Communicating Nature Experiences

"I had my backyard landscaped this week. I had a wonderful time greeting my new "family" of bushes, flowering plants, and a beautiful weeping cherry tree. I welcomed them and expressed my appreciation for their gifts of beauty and serenity.

My backyard is now a place with a purpose: nature's essence! And, I am hoping the neighborhood will benefit as well as I.

I shared my nature-connected statements with only one person, a friend whom I quickly discovered is deep in new brain (5-leg) thinking. I told her of expressing appreciation to the trees who helped me through a rough patch, and she looked at me as if I had just said that NASA discovered the moon is made out of green cheese! I didn't have an opportunity to take her outside for a walk in the wooded area, we were both immersed in a big project, but I do plan to do that this week. I hope I can share some of the basics with her...asking permission , gaining acceptance, being aware of attraction."

Response: I'm finding that with a little practice, the 9-leg thinking story is like an easy" bumper sticker" way of getting myself and other into the Natural Systems Thinking Process (NSTP) and going on with it as new-brain/old brain 53 sense awareness or discussion.  I simply ask their consent to let me share a little story with them that helps them understand the model or logic that I think with.  Once the nine-leg story is introduced, NSTP  becomes available to ourselves and others.  In conversations or arguments, it levels the playing field once I get folks to consent to hear the story. Then their sense of reason can't simply avoid or dismiss the story's rationale, or if it does, it also explains why we might see things differently and still remain friends. I seek and respect 4-leg input, they not-so-much.  It does take a little practice, but seems to be effective in this role.  Has anyone else successfully experimented with this?

Comments

[Juneve and David Givens]

September 12, 2007 7:33:02 PM CDT--David's Birthday celebration

David took 11 and 12 off to celebrate his birthday. We motored to the Cooks' camper on Round Lake, then backtracked (car) five miles to Waboose Lake. It was pretty windy early on in the afternoon, so waited till the wind died down somewhat at 4 pm and returned to thecamper in the dusk around 7:30. With the quartering wind and waves, it took us more time than usual to paddle across the lake to the good H. C. picking spot... the one we have been accessing for several yearsnow. We picked five ice cream pails full - all we had along. The crop is so good this year that we did not even make a small dent in it. Very large and sweet, too. This is up on Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge. Berry picking is allowed after September 1 each year. The way back was into the wind, so the old muscles got a good workout!! Whew!!

The clouds were mostly gone by 5 pm with just a few puffy ones floating overhead to make for great scenery. More highbush cranberry foliage was already red rather than its usual bright green contrast to the red berries than in years past since we were at least a week later for picking. Weather was not conducive to canoeing earlier on. The red oaks are just now beginning to turn color around the edges. The two osprey nests, occupied earlier, now stood empty.

Last night, being away from the city lights, we decided to go out star-gazing around 2 a.m since we were up-in-the-night anyway. There was frost on the railings. It was a wonderful sight to behold with even the Milky Way visible.

Early this morning, sitting out by the lake watching the sunrise and mist rising off the lake, first one, then another of this year's hatch bald eagles flew right over our heads. The first one did not see us; the one following noticed us and with some squawks, abruptly changed altitude. The young-uns are not as graceful as the adults, but then, they are only a few months old. I cannot even fly, so there, me.

On return home, we cleaned our pickings out in the screened tent, about an hour's work. They are now all cooked, squished, and seeds tossed out. Total without sugar is about three gallons of thin (just drained), and thick (squished through the pointy colander) material. I'll freeze most of it to be made into finished product later in the year. It takes up much less space that way. Our freezer is getting pretty full of summer's gleanings and Brad will be off deer hunting this fall. We still have some ground venison left from last year. We do not eat as much as we used to, thank goodness, or we would be gigundas!!

I am tired, but it is a good kind of tiredness. Perhaps David will write more. Bye, juneve

Hi--our annual report on fall highbush cranberry picking activities written by Juneve. Couple of interesting tag-on points by me for my Nameless friends --you. We saw and heard Raven. Spoke to and thanked for being present with us. We are not really living in the usual range for ravens. They live farther north and east from Tamarack Refuge.

While picking the berries I realized I had been whistling a song, but it wasn't whistling and it wasn't humming. There were no words. It wasn't out loud and it wasn't under my breath/mind. This song went on for almost the whole time in the patch. It was Nameless conversing with me and I with Nameless I finally realized. When named, it soon went silent.

Juneve and I have both learned, somehow, to leave some of Nature's bounty for our web mates--sharing. Don't pick a bush totally clean. A wild creature may need the sustenance. We picked four buckets and decided to leave so we loaded the canoe and paddled into the tamarack swamp inlet because we like to visit it when we go to Wauboose (Rabbit) Lake. It was a completely different world in contrast to the lake and the strong, loud wind and waves. It was like entering a separate universe. We got back out on the lake and saw more berries on the bank and one empty bucket in the bottom of the canoe. Yes or no?

The bushes were still red and so fully loaded we could never make a dent in the patch. For our grand finale, we picked close at hand together on the same shrub into one bucket, and then re-embarked into the golden light of the sun/sky/water looking for the landing a mile off inside the halo glare low on the horizon. We were the only two humans on the lake.

Web hugs,
David

[Catrien Ross]

Permission

The heat and humidity return today. But I wander outside and ask permission to sit in the shade of the ancient ginkgo tree. Grasses seemed to wave their greeting, and I am grateful for their invitation. A slight breeze tickles the hairs on my bare left arm. I close my eyes to better sense this touch - like a welcome caress connecting me to the warm air. At my feet darts the tiniest lizard, a black and gold striped body, just over an inch long, not measuring the curving, blue-green tail. A living jewel. In the trees the birds are very active today. A black wasp hovers near the woven tatami mats I stacked against the wall, but it soon flies away. One dog decides to leap up and sit beside me. Another leans against my left leg. Everything feels slow and lazy, including me. Bees buzz all around. Various fragrances reach my nostrils on the breeze. Everywhere is green upon green in every shade and nuance of green. The wind increases, blowing over my face and stirring the leaves like a benediction. By asking permission I open to the senses that surround me and touch me. What I am looking at is looking at me because I am here, too, a part of it all. I rest my eyes on the shadowed earth under the trees, at the places where the sun glints through and lights the soil. A dragonfly lands on a dancing leaf - double wings and a bright red body, the sign of approaching autumn in Japan. My heart stretches, opens, fills with gratitude. I want to stretch it as far and as wide as I can, touching everything in me and around me. I feel my place, and it is right and good.

[Francie]

Thanks to all of you for continuing this deeper discussion of the senses, the categories, and using the wholeness of our earth-beingness to connect with nature. As I sat on the tree in the park the other day, I radiated out my energy to connect with the bayou and all the living creatures when a small hawk flew from the trees on my left to fly across the bayou to perch on a brush pile where they have been scraping the silt from the bayou and cutting down the brush. The hawk must have found something to eat there for it stayed there for a good while, flew to a tree across from me, and then flew back to the brush pile. It was hard to see the hawk because it blended in so well with the coloring of the brush and the trees--I had to focus on its movement to keep it in sight. Since there are all these large earth moving machines at the bayou, it is not a pleasant place to connect with nature unless it is Sun. A neighbor mentioned he's noticed opposums & racoons being displaced due to this work(?) & destruction of their habitat. It seems like they do this every few years...Our rainy, cloudy days have stopped and we are plunged into intense heat, humidity, bright sun and 98 degree days. It is quite a transition for the plants after all the rain. Love, Francie

[Catrien Ross]

Natural Insights

The next time I go out I sense a welcome from the young persimmon tree. It is perky, as if smiling at me to go ahead. I stop my breath and hold it for what seems like a long time. I want to breathe again - I am holding a leaf of the persimmon tree in the fingers of my right hand. I release my breath and breathe in again from the leaf. I feel relief that I can do this, that my breath can function again. It feels so comforting, so assuring. I repeat the activity. Each time I sense this gratitude. Closing my eyes as I breathe with the plant, I sense the texture of the leaf more and more acutely. The two sides of the leaf are very different. The upper side is shiny, almost leathery - this is the side that faces the world and interacts with its surroundings. The underside is softer, velvety, more vulnerable. I am the same, I realize. My survival personality, the side that interacts with the human world, is different from my hidden side. We learn to live with these different aspects of ourselves. We develop a personality to survive because the human world does not mirror the natural connection and love that we feel. In this break in empathy - our natural sense to relate and feel - we become our outer and inner selves. But can I become integrated like this leaf - become all of a piece, whole? I feel that I can.

Looking more closely at the leaf, touching it, I see all its details. There is a tiny hole. It is nibbled around the top edge. The deep green is faded in parts. Other parts are mottled. It is like looking - really looking - at the face of someone you love and seeing everything that time and age and experience and the weather has put there. All the nibbled edges, the imperfections that become perfection through the strength of love, the acceptance of the flaws that become beauty through the eyes of love.

As I repeat the activity - stop breathing, breathe again with the tree - an image of the leaf enters me. It is a glowing image in my mind. As we breathe together the image expands and contracts. We are moving in and out together. I open my eyes and acknowledge that it feels so good to be breathing like this, at this moment, in this garden, on this day. I touch my lips to the leaf in thank you. Tears come to my eyes. I have lived enough, I think. It is enough. All this is enough. I do not ask for more. I bow to the tree and whisper thank you.