One of those responsibilities is to leave it as healthy and beautiful as when we entered. If possible, we should leave it better. The most obvious way to do that is to remove all of the unsightly and unwanted trash that humans leave behind. Each day we collect a combination of plastic water bottles, aluminum drink cans, candy wrappers, glass bottles, styrofoam containers and the various packaging left on the bank and in the water by people who’ve been fishing, boating or hiking. We can’t keep up but we try, and thankfully so do others who live here.

I used to get angry at those who didn’t have the respect of nature or courtesy for others to take away the products they brought with them after turning them into trash. It is, I thought, as if they never intended to return. Surely they would not leave such a mess if they were intent on coming back. It would be like throwing one’s garbage into the corner of one’s living room or the floorboard of one’s car.

And so it is. That’s when the light came on and I forgot my anger.

What one does is what one is. To respect our natural surroundings is to respect ourselves. We learn that truth only by living it. You cannot do what you do not know. Once enlightened, you cannot go back and behave as before. It is a fortunate circumstance to have become aware of, and to have earned, that respect.

We cannot police our way to respect for the environment. It is just not possible to enforce common courtesy when the fountain that emits such spiritual intelligence is not turned on. But we can bring forth ideas that turn on the fountain, refresh the mind and foster the understanding that comes when one sees his reflection in the pool of his actions.  

It is heartening that to hear that a half million people attended an event on the mall in Washington D.C., last weekend and, according to the Wall Street Journal, left not a scrap of trash behind. Perhaps we are on the brink of a new consciousness, one that will extend all the way into our human activities in the wilderness.

I think of Thoreau’s two years at Walden. He recounts time spent observing the movement of a shadow in the doorway over the course of a day. (I always wanted to do that, and since I first read it almost 40 years ago I still haven’t taken a single day to do it.) He was also driven to measure and record everything measurable and recordable about the pond itself and the surrounding landscape. It is our human nature to do, to create, to busy ourselves with ostensibly productive activities quite apart from chopping wood, carrying water and other requirements for basic survival. Still, he made time to wax poetically on the spiritual nature of the experience and the woods’ effect on human culture in the surrounding communities.

As I bounce back and forth between the requirements of participation in society and letting myself free-fall into the time-lengthened realm of the natural environment, I find the quickest way to make the transition is to laugh at myself. How foolish to struggle against the feeling I can’t get ‘inside nature’ fast enough! Indeed, what IS real time? Humility helps me set my internal clock, so to speak, to run closer to nature’s time.

The more I vanish into nature, the more natural it seems to want to be there compared to time spent in the everyday workaday world. Each time it’s harder to come back out. Rather, I don’t want to come out, because the world that  previously seemed so real and all-important now seems pretentious, superficial and a tragic waste of time. Here’s a cautionary note, however, just in case you’re toying with the idea of going off the grid even part-time: Conferring with nature on a regular basis is a life-changing commitment. Your behavior will change. In the short term, friends and family might think you are becoming eccentric, or dropping out (like you did that summer in the ‘60s). They might worry about you, and cite your occasional unshaven face, cockleburs in your shirt or general dishevelment.

In the long term, they might come around a lot less or stop inviting you to dinner parties. Oh, well. You can always buy time by explaining that your new hobby is on the order of meditation; but in point of fact the entire experience expands into an entirely different dimension to the extent you are willing to accept the change. That is to say, we don’t make the rules out there; we don’t even pretend to make the rules. We simply exist alongside nature until alongside becomes within, and eventually within becomes the same as.

Every time I come back from a walking meditation I feel changed, a little more pleased with life. But not SO pleased with myself in that I forget how, or wish not, to communicate with people. I’ve made a choice, and while it’s reasonable that I might need to explain it, it is not necessary to convince anyone that I am smarter or better than anyone else. Aw, geez, again with the humility. Mindfulness in; mindfulness out.

So I’ll go out into the trees again today. I cannot NOT do it any more than I can put off breathing for a day. The essence of the attraction can be summed up by this remarkable passage from Loren Eiseley’s “The Hidden Teacher” :

“…The human body is a magical vessel, but its life is linked with an element it cannot produce. Only the green plant knows the secret of transforming the light that comes to us across the far reaches of space. There is no better illustration of the intricacy of man’s relationship with other living things.”

Joan’s evening piano invention captured the spirit of the day nicely. I named it Cusp of the Season. Enjoy.

Tree Bones
Study them
Climb them
Lay beneath them
Lay on them
Pick them up
Observe how they
Have landed
Disarray to some
To others
Exactly as they
Should be

Things flow
let them flow
streams, rivers, valleys
water runs
gravity pulls
dirt settles
rocks level
diamonds
in time
Let God
carefully pour
items of the universe
power and spirit
into place
Matter drips
expands
fills the void
now
for all time
in time

– Denton Ketels © 2007

Walk
One foot, then another
Start over
Breathe in, breath out
The dirt path is covered in brown needles
Sunlight gleams off the water in the late afternoon.
The scent of the library is still on the books
It is a hopeful smell
The boards on the bridge are wearing nicely
They will probably last all our lives
If the gully doesn’t wash it out.
Too few people cross
To wear it out
Moss covered stones lay in place.
They form an outline of time
Nothing’s changed
In seventy years.
A lifetime.
Ours.

We walk this circle
And never tire.
So much green
A little blue
Even less red and yellow.
Musky dirt and leaves
Popped up knee high over night.
It will be different tomorrow.
Veer home to a warm glow.
There are no mistakes to be made. No
People to please or disappoint. No
Disapproval. Anymore.
Quiet. Just
Enough space to live. A roof.
A door.
The world minds its own business. And
we mind ours. Just enough time.
To live.

– Denton Ketels

Trees speak,

Water guides,

Paths wind.

Grass simply grows.

Birds are the barometer

Of life itself.

Fire provides,

Soil holds

The matter that breathes air.

Blue, green, yellow, red,

Liquid, vapor, solid,

Soul and spirit.

Stillness at the speed

Of light, energy

And thought.

– Denton Ketels