Sunday, January 31, 2016

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.





Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Chattahoochee Bend State Park

Since starting my search for wild spaces to practice re-wilding, I already notice that I am looking into wooded areas on the sides of roads, trying to scope out how deep the woods go.  I am looking at the world differently, as if I am looking for refuge, perhaps not unlike deer or other animals.  It's as if I am reverse-mapping my environment, in contrast with my usual way of seeing, with the man-made roads and destinations being the foreground and the undeveloped areas in the background.

I think I have found a park that will be perfect, though it's a 30 minute drive from my home, Chattahoochee Bend State Park.  Someone wrote a review of the Park that seemed pertinent:

"This is one of the State's latest parks.  It is still "in progress".  We walked the trail to the lookout tower.  Easy, flat trail running through a heavily wooded area.  There is not much to do for little kids.  I think the park is for nature enthusiasts at this point.  People who like very little modern amenities to come between themselves and nature.  They have plan to manicure and expand "man made" areas in the future.  If you have a list of State parks to visit and explore include this one for kayaking, staying in a yurt like cabin. Bring your own entertainment.  Absolutely no cell phone service either. Just nature."

Yet in spite of that enticing description, the area is still being disrupted by human activity: this was posted on the park website:

"TIMBER NOTICE: Through February, the River Trail from mile marker 4 northward as well as the North Backcountry Primitive Campsites, will be closed due to a timber harvest."
 

I got some history about the park on Wikipedia:  "The name Chattahoochee is thought to come from a Muskogean word meaning "rocks-marked" (or "painted"), from chato ("rock") plus huchi ("marked"). This possibly refers to the many colorful granite outcroppings along the northeast-to-southwest segment of the river. The vicinity of the Chattahoochee River was inhabited in prehistoric times by indigenous peoples since at least 1000 BC.  
Among the historical nations, the Chattahoochee served as a dividing line between the Muscogee (Creek) (to the east) and the Cherokee territories (to the west) in the Southeast. The United States accomplished the removal of Native Americans, to extinguish their claims and make way for European-American settlement, through a series of treaties, land lotteries, and forced removals lasting from 1820 through 1832. The Muscogee were first removed from the southeastern side of the river, and then the Cherokee from the northwest.
The Chattahoochee River is a tributary of the Apalachicola River, a relatively short river formed by the confluence of the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers and emptying from Florida into Apalachicola Bay in the Gulf of Mexico. The Chattahoochee River is about 430 miles (690 km) long.[3] The Chattahoochee, Flint, and Apalachicola rivers together make up the Apalachiacola–Chattahoochee–Flint River Basin (ACF River Basin). The Chattahoochee makes up the largest part of the ACF's drainage basin
Since the late twentieth century, the non-profit organization, Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper,advocates for the preservation of the environment and ecology of the northern part of the river, including the portion adjacent to Atlanta."
 

Saturday, January 23, 2016

Opening the cage door...

Hi everyone,

Welcome to my blog in which I will be exploring the idea of "rewilding" as a way to be in balance with my environment.  I'm looking forward to the process and feel it will be an opportunity to find balance between all the energy output for school and some needed internal replenishing by shifting into non-verbal or heart-centered awareness.  I will start with the following texts to get ideas of how to practice rewilding myself. 

Earthwalks for Body and Spirit: Exercises to Restore Our Sacred Bond with the Earth by James Endredy
Ecoshamanism: Sacred Practices of Unity, Power, and Earth Healing by James Endredy
Reclaiming the Wild Soul: How Earth's Landscapes Restore Us to Wholeness by Mary Reynolds Thompson
Wild Earth, Wild Soul: A Manual for an Ecstatic Culture by Bill Pfeiffer

Throughout this process, I hope to attend to cultural appropriation and orientalism in the tone or scope of these texts, which is related to a paper in critical environmentalism that I will be researching for another course this semester.  I am curious about whether unacknowledged harm could undermine the benefits of these practices by cultivating an oblivious, narcissistic, or greedy attitude toward other cultures and a self-promoting or self-congratulatory attitude toward one's own culture.  I am also wary about claims within ecopsychology, such as potentially giving a false impression of activism, establishing a condescending power-structure in the heroic or martyr rhetoric of "saving the world," or fostering a self-centered view in which personal stress management is more important or mysteriously connected to the well-being of others.  My goal is to take benefits and harms into account as much as possible through careful introspection and research.    

One major problem I have so far is trying to find a place in nature to practice.  I am hoping not to have to drive far, and in Georgia, I have been more fearful of the other hikers I meet when I'm deep in the woods by myself.  Yet nothing in my crowded, immediate vicinity seems adequate for even a bare minimum of nature immersion.  This dilemma seems very fitting to the overarching theme of unaltered wildness in industrial society - there isn't any!  So far I have started reading about a wide range of walking practices in Earthwalks and I appreciate the centrality of kinesthetic and sensory awareness.  I am looking into some options for a location this week and hope to start practicing very soon!

Until then, here is an inspirational video to get things rolling.  This is an impression of me hearing the call.