Asters and Goldenrod, by Alex Ardila

After reading Robin Kimmerer’s chapter on Asters and Goldenrod I found myself looking for the things that contrast one another while on my walk in White Clay. The gold in the goldenrods and the purple in the asters were so unalike and different that it made each of them that much more vibrant when placed next to each other. What pairs in this nature were so clashing that in turn were able to complement each other so well? The green color and looseness of the leaves with the browns and sturdiness of the trunks. The shimmer and glow of the water with the matte, earthy tone of the mud. The natural quietness of the forest with the loud echoed chirps of the birds. The fast flow of the stream with the grounded stillness of the rocks in its way. The height of the trees compared with the smallness of me immersed in them. All of these things sharing the same idea that two things so different, can produce something so overwhelmingly beautiful, a sublime experience that science can’t explain.

I went more into a personal depth, and wondered about how the contrasts in me as a person could bring out something larger than I, something extraordinary. I was brought back to Kimmerer’s mention of Greg Cajete, a native scholar, who states that “in indigenous ways of knowing, we understand a thing only when we understand it with all four aspects of our being: mind, body, emotion, and spirit.”

Mind. I felt the small, quick connections occurring in my brain as I tried to figure out how nature was so angelic, so magnificent. Like Kimmerer explains, science “is rigorous in separating the observer from the observed, and the observed from the observer.” and only explains things in black and white. What I pondered about in my mind while in nature was something that you can’t experience with the knowledge of science. Then again, does the mind consist of connections not complex enough to understand the connections of this life, of this nature that created us, something so small made from something so immensely huge? The interconnectedness of the mind is small when compared to the interconnectedness of life, but it is big enough to understand that something so grandiose like our world and universe has given to us so much that we cannot give back, and in turn is something that we don’t deserve.

Body. As soon as I cross the border from campus to being within the trees of White Clay my body becomes calm and relieved. My lungs open and I can breathe better, my muscles lose their tense and I can stroll openly, my eyes and ears widen to let in the sights and sounds of the plants and animals. I am not just a body in the woods, I am a body in unison with the woods. Because I am there I am able to feel the crisp air on my cheeks with the coming of winter season. Because I am there I know what it’s like to have the trees lose their leaves for the gain of my colored, scattered pathway I now walk upon, the crunch of the leaves getting louder the deeper in I go. My human body within the body of the woods, a connection and love formed, one that cannot be appreciated unless physically being within. Because everything in nature comes together to form a force that is unexplainable, the contrast of the physical self and body immersed within a large energy allows the person so experience a heightened understanding and love for their surrounding nature.

Emotion. I am angry when I first enter White Clay; there are not enough hours in the day for a single Delaware student to simply finish all work for five classes. The stress grows as the piles of paper on my desk grow. It sticks with me, this stress, a weight on my shoulders that I am not able to shake off for the life of me. It weighs me down and my temples and eyelids start to numb with the headache created from the memorization of poems by the late Wordsworth and Byron. But yet again, I come back to this time when I first enter the life of the forest. How many people come here to cleanse, to pour out their emotions and stresses into the woods, so they can be lightened with the release of their anxiety or sadness? My guess would be many. We use nature as an emotional escape, something that can hold our deepest feelings either bad or good. There is a layer of emotion at the bottom of the forest floor that is soaked up by the roots of the trees and let out to the sky through the breathing of the leaves. We find comfort in our emotional connection to our land, something that cannot be experienced or properly carried out with the absence of love for it. This is the beneficial contrast of our closed in sorrows with the openness of the landscape.

Spirit. What is a spirit or a soul? I would say it is something invisible and immortal that lives inside us, something that never dies when we do, something that has a force affecting other forces around us. But does a spirit have to have a single kind of host or hosts? After being within woods, or a forest, or land, I would say no. I would say that the trees, plants, and all living things surrounding me in this land have a cumulatively combined force that forms into its own type of spirit. White clay, just like I, has a spirit. It provides an invisible energy that I feel when engrossed within it. A sublime connection between the invisible life-force of human and nature that allows an individual to appreciate what surrounds them, without being able to explain why, because of its essence of being unexplainable or even not understandable. The trees; physical. Us as humans; physical. Both completely different aspects when compared to the non-physical, spiritual connection formed when in the presence of one another. Yet, a force so powerful that it is able to bring us together in supernatural harmony.

Greater beauty from such divergent parts. “The beauty of one is illuminated by the radiance of the other” Kimmerer says. The reciprocity of each to allow a balance that is to be appreciated and create a preeminent value. The beauty in the contrast.

 

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