo is one that often brings me into a relaxed meditative state. It always reminds me to pay attention to the things close at hand, the seemingly common and everyday.

When I look at this photo with the eye of an animist, I can see easily how everything in this universe is alive and how it dances and moves together in such perfect harmony.

I feel that the spirits of the place: the spirits of the geese, the water and the light came together so seamlessly and gave me a gift. Even more than that, I was left feeling like I was truly part of that same fabric.

And that, is perhaps the greatest gift we can receive.

Virtue of the small

The contented man can be happy with what appears to be useless. He can find worthwhile occupation in forests and mountains. He stays in a small cottage and associates with the simple. He would not exchange his worn clothes for the imperial robes, nor the load on his back for a four-horse carriage. He leaves the jade in the mountain and the pearls in the sea. Wherever he goes, whatever he does, he can be happy - he knows when to stop. He does not pick the brief-blossoming flower; he does not travel the dangerous road. To him, the ten thousand possessions are dust in the wind. He sings as he travels among the green mountains.

He finds sheltering branches more comforting than red-gated mansions, the plow in his hands more rewarding than the prestige of titles and banners, fresh mountain water more satisfying than the feasts of the wealthy. He acts in true freedom. What can competition for honors mean to him? What attraction can anxiety and greed possibly hold? Through simplicity he has Tao, and from Tao, everything. He sees the light in the "darkness," the clear in the "cloudy," the speed in the "slowness," the full in the "empty." The cook creating a meal with his own hands has as much honor in his eyes as a famous singer or high official. He has no profits to gain, no salary to lose; no applause, no criticism. When he looks up, it is not in envy. When he looks down, it is not with arrogance. Many look at him, but nobody sees him. Calm and detached, he is free from all danger, a dragon hidden among men.

- Taoist alchemist and herbalist,
Ko Hung

The Taoist ideal is living in simplicity, in the most direct relationship with nature that is possible. It might be argued by some that this life style is perhaps not fit for everyone. Though, it seems to me that there is much to be gained from understanding this way of life, this perspective.

The Taoist mind is the mind of a child. Children respond to the world much more directly, simply and honestly than most adults. The word being alive is simply WHAT IS to a child. Communication with the natural world is engaged in often with joyous abandon by children who are presented with the opportunity.

So why does any of this matter?

To me, the child's mind is our original mind. It is a state to which we as adults can not only strive for but also reconnect with in a pragmatic, daily way. The world, the universe at large, is a wondrous and mysterious place. How much that is overshadowed by our fears and concerns as adults? Our concerns about being someone and about doing something important. Children know that what they are doing is important, whether that is eating ice cream on a hot summer day and having it run down their hand or its jumping around in the mud catching frogs or imitating them. The small things are important. The small things have virtue. These small things are really vital in life, yet so many adults have forgotten to experience them.

The virtue of the small, the weak and the dark are often ignored or looked down upon in our culture.

One interpretation of the TE in the Tao Te Ching is virtue. As Benjamin Hoff describes it in the Te of Piglet:

Te is not, as its English-langauge equivalent suggests, a one-sized-fits-all sort of goodness or admired behavior that can be recognized as essentially the same no matter who possesses it. It is instead a quality of special character, spiritual strength, or hidden potential unique to the individual - something that comes from the Inner Nature of things. And something, we might add, that the individual who possesses it may be quite unaware of - as is the case with Piglet through most of the Pooh stories.

How many people in western culture seek to be somebody? Or be somebody different? From teens to adults who never really matured, never really grew up fully because they never had a chance to get to know themselves. To get to know their te, their own personal, individual virtue.

So many adults I have met, no matter what age they might have written on their birth certificate still act out the drama that they never really faced as they transitioned from teens to young adult years.

Our culture lacks significant rites of passage for people in the major stages of life changes. Getting a driver's license. Reaching legal drinking age. Graduating high school, then college. These things are almost meaningless on the truly individual, personal level.

It lacks a way to truly acknowledge the sacred cycles in our lives.

So much time it seems is spent seeking youth, seeking to stay youthful. Yet in "becoming adults" people rarely seem to grow up, really. They bury their child's mind under fantasies, fears, and masks. For all their age, they seemed to have gained little that can be called true wisdom.

An truly matured adult might be described one who takes care and fosters a healthy relationship to the child's mind within them.

We have forgotten the virtue of the small to such an extent, that many of us worship BIG. We love powerful things, powerful people and personalities. Even when we look at nature, we tend to focus on the fastest, biggest, most dangerous, most frightening. When and if nature is talked about, we spend most of our nature discussions talking about these creatures.

Yet so much of the natural world depends on the work of the small. The bacteria, insects, spiders. The fungi that help break down the soil and decaying matter into nutrients usable by plants. Even the smallest mammals are mostly ignored for their true virtue.

Bats are one of those creatures that are so often recognized for the fear they inspire: for the way they suck blood (though only 3 out of several thousand species actually feed on blood, and they lap it up and don't actually suck), the way they can get tangled in long hair (thought many species can see even in pitch blackness something as fine as a single human hair using their echolocation), the harm they can cause by spreading rabies (which is rare and they generally die from the disease too quickly to be able to spread it to humans) and so on. What seems to often to be missed or ignored is the great care with which they use to tend to their young. They way that bats in a colony will groom themselves and sometimes each other. The acute awareness with which they experience their world. The longevity with which they can live, despite their small size... likely a testament to how well they take care of their bodies and especially, their teeth. Some small species can live for over 30 years. That's incredible, if you consider that another insectivore of comparable size like a large shrew generally does not live long enough to have its first year birth day celebration...

There is much wisdom to be gained in studying the virtue of the small...

From Bat Species Survey of Olympic National Park 2004

Fundamental difference between the Western and indigenous ways of life

I have been reading, and thinking so much on what I have been reading that I have not posted here for sometime. Stumbling on an interview I had bookmarked some time ago, I spotted something worth sharing here. This is an from an interview between Derrick Jensen and well-known Native American author Vine Deloria.

Jensen: What would you say is the fundamental difference between the Western and indigenous ways of life?

Deloria: I think the primary difference is that Indians experience and relate to a living universe, whereas Western people - especially scientists - reduce all things, living or not, to objects. The implications of this are immense. If you see the world around you as a collection of objects for you to manipulate and exploit, you will inevitably destroy the world while attempting to control it. Not only that, but by perceiving the world as lifeless, you rob yourself of the richness, beauty, and wisdom to be found by participating in its larger design.

In order to maintain the fiction that the world is dead - and that those who believe it to be alive have succumbed to primitive superstition - science must reject any interpretation of the natural world that implies sentience or an ability to communicate on the part of nonhumans. Science insists, at a great price in understanding, that the observer be as detached as possible from the event he or she is observing. Contrast that with the attitude of indigenous people, who recognize that humans must participate in events, not isolate themselves.

Ironically, although science prides itself on being a search for knowledge, Indians can obtain knowledge from birds, animals, rivers, and mountains that is inaccessible to modern science. And Indians can use this knowledge to achieve better results. Take meteorology. Scientists know that seeding clouds with certain chemicals will bring rain, but this method of dealing with nature is wholly mechanical and forces nature to do our bidding. Indians achieved the same results more peacefully by conducting ceremonies and asking the spirits for rain. The two methods are diametrically opposed. It's the difference between commanding a slave to do something and asking a friend for help.

Being attuned to their environment, Indians could find food, locate trails, protect themselves from inclement weather, and anticipate coming events thanks to their understanding of how all things are related. This knowledge isn't unique to American Indians. It's available to anyone who lives primarily in the natural world, is reasonably intelligent, and respects other life-forms for their intelligence. Respect for other life-forms filters into our every action, as does its opposite: perceiving the world as lifeless. If you objectify other living things, then you are committing yourself to a totally materialistic universe - which is not even consistent with the findings of modern physics.

The central idea of science, as it has been developed and applied, is to get machines or nature to do the work human beings don't want to do. This is immensely practical, but in a shortsighted way.

As Deloria states, this kind of way of knowing and being in the world is not limited to Native Americans. It is the birth right of all peoples of the Earth. It is unfortunate that many carry the attitude that such a life is a pipe-dream. That such ideas are mere fantasies of those suffering from middle class guilt or an obsession with tribal peoples.

Deloria and Jensen continue with:

Jensen: How so?

Deloria: Developing the automobile, for example, allowed people to get quickly from place to place, but at what cost, both in terms of accidents and of damage to the natural world? And what effect have automobiles had on our spiritual life?

In a capitalist system, whoever supplies the money de-termines the technology. This means that science, as it's applied, is never really for the good of humankind, but instead for the good of the financial elite or the military. It also means that science will be dominated by the authorities who have found institutional favor, whether they have the best evidence for their beliefs or not.

When beliefs and knowledge harden and become institutionalized, we turn to institutions to solve all our problems: people purchase food grown by others, settle their conflicts in courts and legislatures rather than by informal, mutually agreed-upon solutions, and wage extended and terrible wars over abstract principles instead of minor battles over the right to occupy land for hunting and fishing. Similarly, beliefs about the world are processed into philosophical and rational principles rather than anecdotal experiences, and religion is reduced to creeds, dogmas, and doctrines.

Now, every society needs educated people, but the primary responsibility of educated people must be to bring wisdom back into the community and make it available to others. Because of hierarchies, European thinkers have not performed their proper social function. Instead, science and philosophy have taken the path already taken by Western religion and mystified themselves. The people who occupy the top positions in science, religion, and politics have one thing in common: they are responsible for creating a technical language incomprehensible to the rest of us, so that we will cede to them our right and responsibility to think. They, in turn, formulate a set of beautiful lies that lull us to sleep and distract us from our troubles, eventually depriving us of all rights - including, increasingly, the right to a livable world.

Rather than trusting our own experiences and senses, we often look to scientists for explanations of the world. In giving explanations, these scientists defer to the dogma and doctrine they learned in universities and colleges. It's gotten to the point where almost anything anyone with a Ph.D. says is taken as gospel, rather than as someone's opinion...

We can be blind to the limits of the scientific perspective on the natural world as the only perspective. Okay. Obvious enough, I suppose. But what does he suggest is an alternative?

Jensen: What are some better ways of perceiving and living in the world?

Deloria: I would say one alternative to forcing nature to tell us its secrets is to observe nature and adjust to its larger rhythms. This alternative is practiced by many other cultures, but it scares a lot of people in the West because it derives information from sources that may be tinged with mysticism. For example, many centuries ago, three sisters appeared to the Senecas and said they wished to establish a relationship with "the two-legged people." In return for the performance of certain ceremonies that would help them to thrive, the sisters would become plants and feed the people. The three sisters became beans, corn, and squash. And the soil of the Seneca farmlands was never exhausted, because these three plants, in addition to sharing a spiritual relationship with one another, also formed a sophisticated natural nitrogen cycle that kept the land fertile and productive.

The white man came later, planted only corn and wheat, and soon exhausted the soil. Then, after conducting many experiments, scientists "discovered" the nitrogen cycle and produced chemical fertilizers to replace the natural nitrogen. But now we know that these chemicals have unpleasant side effects that may be even worse for us than they are for the soil.

The point is that, for every scientific "discovery," there may exist one or more alternative ways of understanding natural processes. But we can't know what these alternatives are until we absolutely reject the idea of forcing nature to reveal its secrets and instead begin to observe nature and listen to its rhythms.

With this blog I am attempting to encourage the accessibility of another way of looking at life and seeking understanding. Perhaps our connection to that knowledge never ceased, even among our best scientists...

Jensen: I've heard about South American tribes who can take a poisonous plant and, by some complex process - boiling it three times, skimming off the froth, and so on - turn it into medicine. Usually, the tribes are assumed to have arrived at these processes through trial and error, but this seems ludicrous to me, because the original plant is a deadly poison. By contrast, you've written that "getting information from birds and animals regarding plants is an absurdly self-evident proposition for American Indians."

Deloria: There are plenty of Indian stories where a plant will appear in a dream and speak to someone, or a person is walking through the forest, and suddenly a plant will say, "I'm edible, but you've got to do these various things in order to eat me."

When I was much younger, I would bring Indian plant knowledge to scientists for them to investigate. But they always wanted to take the plant apart, break it down to see what its constituents were. Their efforts were pointless, because that's not the way the medicine men use it. They use it whole, and then they get the natural product out of it by making a tea, or a poultice. You can't chemically disassemble it, because it's the whole of the plant that cures, not any one ingredient.

Jensen: This seems to get at the heart of the fundamental difference between Western and indigenous cultures: seeing the plant as a whole and letting it literally speak to you, versus putting nature, as Francis Bacon said, "on the rack and extracting her secrets from her."

Deloria: That's true, although most of the greatest scientists dabbled considerably in spiritual matters and believed that mystical and intuitive experiences provided them with knowledge. This is true even of Descartes, the first materialist, who is famous for articulating the mind/body, human/nature split. He said an angel came and explained things to him. Heisenberg, Einstein, and Bohr all had sudden insights. What's the difference between that and the Indian performing a ceremony and hearing the plant say, "Do this"?