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Coyote and Ground Squirrel do not break the compact they have with each other that one must play predator and the other play game. In the wild a Black-tailed Hare gets maybe one free chance to run across a meadow without looking up. There won’t be a second. The sharper the knife, the cleaner the line of the carving. We can appreciate the elegance of the forces that shape life and the world, that have shaped every line of our bodies - teeth and nails, nipples and eyebrows. We also see that we must try to live without causing unnecessary harm, not just to fellow humans but to all beings. We must try not to be stingy, or to exploit others. There will be enough pain in the world as it it is.
Such are the lessons of the wild. The school where these lessons can be learned, the realms of the caribou and elk, elephant and rhinoceros, orca and walrus, are shrinking day by day. Creatures who have traveled with us through the ages are now apparently doomed, as their habitat - and the old, old habitat of humans - falls before the slow-motion explosion of expanding world economies. If the lad or lass is among us who knows where the secret heart of this Growth-Monster is hidden, let them please tell us where to shoot the arrow that will slow it down. And if the secret heart stays secret and our work is made no easier, I for one will keep working for wildness day by day.(from The Etiquette of Freedom by Gary Snyder - in The Practice of the Wild, a truly inspiring collection of his writings on wildness, freedom, goodness and grace. North Point Press, 1990. Shoemaker & Hoard, 2004)Posted on March 2, 2010 with 5 notes
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Today, the earth began exhaling.
All Winter, it held its breath,
Kept its fragrance to itself,
Held itself so tight, I could feel its ribs ache.
But, today, the earth began to smell again.What had been locked in its chest
Began to push back out at the world today.
Soon, primroses and garlic will follow that
Path of life’s breath into sunlight;
Now, it is simply the shifting, vital moment
Between the inhaling and
Exhaling of the Earth.The fingers of Winter loosened today;
That tight hand will become Summer’s palm
Where all of Life dances:
Myself and you and us and them
And all tomorrow’s children.Somewhere, in the centre of the Earth,
A spark leaps to the hibernating heart
And beneath the blackened leaves of Winter,
That great, essential drum resounds.Today, the earth began to smell again.
The sap turned around; life turned towards life.
The body of this great, wild woman,
This land that grows through my feet,
Shifted in her sleep and sighed.
She whispered something unmistakable.
Everybody heard.
The trees and rocks and the wild birds and me:
All Winter we were waiting
And, today, the earth began exhaling.
I wrote this over the last few days, after a single moment out in the woods here. It happened there, simply and amazingly, the moment of turning. Or at least my awareness of it: the knowledge that somehow, in some sense, Winter was over. Glory be!If you like it, follow the link (on the name) to the Coyopa writing blog and leave a comment - it does actually make a difference…
Posted on February 14, 2010 with 24 notes
Writer, wilderness rites of passage guide, storyteller, lurcher-walker, forest-roamer, stargazer, bread-baker, poem-speaker and life-lover. Also grows potatoes.
