This gorgeous Fall morn
I, at breakfast, stared at my
phone*, not life. Why? Fail!
OR
*screen
This gorgeous Fall morn
I, at breakfast, stared at my
phone*, not life. Why? Fail!
OR
*screen
A little while after I wrote the first Sitting In Nature riff, I came up with these additional thoughts about Nature observation.
I work in the field and the woods, pruning, planting, watering. On occasion, I sit deep in the woods to rest.
As I sit, even when I have intention to rest, to connect with Nature, my phone immediately comes out and I read texts, emails, the news, social media.
So if I’m deep in the woods, but still looking at my electronic devices, what am I connecting to? Nature? Am I hearing the message that she’s trying to send me?
Not really.
Maybe I should take a notepad and pen and write down my notes and my notes, and leave the world of Man behind. Maybe I should turn off the worldly, and connect to a higher power, a deeper message, a sweeter song. Only then can I be healed. Only then can I be rejuvenated through the magic elixir, that elixir which Nature and the Creator alone know how to brew and how to serve.
While sitting out in Creation Girl and my work-in-progress grape arbor on the banks of the West Chickamauga Creek at Spirit Tree Farms, I had some thoughts about sitting in nature. Rather than wait until I was at my computer, I picked up my phone and did a voice recognition verbal riff. A new prose-writing method for me, but one I could get used to! It’s quick and effective, and I hope captures the message well.
Sitting in nature requires putting your phone away, or maybe not even bringing it. It means laying your tools down, including pulling your snippers out of your pocket and throwing them onto the ground, to better be prepared for the messages Nature is going to send you.
Sitting in Nature means looking around and, instead of seeing privet that needs to be pulled, or wild grapevines that need to be trellised, or invasive grasses that need to be burned, or ironweed seeds that need to be gathered, just sitting. Listening. Feeling. Sensing.
Taking this deliberate time, making this purposeful effort of rest and nature observation and connection means hearing and feeling the negative ions of the distant creek running over the rocks placed there as a fishing weir by pre-contact native residents of this land. Sure, these Ancient Ones worked, but they also stopped, looked, listened, felt, learned, and taught.
Like us, they watched the late season butterflies flit among the few goldenrod and burn weed and ironweed blooms still available. They no doubt marveled at the bright blood-red stalks of pokeweed, nearly spent, holding on to the last vestiges of purple berries, to provide fruit throughout the winter swaying with the late autumn breeze.
These people of the land saw that same breeze give dead and dying ironweed stalks a shake, spreading their seeds like salt from a shaker. They felt the late Autumn breeze and wondered at its warmth and smiled at its gentle caress. They looked at the skyline of multi-hued deciduous trees and probably put that sight in their memory banks for later on, when they would make blankets and paint paintings showing those same Earth tone colors.
Undoubtedly, these nature observation experts listened to the squirrels chattering, gathering and husking hickory nuts and black walnuts, preparing for the winter. In the Indigenous tribal culture, the older wise ones probably showed the younger ones which plants to gather. Then, the younger ones, full of life and energy and supple bodies able to bend and lift, used the old ones wisdom and knowledge to quickly harvest what the tribe needed. The old ones sharing that knowledge freely, and accepted the youth’s gift of energy and work, a symbiotic relationship in a group of humans mirroring the symbiotic relationships found throughout nature.
Throughout the entire Nature observation and gathering process, either the elderly or the young — or perhaps both — felt the presence of the Creator, the Great Spirit. Together, they shared the joy found in sitting with and being enveloped by Nature. Maybe the sun caressed their shoulders as they munched on a foraged turkey tail or a goldenrod blossom. Or when they discovered and shared and relished a late-fruiting passion flower, they felt joy, and they gave thanks. And when they went to work again after sitting, resting, and feeling, that Nature joy stayed with them, so work was no longer work and drudgery, but instead a joint celebration with each other, with the plants and animals all around them, like dancers separate but in harmony, swaying and moving through creation itself.
We can learn much from the Ancient Ones. We should mirror that dance with Nature. Let’s make an effort to put down our tools and technology. Let’s take the time to find nature joy today, ourselves. Because, if we let it, if we spend time sitting in Nature, the energy we get and gather to us stays with us, lifts us, buoys us, and carries us through life.
An updated, more in-depth copy of this is on our Spirit Tree Farms blog.
The dark, little-used/
spot in the woods is perfect/
for rare medicine.
On a broken chair,/
propped up by rotting woodchips,/
I watch Fall’s death dance.
I spend so much time
creating places to think,
I can’t contemplate.
I spend so much time
creating places to think,
I’d not intended
to think on the intention
If I sit and think,
is that working, even if /
it’s fun? I think so.