The forest woke up when I did...

Last week, I did the first three practices from Earthwalks: the Fox Stance, the Walk of Attention, and the Walk of Balance.  In these exercises, I was to position my body in such a way that each foot was placed with alert attention, including pauses at random moments between steps to check my balance.  I was to place my hands and arms in a configuration of my own choice, but it was imperative that my arms did not merely hang at my side.  I was to place each foot on the ground while my weight remained on my back foot, which greatly reduced the sound of my footfalls making my walk incredibly silent.

The descriptions of the exercises included a great deal about the intention of walking in nature with an intention to "connect" not "conquer" as is often the theme in recreational outdoor activities.
"By placing attention on these aspects of Nature that are foreign to our usual experience in modern day industrial culture, we create a rift in the continuity of psychic numbness that inhibits people from reacting to our current path of destruction of Earth" (p.xvi).

As someone who has spent a great deal of time in wild places engaged in personal practice, the exercises seemed excessively simplistic yet they held some mysterious appeal as if it was a new form of simplicity. Sure enough, when I finally began to practice the Walk, after I had walked some ways into the trail I selected, I was astounded at how quickly and dramatically the world "woke up."  Suddenly, the trees were visibly swaying in the wind and the pine branches were swishing high above my head.  A small fly hovered along the trail.  There were even sounds of crickets and frogs that had been completely absent before I started my Walk of Attention.  The trail began to look like a shared home of a family of creatures, not a faded background to paint myself upon.

Another reason why the experience seemed unique to me was the practice of walking.  Rather than sitting and gazing at nature as an observer, by walking, I felt I was participating in an organic and wild way, as if the soles of my feet were as sensitive as the soft, dry pads of a fox paw.  I realized that I had to walk very slowly in order to maintain the awareness and balance required, yet I suspected this was a factor of my inexperience.  I have known humans who can walk so silently and imperceptibly through dense woods, so I took my slow pace with humility as an opportunity to practice.  It gave a whole new meaning to the phrase, "walking lightly on the earth" or having "low impact" on the earth from a sustainablity perspective.  I could viscerally feel how I was retraining my body's habitual way of crashing noisily and unconsciously through the world. 

I was surprised how much muscular control it took for me to walk in this way for an extended period and I noticed that I was becoming fatigued even though it seemed like such an undemanding movement.  I could appreciate how poor engagement of muscles in habitual actions is yet another way our senses and our potentialities are deadened. 

After walking silently for about thirty minutes I heard a group of people coming down the trail, and it was somewhat alarming to see how disruptive their chatter, coughing, and rustling was to the atmosphere.  I found myself trying to get off the trail to allow them to pass long before they got to me, as if their sounds were so amplified that I imagined them to be much closer than they really were.  As I watched them get farther away after they passed, I felt my edges soften into the background, noticing how wildness exerts its own adhesive unity against that which tramples through it.

I found myself gazing into tree trunks and experimenting with seeing the shapes and colors as being filled with non-verbal meaning, like in dreams.  I was unable to discern if this was a form of dissociation from my experience or if it was leaning in.

When driving home, I passed two groups of deer.  The second group paused by the side of the road without running away, and I drove very slowly past them.  They stared at me with round, startled eyes, and I stared at them the same way.  I found it so funny the way our expressions seemed to mirror each other, both so full of alarm and curiosity, as if I couldn't tell who was the observer and who was the observed.

I did notice that I had occasional thoughts during my practice of how this would get translated, presented, or interpreted on this blog, which I found distracting and distancing from the experience.  I am glad that I recorded the experience some days afterwards, so as to loosen the attachment to the reconstruction of the event from the event itself.

I am so looking forward to my practice this week.