In each place I have come to know when things bloom and what they look like and the rhythm of their cycle of blooming, flourishing and relinquishing for the winter. I am in relationship with these bits of the earth, and just like the rhythms of my own reproductive cycle grounded me, or the rhythm of day and night, or the cycle of the moon, so too do these cycles. I have tended fruit trees that demanded that they be harvested on their schedule not mine or the fruit would be spoiled on the ground. Similarly dandelions in bud demanded action before they would seed and make next years weeding worse. And invasive weeds let me know that if I did not tend them they would take over and kill everything else.
There is a quiz I took a few years ago. It asks:
1. On what watershed do you live?
2. What are five trees native to your state?
3. What are five native birds?
4. What are five native flowers?
Sadly most Americans cannot even partially answer these questions. Partly because we move so often and partly because of how cut off from the earth we are.
The first year I looked out my apt window at this tree I was completely amused by what happened when the buds opened: it was like party favors burst open. I grew to watch it as a friend.
I like this quote from Rachel Carson: "I am not afraid of being thought a sentimentalist when I stand here tonight and tell you that I believe natural beauty has a necessary place in the spiritual development of any individual or any society. I believe that whenever we destroy beauty, or whenever we substitute something man-made and artificial for a natural feature of the earth, we have retarded some part of man's spiritual growth."
The often quotes speech of Chief Si' ahl (pronounced Seattle by non-native white people), chief of the Duwamish also speaks to this deep love of place:
Ever part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as the swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives of my people, and the very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to their footsteps than yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch. Our departed braves, fond mothers, glad, happy hearted maidens, and even the little children who lived here and rejoiced here for a brief season, will love these somber solitudes and at eventide they greet shadowy returning spirits. And when the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe.... The White Man will never be alone.
In the face of climate change I can only stand indited by the above. I know that in terms of systems theory there are suppose to be feedback loops in every system that are corrective - signs, indicators that cue the system to correct when something is wrong. But we are so deeply cut off from the earth that we do not even notice the warning signs. I have been appalled as spring comes several months to early and birds arrive way before they should - that my fellow neighbors simply rejoice at "early spring" rather than hearing the earth's distress. That our news reporters report forest fires, droughts and record rain and snow storms without ever uttering the word climate change, and we complain about the impacts of these changes, but we do not react with appropriate alarm saying "the earth is sick and what are we going to do about it?" Many of us live in concrete and steel jungles were we are lucky if we see over manicured grass and a tree stuck in a square in the sidewalk. How would we see then the miles of pine trees dying from pine beetle disease? Or the trees that are dying from drought? People drive by trees being smothered to death by invasive ivy without understanding that there is an invasion happening and a death is occurring in their sight.
Four hundred years ago Descarte taught us that body and mind, man and earth were separate from each other. The whole western way of structuring society has been built upon this misguided polarity which has also separated our body from our soul - and apparently our souls from the earth upon which our very survival depends! We have falsely believed we are masters over the earth rather than understanding that we are living cells within a body and that to fail to care for the body will mean our own death. We have believed that we have the right to cut down trees because they are in our way or because we want to use them. We have believed we have the right to blow the tops off mountains or remove the deep recesses of the earth that which is within. I don't believe in the concept of sin, but if there is such a thing this is what it would be - the desecration of the earth. Who are we to say that there is not the divine spirit within every molecule of life? How would we act if we believed that God's spirit dwelt in every living thing on this planet? How would we act if the life forms around us was our familiar and cherished friends?
