Once I spoke the language of the flowers,/ Once I understood each word the caterpillar said/…Once I heard and answered all the questions of the crickets,/ And joined the crying of each falling, dying flake of snow,/ Once I spoke the language of the flowers… How did it go?/ How did it go?
-Shel Silverstein, “Forgotten Language”
My junior year at my Catholic high school I went on a religious overnight retreat with my classmates. For one of our activities, we were paired up and asked to talk about a topic I can’t recall. I ended up with my good friend PJ, and we sat in a field and watched the sunset as we talked. I asked him, “have you heard the song ‘I Saw God Today’, George Strait?” It’s a song about seeing God in little things all around you. I continued “because this sunset reminds of that song.” This still holds true for me today. I look at a sunset, a flower in the desert, a burning tree in autumn, and feel a spiritual connectedness that I don’t experience anywhere else. Maybe this is part of the reason why I’ve departed from the religion I was born, raised, and educated in.
My trip to the woods this week reinforced those feelings I first expressed five years ago, and David Abram’s The Spell of the Sensuous helped me to better verbalize and understand them. I started on the trail to the place where I visit with the advice Dr. Jenkins gave last Tuesday: view the world around you as a subject. It was much harder than I expected, but nonetheless I tried. I began by looking at the trees all around, and recognizing that each was a unique individual. Although I did my best not to ascribe human characteristics to them, I wondered if it would offend the trees to be referred to as just a “tulip poplar” or “maple”, let alone a “tree”, if trees could get offended. Either way, I worked very hard to see a grove of individuals rather than just “trees”, and beyond that, all of the organisms around me as individuals. It was overwhelming and eerie at first, to be surrounded by a forest of Others, or spirits. Never had I walked through these woods before and thought about the fact that not only am I perceiving, but I am being perceived by everything else at the same time, even the things I cannot sense. So, I did the only thing I could think to do: be polite. I greeted everything I saw with a shy and reserved “hello”. It felt very silly at first. I was saying hi to a tree. But, it was not about the words, it was about the gesture, the acknowledgement that I was among others. I was fascinated to read my feelings reflected in Abram’s writings, and hoped that one day I might reach the point where my “experience of the forest is nothing other than the forest experiencing itself” (68).
After a while of verbally saying hello, I realized I could take my salutations one step further: I could touch each tree I walked past as well. Although I saw it as familiarizing both of us to each other, Abrams made me realize that not only could I feel the tree, the tree could feel me just the same. It was just another reminder that I had a long way to go before I truly transitioned from instinctive objectivity to conscious subjectivity.
By the time I reached the field, I was overwhelmed by and cloaked in the vitality that surrounded me. I made it about halfway across when I finally just couldn’t walk anymore, and dropped to the ground. I laid on my back, feeling the contact between myself and each leaf and blade of grass. The wind was blowing, and each tree was dancing in unique, unrepeatable movements. I watched one particular sycamore tree in front of me; it completely entranced me. I watched the leaves, in their various shades of green, yellow, and red, move both as individuals and as one. It was hypnotizingly beautiful. I took turns trying to turn off each of my senses: I closed my eyes and felt and listened. I tuned out noise and just watched and felt. I listened and watched as if I were floating on nothing. I could have laid there for hours, just watching the world go on around me. In that moment, I swore I could feel the roundness of the earth.
It took me 30 minutes just to reach the stream. I sat down, and I looked at all the fallen leaves around me. Each one is a story, and has a million stories to tell. Soon, these leaves will break down and return to the earth, where they will then support new life. Sitting there, surrounded by my newly recognized companions, the concept of reincarnation gained a new meaning for me. When something dies, it goes back to the ground where it decomposes and becomes nutrients for new life. Our bodies nourish a seed, which feeds and insect, then a bird. The water in us eventually becomes rain, or enters a stream. And we slowly travel all over the world, becoming new. Reincarnation is both logic and magic.
Before I left, I found myself singing to the life around me. I don’t exactly know why. I couldn’t discern if it was my way of breaking what I now found to be an awkward silence between me and my nonhuman companions, or because singing is the really the only socially acceptable way of making noise when not accompanied by other people, or because singing is what you do when you are with friends. Regardless, I sang to them. As I was leaving, I thought about Abram’s experience of returning to U.S. and losing his connection with the natural world, and how this happened to me every week once I left the woods. I hope one day I can hold on to it. As I walked out, I did the only thing I could think to do: say “thank you” to the place that I entered every week for having me.