R. Mark Liebenow's Blog: Nature, Grief, and Laughter, page 6

Walking

Out walking this morning, I’m shocked to find that nature has gotten along just fine without me. This time I’m not heading into the woods. I’m walking on the streets of my neighborhood.
I haven’t been outside for a week, not really, being busy with tasks inside the house. I don’t count driving to the store as being outdoors. The car is just a mobile room.
In the meantime, the leaves have popped out on trees and converted their empty branches to umbrellas of thick green. Bushes and plants are flowering, and birds are filling the air with chirps, chortles, whistles, and songs.

As my walking settles into a rhythm, my breathing speeds up to match the pace of my legs. My thoughts slow down to move at the pace of my breathing. Mind and body reconnect, unlike when I sit at my desk and work with my mind, ignoring the needs of my body until I stand up stiff, hungry, and dehydrated.
I walk without any destination. There are no stores or cafes in my neighborhood. And I walk without worrying if I’m moving fast enough for this to count as exercise.
I try not to think about the projects waiting for me at home, and just walk, noticing what catches my attention, what thoughts show up on their own, what feelings surface, and let them flow by. I walk free of everything but what is in this moment, and I move at whatever speed feels right.
As I walk, I loosen the ligaments of my brain that I’ve strapped down to get work done. I let thoughts and feelings run and play. I marvel at the balanced architecture of an oak tree, bend down and examine the pink and lavender colors of Virginia bluebells, see a hollow at the base of a tree and imagine a hobbit or a Keebler elf living there. When I notice a squirrel watching me, I stare at it to see which one of us blinks first.

It’s irresponsible, I know, to walk with no purpose other than joy. But I do. People nod as I pass by, wondering where I’m going and why I’m walking. They have no clue that I’ve escaped and on the loose.

Change Your Neighborhood

If we are afraid of being in the woods by ourselves, if we don’t feel energized by hiking through the mountains or walking on the beach of an ocean, then we have cut ourselves off from one of our main sources of wisdom.

When being in nature makes us feel alive, when we have a special place that renews our spirit, then we will work to protect it. This is where our ecology begins.
Our doing something makes a difference, even if it doesn’t seem like much. Imagine if everyone stood up and protected their sacred place in nature. The one percent standing up and protecting a small area of nature makes a difference. No, not that one percent.

An experiment with the particle accelerator in Batavia, Illinois found there was a one percent difference between the number of muons and antimuons that arise from the decay of particles known as B mesons. This one percent more of matter than antimatter is the reason why we don’t explode into smithereens. You see, matter and antimatter don’t get along.
Trying to save the natural world can seem like such an enormous task that we give up before we try. How do I stop corporations from digging up and fracking the land into piles of waste and polluted lakes of slurry? By trying. We can save parts of nature where we live, whether this is blocking the company that picks up our trash from also dumping toxic waste into our landfill, creating a free recycling program, or convincing people to stop buying plastic water bottles and using plastic grocery bags.
Aldo Leopold restored a denuded sandy area near the Wisconsin River that was once a thriving prairie filled with wildlife and birds. His efforts led to the formation of The Wilderness Society and the idea that it’s not too late to undo much of the damage that we’ve done to nature. Inspired by his work, others started their own projects, like the effort to preserve sandhill cranes nearby in Baraboo, Wisconsin.
In practical terms, what I do on the local level won’t do much to slow global warming or save the glaciers from melting. Not by itself. But when my one percent is added to your one percent and to the one percent of our friends, then we begin to affect larger matters. By working with our neighbors, who may not agree with us on points of public policy, but who trust us because we help them with chores, we help change their minds and they begin to do their one percent.

If I change my neighborhood, and you change your neighborhood, and a hundred others change their neighborhoods, a thousand people will see what we did, and they will make their changes, and then progress begins.

Boundaries

(photo of the top of Yosemite Falls)
We all have boundaries that we don’t want to cross, whether they are emotional, physical, or mental, because we get comfortable where we are.
Taking risks and crossing physical boundaries isn’t a problem for me. Late one October, I traveled to Yosemite anticipating a week of dry, cool, but sunny weather. Perfect for hiking through the glories of fall. One morning I came out of my tent to find that winter had moved in and the mountains around me had turned white. I went on a hike to the top of Yosemite Falls because I wanted to see what this looked like.
            *On the switchbacks going up the canyon wall, snow begins to appear at the 6000-foot elevation. It gets deeper the higher I go, making the upward hike slippery and a little dicey.

Higher up, the trail has iced over. I dig my feet into the snow on the sides and waddle the last hundred yards. Three hours after starting out, I reach the top. The snow is a foot deep and undisturbed. I don’t see the tracks of any wildlife, not even the mountain lion that lives up here. At 8,000 feet, whatever sounds arise are quickly hushed by the snow.
My original plan was to head west for the top of El Capitan, but I think the trail going east to North Dome may have less snow. Neither trail is anywhere to be seen, and if there is ice and deep snow here, then it’s likely that the same conditions exist over the length of both trails. I head off anyway, because I do things like this, figuring that if I can see part of the trail now and then, I will be okay. But after twenty minutes of tromping around through snow that is now above my knees, I can’t find either trail.
There are boundaries I should not play with. This may be one of them.
I consider my options. Both trails run along the edge of the valley wall and a slip could be fatal. I could also fall into a snow-filled crevasse, break an ankle, and be buried. It’s unlikely that anyone else will hike up here today. I calculate how much more I can push my luck to make this work.
There is a difference between crossing a boundary and being foolhardy.
Finally I decide that this is as far as I can safely go. I watch Yosemite Creek trickling down, then slide carefully over snow-covered rocks to the lip of Yosemite Falls. Its thin stream flows over the edge like water being poured from a pitcher, unlike the powerful surge and thunderous roar of the waterfall in spring.
I am perched on the boundary between life and death. One wrong move and I cross over. I look up. Stretched out before me are hundreds of square miles of frozen wilderness. I listen to the silence of the dark, slate-blue Sierra Nevada Mountains topped with a blanket of white, and I am in awe of their raw beauty.

Challenging the boundary has opened a door.

Land Prophets

This month, as April encourages us to linger outdoors and play, we honor the death of Rachel Carson on the 14th, remember the birth of John Muir on the 21st and celebrate Earth Day on the 22nd.
            *
The Land Prophets dedicate their lives to showing others how to do less damage to the land. They confront people in politics and businesses who exploit the land only to make money, who listen to special interest groups rather than the everyday people they represent, and who betray the public trust as trustees of the land. These are some of our prophets.
In California, John Muir saw sheep destroying the wilderness meadows of the Sierra Nevada and worked to get them removed. In the process, he helped create the Sierra Club and the National Park system that has saved large tracts of wilderness areas. He also wanted to save Hetch Hetchy, but the politicians in San Francisco sold nature out for votes.

Aldo Leopoldsaw the barren land in Sand County, Wisconsin, and figured out a way to restore the habitat. His efforts and writings kick-started the ecology movement. 
Destruction of the land stops only when people speak up.
Kathleen Dean Moore writes about the interplay of land and ocean in Oregon, and human renewal through the spirituality of being outdoors.
Sigurd Olsonworked to save the Boundary Waters in northern Minnesota, and taught the value of listening to nature’s wildness.
Terry Tempest Williams in Utah writes of the radioactive desecration of land in the west and its toll on human health, and she is leading a movement of healing the land.
Wendell Berryin Kentucky is figuring out how to do sustainable farming, feeding people while doing minimal damage to the land, helping the earth remain a habitat for animals and birds while feeding people for decades to come.
Sharman Apt Russell writes of the living environment in the desert wilderness of southwest New Mexico, where many of us think not much life lives, and reminding us that what seems barren sustains a wide variety of life.
John Burroughsin New York wanted people to love the nature that existed around us, even in the city, because then they would take care of it.
Francis and Clare of Assisi loved nature, and felt that we were brothers and sisters to all creatures. Rather than fear the outdoors, they encourage us to participate in its life and care for it.

Stepping into the unknown involves taking risks because we don’t know where we’ll end up, or who will object and fight us. But the experiences of the land prophets who have gone before us tell us that standing up for nature is the only way that the natural world will be saved.

We Are Trees

Tiny buds on the trees are giving the woods behind my house a light green sheen.
Last week I noticed a beautiful bare tree. Without any leaves, its entire structure was visible —the trunk, main branches, even the smaller branches as they tapered out into thousands of tiny fingers. The tree was so symmetrical that I gazed at it in admiration, and then I had to leave because I was in a car at a stoplight.
We are like trees.

We grow out from where we’ve been.
The root systems of many trees are a mirror image of what we see in their branches. The half of the tree that branches underground provides nourishment, while the top half we see does something.
Trees are half contemplation, half action.
A few days ago I went into the woods and found a favorite tree that did not survive the winter. The bark on my old friend was beginning to come off in places. I’ve enjoyed the beauty of this tree over the years, and sat under it when it was full and glorious in its summer green. In blustery thunderstorms, I’ve watched it sway back and forth in the wind.
When we sit in a forest and watch the trees, we nourish our roots.
A hole in the trunk of another tree has become a new home for squirrels. I think the trunk might be hollow. Soon its branches will let go under their own weight, and the tree will fall. Then it will become a home for insects and grubs, and attract a new set of birds. Its body will be reabsorbed into the earth and nurture the next generation.
Some trees have significance larger than our personal delight, like the cedars of Lebanon, the giant sequoias of Yosemite, the Bodhi Tree of Buddha, and the Glastonbury Thorn.
When any noble tree dies, I mourn its passing.

Send Them Outside to Play

If you have no relationship with nature, you have no relationship with humanity.
-- Krishnamurti
The landscape of one’s home is always sacramental. It molds our character. It’s the soil out of which we grow. It’s where we either encounter the divine or we never make the connection.
-- Seamus Heaney
If we have a relationship with nature, we do better in relationships with people because we realize that there are bigger truths than our own personal ones, and we can learn from nature. Nature has a way of humbling us, and reminding us that we’re not in control outdoors. In nature we become aware of a greater force at work in the world.

If we have a relationship with nature, we will care what happens to the environment. We will notice when our favorite river becomes polluted, or when our favorite woods are being cut down for a subdivision. We will notice because we will be outside and we will see the destruction. And we can stop some of the destruction if we say something.
If we don’t connect to nature, we will regard the forest only as a source of wood for building homes. We will think of the river only as a place for factories to dump their waste water. We won’t care about pesticides running off the land and into our lakes, killing the fish and making the water undrinkable. Unless we have a beloved fishing hole, or a favorite river that we like to canoe, we won’t care because we won’t have any personal investment.
Large businesses care little about the environment. They increasingly exist only to make as much money as fast as they can for their shareholders. Large businesses have large PR teams that create rosy pictures to make us think they care. They don’t. They really don’t.
If we don’t connect to nature, if we don’t come to love the woods and rivers and mountains, if we don’t feel we are part of nature’s community of living creatures, then we will exploit the land, and we will exploit each other. Everything becomes a commodity if we love nothing but money. If we don’t care about the welfare of others, then we exist only for ourselves, and that is sad.
We will drink artificial water, and eat tasteless, plastic food. We will be depressed by the lack of natural beauty outside our windows because it’s all been bulldozed flat. And when we die, we will be alone, closed up in a hermetically-sealed room because the air smells bad.

Send your children outdoors to play so that they will grow up loving the land and care what happens to it. Go outside yourself before you become crusty, bitter, and bent over like an old curmudgeon money pocket. Breathe in the fresh air of the mountains and feel yourself come alive. Then you will understand what is at stake.

Listen to the Dawn

On Nourishment 
Listening To The Dawn.A short essay of mine published by Mindful Matter.
 http://www.holstee.com/blogs/mindful-matter/113326533-meditation-listen-to-the-dawn

Sitting In the Woods

I’m in the woods again.
Winter has departed but the green of spring hasn’t yet arrived. The woods are just sitting here. Waiting. Black trees sticking out of a layer of brown leaves.
Not much is going on. The woodchuck is still hibernating. The deer haven’t come through in quite a while. The birds stopped coming to the feeder and are foraging somewhere else. And don’t get me started on the owl that’s been on vacation for six months. Everyday the woods look the same, although today fog is drifting through.

I like to be there in the time after because of the presence I feel sitting on a wooden pew in the dusk of that cavernous space. Red votives flicker up front. Stone pillars rise around me. Stained glass windows on the side glow deep blue in the last light of day.
This is what we have after the celebration ends. Memories. And hope.
I am not much for parades and grand celebrations. I’m more interested in the people standing in doorways after the parade has passed by. This is where most of us live. On the edges of life. Battered, bruised, broken, yet believing there is a way through the darkness. Living the days of ordinary time when there are no parades.

I like to sit in the forest on a wooden log and be surrounded by trees rising above me, by something greater than myself, something mysterious and powerful. Real.
In the woods, in cathedrals, and when I listen to people share the struggles and triumphs of their lives, I feel the movement of the sacred. Into this darkness, the morning's light is coming.
May I linger in the wild, unkempt places that remind me life is deeper than what I see.

As I walk the road with strangers, may we share our lives with each other in honest humility.

Cadence of Silence

It’s odd we don’t think it’s odd that we regard silence as deficient and not as full. 
We fill the air with talk, music, sports, news and weather updates until we fall exhausted into bed, the sounds of the day still ringing in our heads. Yet we feel unsatisfied because we’ve heard little that we want to remember. We feel empty. In the manner of the Quakers, we should remain silent until we have something important to say.

We need to sit in a quiet place to know what’s on our minds and hearts.
We need to let go of our preoccupations. Stop thinking about the future and let go of the past. Each day we need time to exist just in this moment. Find out what concerns are troubling us. We need to step back and laugh at some of the things we obsess about that don’t matter, and let them go. We are amazing as we are.
But we don’t. If we are tired, we put on happy music to charge us up, or open an energy drink, instead of dealing with why we feel tired. Music becomes another drug we take to cope with reality.
The sounds of the city shoulder each other out of the way as they fight to get our attention. The billboards. Commercials. The political ads. Their shouting escalates into a din, and teaches us not to listen to what’s going on around us.
When I listen to the natural world, I hear the cadence of silence.
Sometimes when I’m chatting with friends, it’s like being on a train. A word is said that draws my attention to something on the side of our conversation, outside the window, but the train of conversation keeps going straight ahead, and the opening to something deeper slips away.
It can be unsettling to be home without the sounds of the TV, radio, or music filling the rooms. We hear the sounds of the house — the refrigerator clicking on, the roof creaking in the wind, a strange hum that comes from an unknown place, and we wonder if something is about to blow up. We realize how seldom we just sit and listen to the environment around us.
One of the reasons I go camping is to give my ears a chance to rest.
It takes a couple of days after I arrive outdoors before I can hear nature’s softer voices. It also takes time for the surface chatter in my head to quiet. Sitting on the side of a mountain listening to the wind move over the land, I begin to hear the thoughts and feelings that are moving underneath my surface.

At night, I walk into the meadow and drink in the quiet of the dark. I sip the silence of the stars like wine.

Old Trees and Landscapes

There’s a street near my house that had a small woods of majestic, large trees hanging over the road. It provided cool shade even on the hottest summer day. Some trees were perhaps one hundred years old. For one block it felt like walking through Sherwood Forest with its thick trunks and dense canopy.
It used to be a space that made me linger and encouraged me to breathe deeply and get my bearings as I headed off to begin my day. That small woods made me happy.

The land we live on influences how we relate to other people and the care we take in our work.
A green landscape makes me feel connected to something alive. It nourishes me and encourages me to pass its peacefulness on to others.
Thankfully there are other places in town. When I stand on the bluffs of Grandview Drive, I’m inspired by the view high above the Illinois River and over miles of land that used to be prairie. If I squint, I can see the old grasslands and bison that used to roam free.
When I sit along the river and watch it flow by, I feel the massive power of the water as it surges on to the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico a thousand miles away.
I drive into the countryside to see the gentle roll of the land, like long flowing waves way out on the ocean. The land has a close relationship with the sky, like cousins. Soon the green shoots of wheat, oats, and corn will appear and block my view of tree-lined creeks and the horizon.
On the way out, I went by a new shopping mall built where there used to be a patch of old prairie. Instead of seeing wildlife run through the grass, now there were scraps of discarded plastic bags. Instead of hearing birds chirp, there was the sound of hollow paper cups tumbling across dry asphalt.
Too often, developers flatten habitats and landscapes and move on, leaving dead earth and hard-shelled structures behind that push us further away from ourselves.
Nature creates new landscapes of beauty out of the old that draw us in.

As much as we deny it, we need the land to keep us human.