A Wild Mythos
Setting the Tone
We need the tonic of wildness-to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground…We can never have enough of nature.
-Henry David Thoreau
I am sitting outside our tent, looking at my computer and then out at the river beyond. There is a Stellar’s jay feather tucked beneath the corner of the laptop, and a small amber colored spider making its quick and nimble way across the top edge of the screen. I’m sipping a cup of lemon balm tea, made with leaves I harvested and dried myself. The sun is an hour until set. The light, a golden honey color, spills over the willows lining the shore below. Moths flit about, chickadees are chirping, high up in the branches of the old myrtlewoods, the local vultures are soaring in the sky above, and I hear the charming sound of bells coming from the necks of the grazing sheep up-river.
The spider reminds me of creativity, of weaving (right now with words), and of the web that connects us all. The moths speak of transformation and a magnetic draw towards illumination. Lemon balm is soothing joy. The vultures, a constant reminder that with a bit of effort we can rise above the gravitational pull of old habits and soar the skies like the yogis of old. The jay is still a puzzle to me; I have yet to feel the a-ha of its deeper significance. But a feather can also just be a feather - and in that fact there is still a lot to know and understand. And I can admire the deep blue and charcoal filaments, the black contrasting stripes, and the memory of my husband finding it on the trail and asking me where my forest-elf hat was for adornment.
What I present here is what I think based on how I have been focusing, and how that focus has gathered its own evidence over several decades and counting - these are the myths of my own making
This issue marks the official birth of True Nature, and I thought I would take the time to introduce the publication and set the tone for this journey we will take here together. This is the starting point, and where we go from here I cannot say, except that there is a long-standing rhythm that informs my days - the downbeats, where wild nature and I come into sweet synchrony. When my eyes open, my head turns, and my ears catch - at just the right time - communications coming from the wildness around me. I have called this newsletter “a personal mythology of living wild,” as these are the closest words I have found to succinctly describe the interplay between my inner world and my outer living of life. What I present here is what I think based on how I have been focusing, and how that focus has gathered its own evidence over several decades and counting - these are the myths of my own making.
In my personal mythology, everything in wild nature transmits meaning, straight from the heart of life, into my present moment experience. The purpose of a myth is not to tell the cold, hard facts - but to convey the warm, living heart of the matter. Like a shape in the dark we can only see out of the corner of our eye, the depthful identity of the world and its aspects (ourselves an intrinsic part) cannot be seen straight-on through linear causality. Yes, we can measure the wingspan of the bald eagle - but what about its essence? What about Eagle’s dream of the world? To the people who received and conceived of the stories we now call ancient myths, these tales were the truest way to explain a living aspect of the great mystery we are a part of. For as much as we rely on what is quantifiable and measurable, even the most well-preserved pronouncements of modern science are still only theories - from the Greek theoria, which means variously “contemplation, speculation, a looking at, things looked at.” Things seen. Quantum mechanics tells us that the seeing itself creates particulars out of possibility. Creation through perception. And we are each looking through a different lens. Every set of eyes, a different way of seeing life. This multiplicity excites me! It reminds me that my way of seeing the world is not the right way or the good way. It is a part of my wildness, just like yours is too. I want to understand the eagle’s dream, to stand where the oak is and know of life through that sensing. To open as the rose, and filter the great ocean like a mussel, dig roots like a bear, and stalk the vast rocky expanse like the mountain lion. To clear my mind of the myths we have made of the wild from fear and misunderstanding, and learn about life on its own terms.
Most of my earliest memories involve wild nature - watching the orange glow of the sunset from my crib, holding a blue broken shell of a robin’s egg, feeling the burning cold of snow on my face for the first time, eating wild raspberries, waking up my friend at four o’clock in the morning during our first sleepover so we could listen to the birds.
The moments of my life now are still thanks to nature - the soothing smell of my husband, the sound of wind shushing through the pine needles, the cold sharp thrill of an icy spring-melt creek on my bare skin. To me, nature is not only the fields full of blossoming wildflowers, but also the way my skis and I become one body as we fly down the mountain; sparkling Cassiopeia above the treetops last night, the plastic jug holding fresh spring water; the tortilla chips and salsa I just ate, great blue heron soaring past in the dark, croaking; raven klook klooking as they do a barrel roll over my head, the steam rising from my coffee; fox curled in the tall grasses asleep, the crystals and minerals of my iPhone; the wood fire keeping me warm, the hum of our car’s engine as it carries us along - and on and on and on. More is added each breath I take.
I was nineteen before my conscious awareness fully grasped that trees flower in the spring; I lived almost two full decades before I stood in perfect awe before the redbuds, cherries, and apples in bloom. Even though I grew up with a magnolia tree blossoming in our yard every May, even though I was aware of trees from my earliest memories, still, something had to shift in the threshold of my attention for a greater breadth of detail and stimuli to be received by me. Trees had to become more important to me personally.
Our electrical systems have thresholds, beyond which information simply cannot be processed. The sensory gating channels within our brain take in the raw data, and choose what to send to the higher brain centers, to the light of our conscious awareness. These parameters are more or less established in childhood, but they are not fixed. Any herbalist or person of the plants will tell you that when they started their studies, suddenly a certain plant was everywhere. Along the roadsides, sidewalks, in the neighbor’s garden, along the path in the woods. The “green wall” comes down and individuals are seen. Mullein, Nettles, Burdock, Self-Heal, Angelica, St. John’s Wort. The experience can be astonishing as the world comes into clearer view. All that has to change is the inner desire and focus, and suddenly our universe expands, our sense of self and relationship with life enriched.
Birds are very important to me, yet I had barely noticed ospreys. Seen them casually on the outskirts of my experience - in books, in conversation, at the far end of the lake passing by. This summer, every place we have camped there has been an osprey calling, landing, feeding, breeding. Loud, in my face. Diving before my eyes, not once or twice, but over and over. I have learned that when plants show up this obviously, this insistently, there is a communication being shared. A medicinal relationship based on vibrational resonance. Something in me resonates with something in you. With plants, I take the medicine into my body, usually. An intimate intertwining of essence, while my physiology undergoes an elemental shift on a cellular level changing the ecosystem of my digestive tract, or the mucus membranes of my lungs, the quality of my blood, the lubrication of my joints, or how well my liver functions. With animals, I take the teaching in other ways. Who is osprey? What qualities does osprey have? How does this relate to my life, to my understanding of reality? What am I thinking the very moment osprey appears. Is there a pattern?
When we work with the deeper meanings within wild nature, we access the dimensions beyond form; the invisible realms where we need shaman eyes to see with. Or a child’s knowing. Or access to a different place on the spectrum of consciousness, the realms of alpha, theta, and delta. The expanded states of perception beyond discursive beta brain. The places we access when we are relaxed, dreaming, meditating, making love, taking entheogens, playing music, or otherwise focusing beyond the rattling thoughts of our ordinary thinking mind. Realms of knowing and understanding that underly and inform what we observe here with our senses, where a broader picture of ourselves and life as a whole can be found. Inside. Our own insight.
Quantum mechanics tells us that the seeing itself creates particulars out of possibility. Creation through perception. And we are each looking through a different lens. Every set of eyes, a different way of seeing life.
A few weeks ago, I put on a mask, snorkel, and fins and for the first time ever hopped into the river. My eyes open to an entirely new universe. One filled with green-glowing underwater plants, dotted with crystal globules of water, like tiny beads of light. A school of silver scaled salmon swimming up-river to their sacred spawning grounds. Shells and agates, scissors dropped by a fisherman, crawdads and tadpoles, bits of molten metal, and a small group of electric blue minnows. When I stood in shoulder-deep river water and looked into the universe below me, the small-mouth bass with red eyes and green-gold shimming bodies swam up to me. It was effort for me to stand in the current. They appeared almost motionless in the flow, moving easily against the tide just thirty miles from the ocean. Mouths opening occasionally to take in a nutriment. Ancient faces, primal shapes. Still in the watery womb of the world, a reminder of where we have all come from. I was awestruck, they looked so beautiful. And suddenly fearsome, their visage shapeshifting, a relic from a bygone era staring me in the face. Dinosaur. A reminder of the cold reptilian brain. Devour. Devouring. Devoured. The lacewing, they say, is so aggressive that the hatchlings will eat each other if it weren’t for the manner in which they are laid by the parent along the plant-stem. And yet when I see lacewings, I see fairies; fragile, benevolent souls dancing on the breeze. When the lizard turns its eye towards me, what do I feel? In truth, I feel what I think about it, which is limited to what I know, which in most cases is what other humans have told me - a lot of stories, a lot of myths. The only way to find feelings accurate to the lizard itself is to focus my thinking into pure perception. Breathe in, breathe out. Just the lizard, darting. Just the bass. Fins rimmed with gold. Only the bass. Red eyes watching. And the water. And the flow. Until my thinking becomes awareness itself. Only then can the bass tell me what is true about who it is. Only then can I receive its communication, straight into my heart and somatic sensing.
The first time I really saw the bass without my other thoughts in the way, I was completely startled. A living perspective different from my own, but no less alive, and no less sentient. Certainly no less intelligent. In that moment, a transmission occurred between us. The sharing of soul-essence, says Buhner. Aisthesis say the ancient Greeks. In a split-second of perception my universe expanded. I felt different because I saw myself in relationship with something I had never perceived before - this “something” being Bass - the pattern coming into form from the archetypal dimension. Bass, not just the fish on my hook, or in the fry pan, not just the bane of fisherman who despise its invasiveness here on the Umpqua. But Bass, an energy that was specifically expressed out of the quantum matrix of life, a pattern that can tell me more about my environment and more about myself. When I dropped my inner noise, and became fully present to its beingness, Bass shared with me, for a quick slippery moment, who they are beyond human conception. This is the kind of relational living I am about. This is the mythos of my vantage point.
I am sharing True Nature from a love of self-expression and the connection that derives from showing up in the world fully as myself. When I take satisfaction in my own life, and in the expressing of its joys, there is the opportunity to find others who resonate with the same heart-chords. I love making music, especially with others. And it’s relaxing for me to think that there will always be room for more beautiful melodies and harmonies to be sung.
The sun has set, and the vultures are now rustling above, choosing their nighttime roosting spots in the myrtlewood branches. The sky is a dusky pink, the hills in shadow, grey-violet. Several minutes ago Victor and I both started at the sound of a particular crunching noise. We looked at each other, and simultaneously half-silently mouthed “the otters,” looking towards the river below. Their telltale dark heads bobbed at the surface of the water, concentric rings of sliver light-on-water radiating outward into the river beyond. Now, I hear the osprey call out in the distance a long, keening chirp, and the late-summer crickets are chanting in the grasses all around us. I feel a sense of satisfaction, knowing that I have the opportunity to share these slivers of my life with you. I send my love, and a wish for you to have moments of exceptional beauty - today, tomorrow, always.
What myths are you making?
What stories are speaking to you from the heart of the world?
Who from the wild world is showing up in your life with consistency and insistence?
What are your thoughts on Jays (Stellar Jays, Blue Jays, Jays of your region)?
I would love to hear from you,
Emma
Emma-Cate - you are an incredibly gifted observer of and cocreator with nature. This is so beautifully written it raises the consciousness of others. This morning after reading it I realized I have been hearing the disturbed cries of the sandhill cranes so close to me that it seemed as if they were calling out to me for help. I went outside and walk down the driveway and beyond the ever greens to where two of them were standing calling crying moaning mourning. In the grass three feathers lay. It has now been 20 minutes, and I am still brought to tears knowing their sadness and distress. I remind myself that is the way of Nature. It is natural selection, but how is it any less than a parent losing a child? Grief, regardless of origin is still grief. Joy, regardless of origin is still joy. Now they are behind my house crying. They were quiet for about two minutes but their search continues. As it does for all of us. How can we find our way when all seems lost?
Seeing and being seen seems the essence of what you shared in this post... and what we all long for.