Our car comes to a halt before a log in an inlet beside a back road. The log is used to stop off-roaders from tearing up the earth, but this is not our intention, so we gather our things and step into the bristling scrubland. We look to the shelter of a large mound of earth, and clear a space beneath it. Just earlier, I had been listening to a story of a reporter who was stranded in Afghanistan, hunted by the Taliban. There are no bullets flying at us now, yet I do not feel entirely alone, or entirely safe. Continue reading →
One of our greatest fears is to eat the wildness of the world.
Our mothers intuitively understood something essential: the green is poisonous to civilization. If we eat the wild, it begins to work inside us, altering us, changing us. Soon, if we eat too much, we will no longer fit the suit that has been made for us. Our hair will begin to grow long and ragged. Our gait and how we hold our body will change. A wild light begins to gleam in our eyes. Our words start to sound strange, nonlinear, emotional. Unpractical. Poetic.
Once we have tasted this wildness, we begin to hunger for a food long denied us, and the more we eat of it the more we will awaken.
It is no wonder that we are taught to close off our senses to Nature.
Through these channels, the green paws of Nature enter into us, climb over us, search within us, find all our hiding places, burst us open, and blind the intellectual eye with hanging tendrils of green.
The terror is an illusion, of course. For most of our million years on this planet human beings have daily eaten the wild. It’s just that the linear mind knows what will happen if you eat it now.
But we’ve gone astray with this, distracted from our task. Still, it’s a good reminder. When your hair begins to grow long and you think strange thoughts, sometimes you will wonder what is happening and will become afraid.
In Nature, human markers fade, lose significance. It takes awhile to learn the old markers again, to see the path that ancient humans took before us. In kindness, learn how to comfort yourself, to hold yourself as you would a child that is afraid of the light. (I suppose you could learn the poisonous plants first if you need to; there aren’t very many.) For on this journey, you mostly have yourself for company.
It helps if you become your own best friend
and find out what is true about all this for yourself.
Open the door and take a look around outside.
The air is shining there,
and there are wonders,
more wonderful than words can tell.
Why is almond butter so expensive now? This is what I thought as I returned the glass jar to the shelf of the co-op last summer. It was my first summer working full-time on a farm, and I watched my newfound perspective inform my reasoning. California… drought… almonds… aha!
Almond butter is so expensive because there’s a drought in California, where most of America’s almonds are produced. A no-brainer for anyone connected to their food. But I was just beginning to learn the consequences of the food choices I was making, and most Americans are still in the dark.
“When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
“Many Indians have told me that the most basic difference between Western and indigenous ways of being is that Westerners view the world as dead, and not as filled with speaking, thinking, feeling subjects as worthy and valuable as themselves.”
–Derrick Jensen
The World is Alive! Photo by Michael Fertig.
Isn’t it interesting that as we become more civilized, we surround ourselves with more things that are not alive? Continue reading →
The plants on this list changed the way I see autumn. Before, I thought everything was just dying. I now know how much energy is being stored in roots, preserved in seeds, and housed in nuts. Fall is a brilliant time to search for wild edibles for just that reason—there are lots of nutrient-dense foods available. We just have to know how to look for them.
We cut through the grass with our bodies, merging with the field. The calls of birds alert the other creatures to our presence as we swish and crackle our way through grass that’s taller than we are. At last, we come upon a clearing.
Raw umber. This is the color of the spring that bubbles up between a hunting stand and a zillion wild milkweed plants. The field lies below the ridge I grew up on, and it is the place I forged a spiritual connection with nature, staring into the depths of this spontaneous, life-giving flow. Continue reading →
