Today my son’s class had a field trip to a marsh – 10 acres of protected land surrounded by strip malls and city streets. There are trails through the marsh, but being 5-year-olds, this group took more to the brush, weaving in and out of grasses, decaying leaves, pond water. As a microcosm of life, I’d say this marsh did a nice representative job: lots of chaos, few spots suitable for sitting down to rest.
As for my comfort level with the chaos, I am a lot like the girl from Tuesday’s sketch. Literally and metaphorically, I love the idea of dirt between my toes. I love the thought of being one with bugs and grasses and trees. I see a life trajectory for myself of ever more connection with nature.
But simultaneously, I fear it. I fear its foreignness and its power. I fear its seeming indifference to my comfort and well being. I fear – and this one’s hardest to name – what could happen to me were I to open myself more wholly to it. My efforts at constructing a self that I’m proud of and comfortable displaying in public feel, in the face of raw, untended nature, like a row of pansies planted in flimsy, plastic cups on the bank of a raging river known to flood. Laughable, in one respect. Pointless in another. Like they’ll wash away as quick as sand.
And truly, despite my long work on inner things, I’m not sure what would be left after such a washing.
I’m speaking here of fearing literal nature, but too the raw realities of life that pulse and flood and flow beneath all of us, all of the time. All of us are constructing ourselves all of the time – putting clothes on and make-up, wearing our degrees and accomplishments, covering over our fears and longings with every manner of food and practice and work and entertainment and exercise and next-best-things to buy. Even relationships do some covering for us. Children, too.
And if we’re lucky – or so we come to think – we maintain some semblance of order most of the time. We maintain our appearances and come to identify so strongly with the coverings that make them up that the raw stuff beneath those appearances begins to look foreign. Fearsome. Dirt we like the idea of feeling between our toes, but somehow never get around to taking our shoes off to try.
So here’s a marsh-thought from today: what if it’s possible to take small steps into raw nature – literally, or into the wilds of our own selves – and not only survive, but be all the better for it: more alive, more clean in the ways that matter, more real, somehow. And what if those small steps, maybe even in the company of a guide who knows more about those wilds than we, could turn into whole afternoons spent there, getting familiar with the wilds themselves, and also our own limitations in them. (There are times for risk and adventure, for example, and times to head back in to a soft couch and something warm to drink.)
I wonder whether the fear of losing our coverings – the things that on one level make us safe (“normal”, “successful”, “dutiful”, “pious”), or at the very least appear to be so, which is often what matters to us most – I wonder whether this fear could be faced and lived past not by giant strides into fearsome, unknown territory (backpacking for a week on steep terrain! quitting the day job now! commitments to years of therapy! ultimatums to people we love!), but by a walk through a small preserve on a March morning. By finding a guide or volunteer somewhere who can say one or two things about the plants and animals that grow there.
By a series of small steps into the wilds of our earth and the wilds of our own souls, we just might discover ourselves less foreigners in such places…less foreigners in every place…and more strongly, abidingly home.
Everything Belongs
Seasons are universal. Treat yours uniquely.
Oh Kristin, I feel such an intense kinship with this post, for it speaks so perfectly to exactly what I’ve been doing in recent months. In fact, it’s so perfect that it describes even for me why it has felt so good and led to such personal change. Particularly this part:
What if it’s possible to take small steps into raw nature – literally, or into the wilds of our own selves – and not only survive, but be all the better for it: more alive, more clean in the ways that matter, more real, somehow.
I wrote about this very thing this week, but I did a far less elqouent job of it. Thank you for this post, it’s timed just right!
Comment by Christine — March 3, 2011 @ 10:56 amIts like you read my journal, or something… :) This is a great post. As someone who loves the *big picture* stuff of life, the grand theories making sense of Everything, the importance of small steps cannot be emphasized too much. Right now my challenge is writing: an area comprehensive exam coming up, a dissertation prospectus, and a paper which I’m co-authoring with one of my professors. All good things, all exciting, but all overwhelmingly huge some days. So I like your reminder to start small. This inspires me to simply sit down, and write something down, an idea I have that I like, whatever–instead of allowing the pressure of Producing Great Work to steal away the small successes along the way. Thanks for another great post!
Comment by Lori — March 3, 2011 @ 11:00 amChristine, I’m going to check out your post right now. I LOVE it when there are echoes of our thoughts and path everywhere. Makes me feel surrounded by wonderful company.
Lori, YES. I often have this sense for what the future could or will hold (i.e. a finished piece of writing, a particular life situation) but feel mystified that it doesn’t just…HAPPEN. If I can see it so clearly, why must it involve the actual DOING of it?? But like you’ve said, the small steps are what it’s all about. I’m so glad for your company in these thoughts, too.
Comment by Kristin Noelle — March 3, 2011 @ 2:31 pmBeautiful, Kristin. Absolutely beautiful!
Comment by Susan Odle — March 3, 2011 @ 6:25 pmA bit of a tangent, but just yesterday I read an excellent piece about this dichotomy you refer to, between the things (and places and processes and etc.) we make that are orderly and comfortable to us, and things that are wild and unstructured and a little threatening. Actually wild places have an order to them too, but the order is too complex for our poor ape brains to grasp easily, and it makes us nervous. It comes down to an idea they term “legibility.” Check it out: http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-called-legibility/
Anyway from this it seems like it’s natural to seek and cling to order (and all the things you mention as coverings, are various types of orders we create and maintain), but also natural to feel a draw toward the wild, since that’s always been the source of everything that becomes part of any order.
Comment by Roland — March 3, 2011 @ 7:23 pmHi Kristin! I love this post. The sketch really struck home. I just bought several books related to a pursuit that I’ve wanted to get into for eighteen years, but haven’t done. I never had the time (I still don’t), or the space (I still don’t), and somehow eighteen years have gone by while I was up to my eyes with other things. I decided to go ahead and just get some BOOKS about it, at the very least, and read them thoroughly. Then, in a few years, when I have more time and the right kind of space, I may be able to do more. I’m enjoying taking a small step towards a long-held dream, and am concentrating on enjoying it (and not shooting it down). So the quote, “She bought them as a small step into what she’d always wanted. It felt like one of the most important things she’d ever done,” really hit home. Thank you for putting thoughts into words so beautifully.
Comment by Anne H. — March 3, 2011 @ 8:26 pmSusan, thank you. Thank you for a wonderful field trip location, too.
Roland, this quote from the article you site sums up a lot of what I’m thinking in this post: “[I]t is easier to comprehend the whole by walking among the trees, absorbing the gestalt, and becoming a holographic/fractal part of the forest, than by hovering above it.” I really love that sentence. And I love your second paragraph, too. YES!!! And in light of what you say, isn’t it so ironic that those very wilds, which have given birth to the order we create, become *by means of that order*, foreign to us? So strange!
Anne, the thought of you buying and reading those books makes my heart sing. *Precisely* what that drawing depicts. That drawing, truth be told, came directly from a purchase of hiking boots I made last year. Because of those boots, and the yearning for more connection with nature that made me buy them, our family has spent many a weekend this year learning how to hike – an activity we had never done before together. There really was the feeling when I bought them that something was being set in motion that far outweighed the surface import of the purchase.
I’m going to go email you about the *what* of your pursuit; you have me very curious!!! :)
Comment by Kristin — March 3, 2011 @ 10:35 pm