Nourishing Quiescence

Field Notes from Fall Camp

Back when I was the moss, or

in when I was the rocks,

still when I was the sky,

dissolved into space, my personal eye

perceiving the singularity within the multiplicity.

Maybe our skin crawls sometimes because we still remember

what it is like

to be the forest.

-EC Liles

Yang Decline / Yin Rising: September 23rd - November 7th, 2023

I am sitting at the picnic table underneath the big tarp Victor has flown for the roof of our outdoor kitchen. Behind me to my right is our canvas bell-tent, looking like a magical hut. A hundred yards in front of me is the lake, shining through the trees, a luminous band of light.

It is quite quiet, save for a soft breeze rustling through the forest canopy, fifty feet above my head. I can hear a red squirrel chittering far in the distance, the buzzing of a passing fly, and the conversant chirp of a few nuthatches. There is a growing carpet of red, brown and golden leaves, with more raining down from the canopy in a near-constant trickle. Shapes of slender ash, oval birch, palmate maple, and heart-shaped basswood fall all around, sounding like raindrops as they end their flutter-dance descent.

Autumn is here in the Wisconsin Northwoods, heralding the season change that will gradually sweep southward as the weeks progress. As last Sunday was the fall equinox, we now have six weeks during which the yang energy visibly declines. On November 7th, we will cross into the darkest portion of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. For now, the last fruits are being gathered and the green world begins its movement towards quiescence. The active energy, which in spring moved up and outward, is shifting inward and down - into the roots, into the soil, into the nourishing darkness. This word, quiescence, is not only a lovely way to see the wild world as it shifts into fall and winter - it is also the word biologists have chosen to describe the state of being that a tree adopts during the seasons of less light. When I think of quiescence, I think of wisened yogis and yoginis submersed in their contemplative samadhi, ancient sages walking through mist-covered forests, and the sweetness of sleep that we allow to overtake us after a day that feels saturated with fulfillment. I enjoy envisioning the trees around me sinking into a deep state of replenishing inner stillness - as a compliment to the hearty cycle of growth and gain they have been engaging in all spring and summer. As I think that thought, I find within myself a desire to do the same.

Now I’m sitting in the tent, my feet are in a bath of hot water and cedar sprays. I am warming up next to the fire after a dip in the lake. Yesterday I took a long meandering walk along the eastern shore, around the bend past the marshy area, to where the cedars are prominent. I was actually looking for bolete mushrooms, where in years past there have been bumper crops. Victor was jogging, and I decided to take a different pace with my knife and basket. I had already found a few beautiful (and delicious looking) specimens, but decided not to harvest them as there weren’t that many to begin with. I rounded the corner past the arched portal formed by a downed tree (which of course I went through, crouching, having had to leave my basket back on the path), and suddenly my whole vision was filled with cedar. One of the trees had fallen recently, from the look of the sprays still vibrantly green except for tiny little portions of brown. Well, my knife came in handy for that. I grabbed bunches by the handful, and sheared them off at the base, collecting a handsome stack before depositing it into my basket. I was excited to show Victor, because he loves to make us cedar hair rinses for after our swims in the lake. The whole experience with the rinse is unforgettable. Typically, we are swimming in frigid water, so coming back to shore and pouring warm water infused with cedar all through my hair is euphoric. The scent is intoxicating - so sweet, so evergreen, so full of the forest’s magic and wisdom. This small simple act feels like a wild baptism of sorts, a benediction from the elders of this sacred place, a way of coming into deeper connection with the land.

I say we are swimming, but actually it is more of a wading out past the rocks, and gathering courage before sinking up to our necks in the water. Knees in the leafy muck, chin level with the surface of the lake. Right now, the lake and air temperature are fairly close - someplace in the low sixties or high fifties. Cold enough where you have to relax and breathe deeply if you want to sit for a “cold think” as my mother calls it, but not so icy that I get the pervasive tingles and chills from the cold blood at my peripheries mixing with the hot blood of my core after I get out. That will have to wait until the air temperature drops a little more at night. I enter an altered state while I kneel there, gazing out across the lake. If there are ripples on the water, the play of light and dark is mesmerizing. There’s not much to do except breathe, and the colder it gets, the more important it becomes to breathe. When I finally decide that I’ve had enough, and wade back to shore, I feel different - more alive, more in my body, more connected to the elements and the season at hand, and I think this is why I continue to seek this experience long after the temperatures drop below freezing.

I used to be extremely opposed to the idea of deliberately exposing myself to cold, but I changed my mind in light of direct experience. Years ago, Victor and I managed a 160 acre nature retreat in Washington State, named Skalitude from the Salish word skalalitude - meaning to be in harmony with nature. It was an absolutely amazing, sacred, and magical place. Very wild. Very benevolent. It was the first time in my life that I saw bear and mountain lion prints close to home and felt not only relaxed, but happy about it. Living there and care-tending the property for almost a year was transformative, and a springboard to many of the ways we choose to live now. While our time at Skalitude is a whole other universe of story unto itself, the tiny part of that chapter I bring out here is my introduction to cold water immersion. On the Skalitude grounds, there was a sizable wood-fired sauna and a pond. When the pond first opened in the beginning of March there were still many feet of snow on the ground, and Victor got the idea that we should have a sauna-cold plunge party with five of our friends. The closest I had ever come to something like this prior was jumping into a snowbank, and I swore I would never repeat that experience on account of how surprisingly painful it was. I liked the idea of getting hot in the sauna before jumping into the cold water, but at the first round after I ran the two hundred yards from the sauna to the pond like everyone else, I could not for the life of me make my body get into the water. I’ll be honest, I was disappointed in myself. I wanted to want to do it. It was no more than twenty-five degrees outside that night, so I certainly cooled off as I hemmed and hawed, and went back to the sauna with everyone else. At the second round, when everyone took off for the pond again I elected to stay behind. I didn’t want to run down there just to stand on the edge. I decided I simply wasn’t “interested” in cold-plunges. But something shifted in me as I sat there in the sauna all alone. I realized that I was letting my ideas of “what it might be like” (terrible) stand in my way of actually doing it. I was assuming the outcome being unbearable discomfort, and writing off the possibility of it being otherwise (“It’s just not for me). I sat there until I was beyond hot, and made a decision that I would not give myself any time to rethink the act. I ran down to the pond, passing everyone else on their way back up to the sauna, and jumped in. And I was reborn. A switch was flicked for me, and cold water became an obsession. For the next month, every morning around six or seven I would wake up and go directly from my warm bed to the pond, decked head to toe in wool. I would bring a towel with me, so that I didn’t have to stand on the snow while I undressed, and then without any allowed hesitation I would get right into the water. Suddenly and utterly awake. After staying in as long as I dared, I would get out, put all my wool back on while still dripping wet, and hike back to our cabin in a state of bliss.

Just because I like getting into cold water, does not mean it is always easy. Still today, I find it takes deliberation and will-power. Even if I joyfully rush to the water’s edge, to take the plunge requires a conscious decision. That’s why I like it so much. In the daily living of life, my thoughts are not always helpful, but there is a deeper knowing always underlying my perception. To embrace the cold and allow myself to be fully present in the moment, is to connect with the wider, wiser, wilder part of myself who knows that where I point my will, is where my chariot will fly.

Fall camp, as I like to call it, is pretty simple. It rains frequently at Lost Lake, which I surmise is related to the pervasive, surrounding forest helping to create its own weather. We assume rain, plan for it, and end up spending a lot of time being cozy in our tent while it drip drip drips outside, like it is right now. This feels like the perfect entry into autumn; the cold lake, rain, falling leaves, sitting by the wood stove, cooking meals in our outdoor kitchen, and reading in the evenings by candlelight. Even though we have spent the past three months living outside in some version of this set-up, it always feels different at Lost Lake.

The main difference I feel here is in the forest. It is remarkable. I have yet to be in another wood that radiates the same kind of presence I feel in this wild collective. I have heard it said by others before, that there is a specific kind of settled silence that can be felt amongst old growth. To a cursory glance or unknowing eyes it could even seem vacant, missing all the understory tumult. However, the complex and well-grooved relationships within an old growth forest are not so much hidden, as they are so long-established as to be in a very stable synchrony - the kind you feel between people who have known each other practically forever, and share a profound understanding, acceptance, and love. One of the primary reasons old growth feels so quiet, is that the complexity of life at the apex of the collective’s stability and fertility lies within the soils - in the mycorrhizal networks (coined “the wood wide web” by Dr. Simard et al, in their 1997 article featured in the journal Nature.) While our eyes might be drawn to the larger forms on display within an ecosystem - the trees, animals, birds, and reptiles - it is the “small kingdoms” as Mary Oliver so beautifully referred to them, that are central to the balance. Each unique system has its own self-organized orientation towards homeodynamis - a constant seeking of stability in response to the internal needs of the whole in relationship with external fluctuations. This stability is not a fixed quotient, but a constantly moving target that each wild system, from the single-celled to the larger eco-range, learns to navigate. Vitality and intelligence go hand-in-hand with a system’s ability to respond dynamically. Over time, this intelligence becomes wisdom. Such organically arising well-being can be felt.

The ancient, coevolutionary communities at the basis of life, came together billions of years ago to form the synergistic whole we call earth. Gaia. Microbiologists who look closely at the underpinnings of life on earth, have come to an understanding that it is the bacteria, viruses, and other microorganisms that are the living foundation. The undulating firmament. A symphony of countless biofilms (bacterial communities) reaching several miles both down into the earth and above into the atmosphere surrounding the planet. These communities regulate the precise level of oxygen, are responsible for the formation of thermals and waves on the ocean, clouds in the sky, the horizontal transfer of genes (information) between species, and the on-going homeodynamis of the entire earth matrix. Microorganisms, it turns out, are not the Other, we have been assuming. Not only is the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) for all life on this planet bacterial, we too - along with every other form we see - are actually modified forms of bacterial life. Our nervous system and that of every other life-form, including the neural networks within plants, are evolutionary innovations on templates first cocreated within the bacterial world. The astonishing variety of life here on earth has its deep roots in the microcosm. Where fields of complex relationship join together in self-organized purpose and intention. Cocreation. Or as bacterial researcher Lynn Margulis calls it - symbiogenesis. The formation of more complex life-forms from the union of two dissimilar, simpler ones.¹ The oft-cited example of symbiogenesis is the mitochondria of our cells - which were previously free-roaming bacteria. The chloroplasts within plant cells responsible for the metabolism of the sun’s light into useable energy have the same history. What a view, to consider every single cell in our bodies, and perceive the cooperation that occurred so long ago, to coevolve these life-forms that we now inhabit. Symbiogenesis is not the anomaly here but the primordial condition.

I love the Taoist description of this process:

The One gives birth to the Two

The Two gives birth to the Three

The Three gives birth to the Ten-thousand Things

From the singularity, we move into duality, into synergy, into complexity beyond measure. And this need not be esoteric. I can perceive myself as singular. Me. I am also two - a body and mind. A non-physical consciousness and physically focused personality. I am three - a body, mind, and life-force. Body, soul, spirit. I am the ten-thousand things - an entire whole body system with dimensions in both the form and formless realms; trillions of cells, communities of tissues, organs, and organ systems; molecules, atoms, electricity; thoughts, emotions, energy. And from this self-organized whole is just one person - now multiply that by billions, and expand the view to include non-human life as well. The Buddhists have a related term - the ten thousand-fold universe - denoting the infinity of life throughout all of space. To understand this complexity, the Buddha advises us to simply focus on our own illumination, within which all the answers abide. The singularity and the multiplicity, inherently interwoven. Whether we focus on the universe or ourselves, ultimately we arrive at the same place.    

What stands out to me about symbiogensis, is that resiliency and responsiveness, intelligence, and communication are at the very basis of who we are, and inherent to all life. Connection and coevolution is built in, not something we need to cultivate or strive for. I think the reason old-growth forests and other long-established ecosystems feel so good is that they offer an undiluted, coherent field of connection that reminds us of our own. Wherever there is coherency there is communication, whether in a wild ecosystem or in our body. When communication and connection flow, wellness and thriving arise of their own natural accord.

Earlier today, I went on a walk-about with my basket and knife, but my mission wasn’t really foraging - I bring it along in case something delicious and abundant appears. Instead, my primary intent was observation and sensing. Feeling and looking. Without a specific plan, I allowed myself to wander off trail and follow where my body wanted to go. Within five minutes, I found myself laying spread-eagle under a canopy of maple and birch. The ground was exceedingly comfortable, cradling my back in-between grassy mounds. I felt a soft, gentle buzzing all through my legs and back, like I was receiving a subtle massage. After that, I wandered a bit more, and this time found a rather large hemlock tree all alone amidst more maples and birches, looking like a dark mage. I was struck by the appearance of the hemlock, back-lit by the other trees. Surrounding the lake are many great old hemlocks all growing together. Here, the singular evergreen was an abrupt dark tent against a backdrop of green-turning-to-yellow leaves. This contrast between the trees highlighted a characteristic of hemlocks I had never observed before. A certain feeling tone, an essential quality that speaks to the deeper identity of who Hemlock is within the dreaming of the earth. I lay beneath this tree, the ground similarly soft, my body feeling a similar buzzing of energy. Words formed in my mind, as if coming from the tree itself: There is only life.

Along with these words, came the images and memories of seeing the larger old growth hemlock communities. Trees growing upon the trees that once were, in a never-ending succession of life feeding life. I thought of the reishi mushroom, known as Ling Zhi in Chinese, the mushroom of immortality. In hemlock forests, the reishi variety ganoderma tsugae grows in symbiosis. In the summer months, gorgeous lacquered fruiting bodies of the reishi mycelial web appear like red jewels nestled in mossy stumps and along still-upright trunks - a telltale sign the tree is the process of transition and transformation. The human idea of immortality seems to be some version of staying in the same body forever, ageless - but I like to look to the example of hemlock and reishi to find Nature’s view on the matter. In the life-cycle of the forest, there is no place where we can draw a clear dividing line and say, “Over here is life” and “Over here is death.” There is becoming, transition, and change. There is the life-force-source-energy taking many forms, from the one to the two, to the three, to the ten-thousand things. The birch tree down by the water that I painted three years ago seems to be dying, yet Birch as a pattern is still very much alive and well. And what I see as decay is nutriment to another.

The changing of forms is at the wild heart of life on earth.

I first heard about the subtle psychedelic properties of reishi mushroom from North Carolina herbalist Asia Suler. The primary action of a psychedelic substance, is that it modifies the manner in which we receive sensory input from the world around us. While each psychedelic or entheogen is unique, the bottom line is that we become conscious of more. The apertures of our sensory gating channels widen, and we become more aware of the ocean of information we are swimming within. Reishi is not classified as an actual psychedelic substance, however what Suler and other herbalists including myself have noticed, is that - taken in tea form - reishi gently dilates our sense of time. The present moment opens slightly, and its inherent luminosity peeks through. I find this a fascinating addition to the Chinese perspective on this mushroom’s medicine. Immortality then, is not the clinging to a certain form, but an ability to open to the infinitude of the moment at hand. The field notes of spiritual mystics and psychonauts alike attest to a common experience of the infinite present - the state of pure being where time simply drops away. Within this manner of essential quiescence - what form would we grasp at? Rather, dissolved into the flow of our own primal energy stream, the movement of life itself through forms untold, becomes the dance we seek.    

As global culture, we are still afraid of death - even though everyone does it, and as Stephen Buhner said, “nobody is getting out of here alive.” I like adding to his sentiments, the words of Abraham-Hicks:

We’re not wanting to be insensitive to what so many of you are feeling, but we are very much wanting you to put this death thing in the proper perspective: You are all going to die! Except there is no death. You’re all going to make your transition into Non-Physical. It is time to stop making your transition into Non-Physical sound like a subject that is uncomfortable and begin acknowledging that it is something that happens to everyone. This death thing is so misunderstood that you use it to torture yourself never-endingly and just absolutely unnecessarily. There are those who feel such fulfillment of life and such Connection to Source Energy, who understand that there is no separation between what is physical and Non-Physical; who understand that there is not even a lapse in consciousness, that “death” is a matter of closing one’s eyes in this dimension and literally opening one’s eyes in the other dimension. And that, truly, is how all death is, no matter how it looks, up to that point.. The re-emergence into Source Energy is always a delightful thing.

Seeing death as opposite to life is completely askew from the standpoint of a healthy ecosystem. In the world of old-growth, the elders are honored and the young are nurtured. Death is not an ending but a fantastic transformation. Imagine being like the 13th century mystic and poet Jalaladin Rumi, who awaited his death eagerly as the moment of his consummate union with the divine. This is not about seeking death over life, but understanding that what we call death is, in the first place, a changing of form, a changing of parameters and perspective. For us to sit at the feet of the wise old trees and catch a whiff of our grandmother on the breeze, and to know she is still here - is to connect with a larger living picture. We hold on to discreet forms and suffer when we feel they are gone, but the entirety of Nature speaks the mantra of the hemlock: There is only life, there is only life, there is only life.

The father of my best friend in preschool was a proclaimed atheist, and I have distinct memories of my first ever “contemplation” of death, while laying on the ground outside, around the age of five or six. In my young mind, I tried to imagine or feel into his statement that “we just turn back into dirt.” And while I sensed the truth of that statement in a physical way, I could not, nor have I ever been able to imagine that my consciousness - so awake, vibrant, luminously aware, would simply turn off like a light, never to turn on again. Will I always be Emma as I know myself now? That, I suppose is up for epistemological grabs, but the core essence of my awareness is beyond the scope of measuring.

Empty your mind of all thoughts.

Let your heart be at peace.

Watch the turmoil of beings,

but contemplate their return.

Each separate being in the universe

returns to the common source.

Returning to the source is serenity.

If you don’t realize the source,

you stumble in confusion and sorrow.

When you realize where you come from,

you naturally become tolerant,

disinterested, amused,

kindhearted as a grandmother,

dignified as a king.

Immersed in the wonder of the Tao,

you can deal with whatever life brings you,

and when death comes, you are ready.

- Chapter 16 of the Tao Te Ching, translated by Stephen Mitchell. 1988, Harper & Row.

I know I’m not the only one who thinks about death as fall arrives. I find importance in these contemplations because I am interested in living life fully - and fear of death or discomfort in the unknown can be a hindrance to finding enjoyment in the moment. I know the present is not only where my creative power is - it is where my health, well-being, thriving, vitality, abundance, prosperity, inspiration, and illumination abide as well. The present is where I connect with everyone else, where I can participate in the continual coevolution of life here on earth, and where I can fully inhabit my reasons for being here in the first place.

As the yang energy begins its visible decline and we enter these six weeks of yin rising - finding comfort in letting go and opening to the stillness within can be akin to a small death. It’s nice to know that we can let go of the forms that were - symptoms in our body, difficulty in relationships, challenges in our life - and allow for the pure essence of that which we are, to take birth anew. It’s nice to know we don’t have to let go of what we love, what nourishes, satisfies, and sustains us - the yinward flow, the death of the old, is not about any losing of what is most dear to us. Rather, it is a return to our roots, our core; a clarification and distillation of our sense of self. Who are we outside of the activities we do every day? What is left when the husk of summer is stripped away, and we stand bare to the world under the winter sky? Who are we if we embrace the invitation of the seasons? Who will we become if we relax into the starry womb of transformation? Can we enter the dark and feel it as a blanket of love? What do we need to shed in order to realize our own state of nourishing quiescence?

As deep winter draws ever closer, and it does - may we find the space to harmonize with the elements of our own wild becoming.

1. Buhner, Stephen H. Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm. 2014, Bear and Company. p 141.