PUBLISHED: 09-08-08

Natural Tendencies: Critical Encounters’ personal narratives on Human/Nature

Live Simply

by Louis Silverstein
Faculty, Liberal Arts Education

I am walking on the land of upper Oregon, staying at the homestead of a friend who lives in a canyon surrounded by white chalk cliffs, holding out to all who are in need of healing a purity of place absent of time.

Unending strands of trees, poplar, pine, elm, sycamore, maple, willow and black walnut. Blue, orange, red, mauve, purple and yellow wildflowers. Raspberries, blackberries, huckleberries, dewberries and blueberries. Buckwheat and oats. Flat land, rolling land, dry land and wet land. Huge white clouds floating in a big blue sky.

Save for a slightly warm wind blowing in from the south, causing the leaves of the tree and the field of oats and buckwheat to dance slowly, the melodic and soulful singing of birds, and the fluttering wings of a stoned-on-nectar butterfly, all is still.

I sit myself at the foot of an aged tree, mother and crone being its essence. Bark is missing in places. Limbs are twisted giving off the appearance of gnarled hands while others have succumbed to disease, lightning or just age. Woodpeckers have carved out notches in the trunk in their search for insect food. Birds have constructed nests in the upper limbs. Ants scurry back and forth on the low branches.

I do not give my mind over to how this tree can be of use to me. I wonder how I can serve and learn from this elder, how I can dwell in its majesty?

Closing my eyes, I begin to rock back and forth on the balls and heels of my feet as waves of energy released from the tree float toward where I sit, bathing me with wisdom and peacefulness, impregnating me with nature’s grace. Peace above me. Peace below me. Peace all around me.

Trees do not cry out for notice and attention. Trees do not have pretense and wear costumes to hide what they are. Trees do not perform community service to save the planet by engaging in good works after 5 p.m. and on weekends to undo the damage that 9-to-5 work has inflicted on the planet. Trees are just there all the time doing their thing, planet support work. Holding the earth together, housing and feeding life, transmuting noxious and poisonous vapors into life-giving air, offering shade from the hot sun, beautifying the lands with their presence, reminding us that sometimes just being there, just being part of the community of life, is all that is needed.

To do something, take some action, in its presence. What this customarily has meant is a version of Caesar’s “I came. I saw. I conquered.” This stance being true whether it is the exploitation of its resources or climbing its mountains.

To see humans as the lens of the camera and thereby in control. The relationship between humans and nature is interdependent, and therefore it is important to take time to reflect upon how nature relates to us, how the natural world sees and experiences humans.

The fact that they (humans and nature) coexist (I use the word interdependent) is the most important lesson to be learned if we are to turn to a higher consciousness way of relating to nature.

In Gandhi’s words: “Live simply that others may simply live.”

LSilverstein@colum.edu

The aim of Natural Tendencies is to show the relationships between humans and nature, as well as to better understand human nature. This is the third edition of Critical Encounters.

If you would like to submit to Human “Natural Tendencies” please contact Kevin Fuller at 312-344-8505 or kgfuller@colum.edu.