Author: Eagle Willier

Ubiquitously we are surrounded by risks in life; we are constantly being pressured, challenged and pushed. Being under these constant pretenses causes a universal feeling of stress. The prescription that has followed to mitigate these stresses are usually in the forms of medicine, types of a condensed elements that help numb the tension and strain that we knowingly apply onto our mental and physical bodies. In this week’s readings, I agree that we are in need of some Vitamin N in our lives if we are expected to heal both physically and mentally. A quote that started my progression into putting myself with and in nature is,
“Humans living in landscapes that lack trees or other natural features undergo patterns of social, psychological, and physical breakdown that strikingly similar to those observed in animals that have been deprived of their natural habitat.”
Remembering that I am nothing more than another animal is humbling to my sense of being. We as a species may be highly “developed” in sense of social structures, scientific knowledge, having the use of five appendages, learning and retaining “intelligence” but simple reminders that I am just another animal here to “eat, sleep, procreate” are very comforting. I often find myself becoming so absorbed in the tasks for the day: drop this at so and so’s desk, fill in time-sheet, write reflection, meet with Kate to help her do that drama thing, pay phone bill, don’t forget to eat, make list for the list of things to do, that I forget that I am just another animal. And yes, I understand that with our complexities in society there are certain things expected of me to complete and withhold but sometimes it is nice to just stand back and realize that in all the essence of craziness, we are just animals.
In exploring nature, I think it is important to bring ourselves down from a hierarchical state and let ourselves be seen in within nature, never above it only then can we benefit from holistic healing. In Patricia Hasbach’s ecotherapy she testing what she calls “mapping the internal landscape”. When I first read this, I began thinking, what would the landscape of my mind look like if I was to walk through it now? Trying to envision what this may look like, I try to walk through my mind. What I see is a black room full of a stack of lists upon lists of things to accomplish. Near at my feet are things I must accomplish soon and at the back there are my future goals. In the middle stand the people that are important to me, I see them kicking their feet, some with flashing signs saying you missed their birthdays, and another is saying you should call me soon. I know this image all so well. In fact, I am in my internal map a fair bit.
Walking to school, I walk on a gravel road, where I pass a small hidden park, sometimes my neighbors have a fire going, I can smell the strong smoke that touches my body, I see the recently fallen leaves, but above all I see these things through calculated eyes. I see the tangible and the explainable. I read my surroundings not with my spirit and soul only my mind. In fact, I usually can see and notice changes in my environment, such as I have noticed that every week the Mündel’s part of the alley is drenched in a substance, which I have explained to myself as some sort of watering system. I can make these types of analyses all while consulting my task list in my head. I think this week’s readings eludes the stark issue in that in healing from your environment, from nature, is that you have to truly immerse yourself in it. I comprehend that the readings are a factual representation of trials and studies that concur that nature can heal a person but more importantly, at least for myself, I want to learn not that it works but how to do so in a way that both nature and I are mutually benefited. Outdoor exercise or green exercises for example, in my opinion, are petty examples of how to heal through nature. First of all, when I think of “exercise” or working out at all, in any manner, I automatically am reminded of pain or a time where I am forcing myself through something I thought I had to do because my body needed. In this sense, it just becomes another one of my daunting tasks. Therefore, why must we call it exercise? Why can we not just say, “oh… I’m going to go experience nature” or “oh, I’m going to go look for my peak experience in nature” or “oh… I’m going to have my Pocahontas moment with nature”. Using the word, ‘exercise’ to me diminishes the full meaning of what can be gathered in and through nature. To me it is similar to the concept of ‘putting the headphones on and in’ while being in nature. The semantics of connecting with nature then should mimic the peak experience that you can derive from it. So please help me, other than my poor explanation of engaging with your inner Pocahontas, tell me what you call connecting with nature? What do you call the action of healing with and from nature?

I am not much of a poetry writer but after reading the Indigenous Mind by Kaylynn Sullivan Twotrees I was inspired to write a poem. The title of my poem is derived from a sentence that really called to my own spiritual struggles.In the sentence she writes, “Accessing [the power of consciousness means] a commitment to slowing down, remembering, and re-conceiving on a smaller scale to reclaim intimacy with nature and its layers of species as an aspect of my own essential nature”. I too often fall captive to the constant busyness of life that I forget to take these moments. Most times it gets to the point where I find myself yearning for nature to take me back. And this poem is my articulation of this struggle:

With her I take the last breath
Sorrowfully learning the meaning of connection
Feeling more alive than ever, I thank you death
You are my portal to a deeper reflection

The rhetoric of life causing repentance
A moment paused for redirection
Contemplation of the interdependence
Complexities in need of the finest dissection

Only in a heavenly melody
Do I find myself to have meaningful collection
The beat, the voice, slows me down mentally
The soul open to perfection

Yet hopelessly drowning in damage control
The spiritual realm is in rejection
To the consumer soul
Struggling to get up, for protection

Mother Nature takes my hand
Looks me in my eyes with inspection
Opens the winds, the light, and shows me the land
I place myself here, forced injection

You are my portal to a deeper reflection
Struggling to get up, for protection

In reading Wendell Berry, I feel an immense urge to get in my truck, drive home to the farm I grew up on and hop on a tractor to help my Father finish harvesting.
I grew up on a little farm, about 16 hundred acres, on a reserve up north.
The sad realization that I have come to in reading Wendell is that I do not know how to use the land well. I do not have or make the time to use it well and I most definitely cannot afford to use it well. Yet, when people ask me if I’m a farm girl, I gloat and happily say yes. It is true that I have grown up hearing my father talk about how frustrating it is that the flood has taken away more than half our crop yield, or that he’ll have to sell X many cows if he expects to feed every cow with enough food this winter. But that’s just it I have heard stories like that all of my life, it’s all he talks about yet I still do not know how he operates the farm. I do not know his crop rotation, I do not know where he has decided to plow, I do not know how he knows every cow and bull in the fence, I just do not know…
I am in the line to inherit this land, yet I know nothing of it.
I feel that when I say that, I am a farm girl, diminishes those who work so hard to know the nature around them, to know how to cultivate it, or in Wendell’s words, to know how to converse with nature.
Wendell talks about a law that states, ” Land that is in human use must be lovingly used; it requires intimate knowledge, attention, and care.”
At this point in my life, I can honestly say that I could not tend to the land to the extent that my Father does now and I don’t know if I will be able to. My motivation to go back to the farm is very low. For so long I have been told to get an education and do better for myself then to live back home. I could have never predicted that it would be my education, my critical thinking, and my profs would subtly be pushing me back to the farm. Unfortunately that’s how I see it. That I would be working backwards. Talking to people who are still so captivated and blinded by the capitalistic and consumer culture, I too become blinded by greed. Through this cultural perspective, going back home would be seen as failure. I know in my heart that working with the land would have an ineffable spiritual value. My senses would connect to nature. I could learn to converse with nature… To learn and use all of my senses. So why!!! Why am I still so attracted to a culture that degrades and prevents the maturity of my mind and soul!!

One of the biggest questions that, The Nature Principle drew my attention to the most was, what do we miss seeing, hearing, and knowing because we allow the tangle of technology’s wire to tighten around us a little more each day? What else can we do that we have forgotten?

I have heard time and time again that human’s only tap into a very small amount of our brain throughout our daily lives. Meaning that there is such a vast amount that we do not harness nor take advantage of but how do we harness these senses? Yesterday, I was on my way to lead a seminar for Aboriginal studies. I was feeling rushed as I made a smoothie for the class. I looked in the cupboard to choose a cup for the smoothie, as I reached for the canning jar that I was going to make my cup, a voice came in my mind, “don’t use that one”. Now … I must admit that I am the type of person that can have a hundred conversations in my head, argue with myself, and both win and lose these battles. But THIS voice, it was different. Nevertheless, I shrugged it off and decided it was the perfect cup.

I longboarded to school shortly after, which then I proceeded to fall off my longboard where the glass cup broke and slit my hand open. I was overwhelmed with emotion at the time, yet now that I look back, I can hear that voice clearly. This brings me to another part of the book, poverty of the senses. I see that voice now, as my intuition. For such a long time I have not heard it, or maybe it is that I have not listened to it. I think that if any sense, this is one that I want to learn to listen to it. To be able to discern it in my head but most of all, learn to listen to what it is trying to warn me about.

Like I said earlier, we humans only tap into such a small part of our brains. I do not know how intuition works but there are so many times in my life where it could have been useful if I just listened. The mind, the brain, the heart all give us signals and I need to learn to listen.