However, what form we will keep publishing in is uncertain. In the first four months of 2002, our income came in at approximately half the rate we need to continue printing a bound newsstand-ready magazine. Given our current financial situation, we need to attract substantially more subscribers and supporters to continue in our current format. TL is determined to continue. But without a substantial boost in income, our next issue will have to be a special subscribers-only edition, still with the same inspiring contents and same high-quality paper, but in the form of 8-1/2" x 11" sheets hand-stapled by the editor and other volunteers.
Times are hard everywhere, it seems. Every responsible business we know (including Lost Valley Educational Center itself) is down in income, and struggling. You yourself likely are too. On a larger scale, many environmental and social indicators might lead one to conclude that the world as a whole is going to hell in a handbasket. Whether we can afford to keep publishing our little journal of ecological culture is a question that pales in comparison to-for example-whether this planet has enough topsoil and water left to last the human race through the 21st century-or even half way through it, let alone beyond it. In our lifetimes, we are likely to see changes that we can only imagine right now. What those changes are will be the collective result of our intentions, what kind of a world we put our energy and resources toward. If Talking Leaves speaks to your own visions for a viable future, please support us in any way you can and share us with your friends. It's time for many more of us to learn how to swim. Thanks for your attention! And enjoy this issue.
©2002 Talking Leaves
Summer 2002
Volume 12, Number 2
Ecopsychology, Self and Place
Did the people who decided what to do with this land know that the old Gravenstein apple tree they destroyed had produced the best tasting apples of any tree in the neighborhood? That in one year I had made eight gallons of cider and four gallons of applesauce from it? Did they know that that tree had once shaded a beehive from which I harvested twelve gallons of honey in one year? Did they know that the overgrown hedge they removed had once sheltered clouded salamanders and a California quail? That a sharp-shinned hawk had once caught a sparrow here? Did they think about the beauty of lilac bushes ten feet tall covered in huge purple blooms before they chopped them down? Would they have been surprised to hear that I saw twenty-five species of wild birds and five species of wild mammals living in this small city lot?
Did they know that before they turned the side yard into a parking lot, kids used to swing nets through the tall grass here and exclaim excitedly about the bugs that they caught? For this was the birthplace of Nearby Nature, the non-profit environmental education group that I started ten years ago. I put up a yurt under the pear tree that used to be here, and that was our classroom. We held many board meetings and mailing parties in my living room. At a meeting under the apple tree, my friend and I once persuaded a donor to give $10,000 to our new group.
But more than that, this place was my home and I loved it dearly. The many trees and bushes around my little house and yard made it a special place, separate and apart from the surrounding bread factory, bank drive-up teller, six lanes of Franklin Boulevard, and the university dorms. I am glad to see the large trees have been spared from the destruction, even though that means they must have torn down the house rather than move it, since they could not have gotten it out from between these three trees without cutting one down. Since the bread factory that owned it never did any maintenance, the demise of the house was inevitable. As a renter, I did what I could, but when I found a mushroom sprouting up out of the bathroom floor, I realized this old house needed way more work than I could give it. Before they tore it down, I hope they salvaged some of the old growth wood and the antique glass doorknobs.
The imprint of the foundation still shows in the squared off roots of one of the trees that grew too close. The other two trees grew close as well, thus they still define the space that was my house, just 25 feet by 25 feet. How small it looks now that the house is gone, and yet it was enough. I lived a full, rich life in that small space between the trees. But a big part of that fullness and richness came from what was outside the house. Like hearing a great horned owl hooting in the tree over the house and raccoons running on the roof. Or sitting on my bed soaking up the sun coming in my south-facing window and delighting in the daisies, dandelions, and grape hyacinths blooming in the lawn next door. Or taking my dog out to the dead-end alley and hitting tennis balls for her to retrieve. Or visiting my neighbor Mike and marveling at the wonderful organic garden he created out of a lawn. Or picking buckets full of these awesome orange plums that grew on a couple scraggly trees in the alley. That lawn, the alley, Mike's house and garden, and the plum trees have all been lost now to another university parking lot and a huge graduate student housing complex.
One day when I lived there, a man came to my door and marveled at how the cottonwood tree had grown. He said he had lived in this house for 13 years and wanted to see if it was still here. I could tell that he too had loved this place. Since I moved out six and a half years ago, I too have found myself drawn back by some inexplicable urge. Each time I returned, I saw changes in the neighboring university land, but my old house and yard has remained essentially intact until this latest visit. I am surprised that it lasted as long as it did. I used to have fantasies about staging a protest to protect this place. My fellow environmental activists would have laughed at me. In the big scheme of things, saving this place was not a battle worth fighting. But I also know that my home gave me energy that I used to fight the bigger battles for ancient forests, wetlands, and roadless areas. No one can have the energy to fight those battles for long unless they find a home ground that nourishes them and renews their ties with nature on a daily basis. I started Nearby Nature to help others find that home ground, as I had, in city parks. But seeing my old home destroyed has made me realize that parks are not enough. Private lands matter too. Neighborhoods matter.
Every day, all over our country, countless little places like this are destroyed. Places that people love. Places where wild animals live. Places full of memories. For the most part, the people who do the destruction and the people who live or work there afterwards never know what came before, what was destroyed. So I write this to bear witness to this place I loved so that others will know what was lost here. Maybe someday we can have land-use laws that respect the land as a living community and value the knowledge and wisdom that come from living on a piece of land for a long time. As it is now, the land-use laws here served only to save a few trees. The pending land-use decision described on the sign is whether or not to put up a cell phone tower here. An important decision, yes, but no more important than the decisions already made which destroyed my former home, so dear to my heart, with no opportunity for my voice to be heard.
Sharon Blick is a sound sleeper, otherwise she might not have loved this former home (affectionately known as the Bun House, because it was too small to be a whole loaf) owned by and adjacent to the biggest bread factory in Oregon (you can't call it a bakery), where huge flour trucks would arrive in the middle of the night and hook up to a big vacuum, then the drivers would pound the sides with a big rubber mallet to get the last bit of flour to come out.
©2002 Talking Leaves
Summer 2002
Volume 12, Number 2
Ecopsychology, Self and Place
And yet sometimes, even in those first weeks, she would break into a fresh and beatific smile, mysterious and glowing. Sometimes there appeared a flash of fire in her eyes that let me know that she was in her power and ready to do battle with dragons of her own making or those set in front of her on her chosen path. It was clear to me, even then, that Carrie was not a simple woman, easy to understand, nor was she ready to simply be put into a box or dehumanized by a label that was supposed to describe who she was and how she ought to act.
While a garden apprentice at Lost Valley Educational Center, Carrie chose to become a student in a weekend workshop we offer here. It is called Naka-Ima, which is roughly translated from its Japanese roots to mean "in the middle of now." This is one of the avenues for personal growth that give a common language and a semi-structured way of helping our diverse and changing community stay in honest and loving communication with one another. The workshops are also offered to individuals from outside the community who want to learn more communication skills and enhance their lives. Carrie attended a Naka-Ima workshop the first week after becoming a Lost Valley apprentice. She fell in love with Naka-Ima, especially in the way that it allowed her to express her various feelings openly and seemed to validate her sense of uniqueness. In addition, she found that the love, affection, acceptance, and growing sense of community made a huge impression on how she saw herself.
As summer came on, Carrie left Lost Valley to explore the next steps along her path. As a BA student in Goddard College's Health Arts & Sciences: Nature, Culture & Healing Program, in Vermont, she had other adventures to pursue in her quest for truth. Since Goddard is a school that wholly supports student-centered learning, Carrie had planned to go to India to study yoga and laughing meditation. She bought her ticket, made arrangements, and was, in fact, ready to take off for India when the events of September 11th gave her cause for concern about what would happen next. How would these events and the global response to them affect her ability to travel, her personal safety, and her acceptance within a foreign culture? Like many students planning to explore the world of international study, she postponed and ultimately abandoned her plans to do her research abroad during this unstable time in our global history.
Now Carrie faced the dilemma of switching horses in mid-stream and looking for what other research she might do that would both fulfill her Goddard requirements while also holding her attention and sense of aliveness long enough for her to complete her BA degree program. It was at this point that she contacted Lost Valley to see if it might be possible for her to look more deeply into the techniques and philosophies behind the practice of honesty as taught through Naka-Ima. Both Goddard and Lost Valley were pleased with her choice of Naka-Ima as her major focus for senior study research and final paper, and gave her permission to proceed.
Carrie wrote about her first Naka-Ima experience, sent out a questionnaire to past Naka-Ima participants, and studied other related personal growth modalities. She participated in another Naka-Ima workshop, this time as an assistant. At the time, Carrie was feeling blocked in the completion of her schoolwork and she chose to utilize the Naka-Ima process within a triad of assistants to face and break through her resistance. I was aware of Carrie's fear of failure around actually completing her degree program and hoped that she would find the desire and will to move forward with her work. It was quite a joyful moment to observe and support her when she re-remembered who she was in her essence and that she really had the strength to succeed in this goal in her life.
At the end of the workshop, Carrie volunteered to become the Goddess of Concrete in a ritual enactment that symbolically reinforces the next steps that students commit to when they leave the workshop. She dressed up to portray a Goddess figure and danced up to each student on the platform, one after another, presenting them with magical stones to hold their dreams and visions for who they were choosing to become as a result of their growth during the workshop. She interacted with each student in a unique manner which reflected an acknowledgment of their own stated commitments.
As a fellow assistant that weekend, I was able to observe Carrie throughout this process. I was particularly interested in seeing how much growth had taken place in her over the nine months or so that I had known her. Certainly, I saw a new sense of personal style with perhaps a softer sense of her femininity, a deeper sense of self assurance, and a willingness to confront her fears and frustrations and come out the other side. Was there also more peace and even a certain happiness, joy, or sense of pride in evidence in her actions and the way she carried her body? It seemed that an observable shift had taken place.
This enhanced sense of Self is a quality that I often notice in someone who has made a choice to take charge of her or his own life and begin to take the steps necessary to mold a life that reflects a deeper inner being. Many young people seem dominated by the images that have been fed to them by the outside culture, foisted upon them by parents, economic circumstances, or lack of seeing any alternatives. Carrie is one of the many people whom I have had the opportunity to watch and support going through this journey of self-discovery. As a past college teacher in a number of alternative programs, I have loved the job of supporting students in their struggles to find out who they really are, what they want to become in the world, and then in creating for themselves lives that reflect those values.
I was very pleased and delighted when Carrie and Goddard chose me to act as a Second Reader for her final Senior Study under Goddard's Off-Campus Healing Arts Program. It somehow seemed a perfect fit for everyone. While Goddard is located in Vermont, this part of Carrie's work was being done here in Oregon. Not only do I live at Lost Valley Educational Center, where she had been an apprentice last year and had taken Naka-Ima, but I have served as a Naka-Ima assistant since we first brought these workshops to Lost Valley in 1996. Because I was uniquely qualified to assess Carrie's writings and reflection about the theory, philosophy, and processes of Naka-Ima, her Goddard Program Director and Advisor have been able to rely on my eyes and ears to pick up the kinds of nuances, needs, and reflections that they might not notice at a distance from her writing alone. In the meantime, Carrie was able to personally sit down and share her joys and frustrations with someone who knew her, Naka-Ima, and the kind of educational process she was undertaking. And for me, the greatest reward was to be able to bring one more strand of my life back into my daily activities. I was a college teacher in Vermont and New England more than twenty years ago and have been hoping to find a way to again serve in this manner with dedicated and self-directed students who want to enhance their lives through further education.
The Lost Valley Apprenticeship Program, Naka-Ima workshops, and Goddard College's Health Arts & Sciences Program all have elements that are designed to bring individuals into more alignment with who they most want to be in the world. It would be hard to assess, in Carrie's case, which of these three deserves the most credit for the subtle, but striking transformation that is taking place within this young woman. Certainly, she herself is at the center of the changes in her life, and yet somehow she has been wise enough to choose an interdisciplinary approach and diverse opportunities that clearly have enhanced her likelihood of creating a life that works for her. Carrie will never be a "run of the mill" woman, but my guess is that she now possesses some of the direction, drive, and power that will give her worldly success while also feeling strong enough to open her heart and share her vulnerability with others. For me, these are ideal qualities to find in a person who wants to make the world a better place, as Carrie certainly does.
It is always a gift to witness and play a part in another individual's transformation, and I feel happy to have become a support person in Carrie's life path. It will be fun to check in with her over the years to see how she chooses to impact the world. Already, she has helped me relearn the fact that what a person wears or the expression on her face does not necessarily reflect the depth of her being. I have been reminded to look below the outer trappings and find the soul within.
Dianne Brause helped create Lost Valley Educational Center in 1989, and has lived here ever since.
Carrie Koester writes: "This is what these programs have done for me--supported me in my search for myself, my direction, my education, my goals, dreams, aspirations. For the first time in my academic career, I could ask myself 'What do I want to learn? What am I interested in? And how can I accomplish my goals?' Because of the support from Goddard and Lost Valley, I am now more empowered to do these things by myself, on my own. They provided me with alternatives in a scary world where conformity is celebrated and encouraged. They gave me the freedom to find my own way of learning and the guidance to find Me. I will soon be graduating and continuing on my path with the tools, support and sense of community that I have gained during this past year. Yeah!"
©2002 Talking Leaves
Summer 2002
Volume 12, Number 2
Ecopsychology, Self and Place
Luna was holding a large mango seed, having just finished snacking on a mango on her way out to the garden.
"I might try planting it," I suggested on impulse. I knew no one who'd ever planted a mango seed or grown a mango, but I suppose it was an inspired moment, because I couldn't think of why not to try putting the seed in a pot in a warm place to see what would happen. Mangoes were tropical trees, far out of their region here in the Pacific Northwest, but perhaps with some coddling a plant could be grown, even if it never bore fruit.
Luna was initially surprised by my suggestion, but liked the idea, found a pot, and planted the seed. "I thought you were going to tell me that you'd put it in the compost, or throw it into the woods or onto a pile of mulch. It didn't occur to me that I could plant it."
"I hadn't thought of it before with mango seeds either, but I don't see why, given the right conditions, it wouldn't grow."
I reflected a little on what might be necessary to get a mango seed to grow.
"Of course, in order to sprout, it might need scarification of some kind. It might need to be physically damaged, or to go through a temperature cycle that mimics what happens to it in its natural environment before it sprouts."
I knew that many temperate zone fruit tree seeds need to be nicked with a knife or put in a freezer for a period before they will break dormancy and grow. Other seeds, such as those from redwood trees, require fire in order to sprout. Until those things happen, conditions for the new plant are not likely to be amenable to growth. Some sort of physical tumbling-around, seasonal temperature fluctuations, or other exposure to transformative conditions, combined with the passage of time, seems necessary to break such seeds out of their waiting period--during which they are still very much alive--and into active growth. Those which never receive the signals that conditions for growth are favorable will eventually lose vigor and die. Some may sprout only to encounter adverse conditions, and will die quickly. Others, however, will live long lives.
We spent the rest of that morning's gardening period harvesting kale for an activist conference here at Lost Valley. The kale was a volunteer crop, having sprouted from seeds spread by other kale plants which themselves had volunteered in previous seasons. Perhaps four years ago, we had actually planted kale in that section of the garden, but since then, it had planted itself. Unlike mangoes and other perennial fruits, kale is an annual--and a vigorously self-seeding one at that. Kale seeds, too, choose favorable conditions to sprout in, but they sprout much more easily and readily than their harder-shelled, perennial counterparts in the world of woody plants.
What caused me to suggest the planting of a seed that I was fairly certain would never grow into a tree that would actually bear fruit? Was it the DNA within the mango seed itself speaking to me, wanting to be expressed? Or was I perhaps being influenced by the kale seeds that had grown into these kale plants, conspiring on behalf of their perennial brethren? And if these particular kale plants weren't talking to me, was I being influenced by the kale I had eaten the day before, or the week before, or for the many years leading up to this morning? Had a gardening bug sent from the plant world gotten into my ear and drowned out my common sense to such an extent that I was now advocating frivolous experiments such as planting tropical fruit seeds?
What, I wondered as I continued to harvest, is a seed? What is the difference between a seed and me? A seed seems to be mainly potential, promise--spirit, in a sense, just barely manifesting in physical form. The seed contains all the information necessary for the growth and reproduction of the whole plant, but it is contained in the tiniest (or sometimes, as in the case of the mango, not-so-tiny, but still amazingly compact) package. Given favorable conditions for growth, that seed will start the miracle of transformation, re-arranging, and re-integration that results in many parts of the "environment" becoming part of that plant, and the plant, in turn, becoming its environment. The "boundary" of the organism--if such a term can even have real meaning in such a complex web of transformation and exchange--is never easy to define, and certainly always changing. "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together" applies equally well to kale plants, earthworms, soil microorganisms, leaf litter, sunshine, wind, water, beetles, Beatles, me, and you. And yet sometimes an individual manifestation, like "that kale plant," "this poet," "that mango," "this piece of mashed-together plant fibers with soybean-ink imprinted on it so as to spell these words"--sometimes the individual is the gateway to seeing the universal. Moreover, the whole doesn't hold together just as one homogenous mass (think of a body composed only of skin cells)--it's only the diversity and complex interactions of all its distinct parts that allow it to be whole. Even if every part we call a "part" is an illusion, an artificial mental construct, every one of those parts is essential.
How many distinct bits of genetic information are contained in just a single strand of a plant's DNA? How many lifetimes does it reflect? How many latent lifetimes does it contain?
How much of a miracle is even one seed?
Such are the thoughts that drift in an out of my mind while spending time with plants.
Is it any wonder that I suggested that Luna plant that seed instead of tossing it aside? And even if it had been tossed, and transformed into something else, isn't even that a miracle?
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Later that day, I and the other gardeners were recollecting times when we'd each felt as if we'd had mental breakdowns. We talked about the rough times in our lives, the times when we did not feel part of the whole and did not see our own beauty as individuals--the times when we felt alienated from society, the rest of the living world, and ourselves. And we talked about how every one of those experiences had changed us. Each one of us had emerged from that tumbling-around, that cold dark winter, that raging fire--and we'd emerged transformed. Important parts of ourselves that had been dormant had finally been able to sprout and grow. The power and spirit latent in the seed had finally been able to find fuller manifestation in the world of relationship with other parts of the larger whole--and the manifestation of this growth was not only physical but spiritual. Our seeds, our dreams, were who we truly were all along, and by releasing them into the physical world we also allowed them to grow in the spiritual world. And what broke those seeds out of dormancy was often the combined action of metaphorical "gardeners" and the rest of the living world telling us that the time was right. Our minor or major mental breakdowns signaled not the end of our lives, but, in many senses, new beginnings, achieved because we'd "cracked" some of the hard cases enclosing latent parts of ourselves.
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The following morning, as I awoke, I thought about that mango seed, and how I intended to research what conditions allow a mango seed to grow. And I thought back on a couple of challenging conversations I'd had over the last few days--conversations that had tumbled me around a bit internally. I also recalled several other conversations that had nourished and restored me--seeming almost as essential as water--after these more disturbing exchanges. I thought back on the hard outer shell of that mango seed, and realized that perennial plants which ultimately live the longest are often also the hardest to get sprouted.
In my semi-awake state, I envisioned myself as a collection of seeds, some of them easily-sprouted annuals, which keep me going day to day, and some of them long-lived perennials, heirloom apples and old-growth redwoods, which need tumbling-around, freezing, or fire to get them growing. These plants ultimately offer a different, uniquely rich perspective, an experience of deep time and a wisdom not necessarily found in some of those more exuberant but shorter-cycled plants that are parts of my life. I resolved to talk with those people whose words had helped tumble my own harder-shelled seeds or whose energy had seemed to upset my internal equilibrium, and I knew that I would do it with gratitude--because some of those hard-to-sprout seeds need not just the water of compassion but a bit of nicking or a temperature fluctuation to get them going.
And when I watch that mango plant grow, or not grow, it won't be with just intellectual curiosity. I suspect that that seed still has the power to teach me more about "the ecological self," miracles, diversity, challenge, and wholeness than I will ever be able to convey in words.
Chris Roth co-facilitates Lost Valley's Apprenticeship program in Organic Gardening, Permaculture, and Community.
©2002 Talking Leaves
Summer 2002
Volume 12, Number 2
Ecopsychology, Self and Place
I live in a place which has attracted groups of people for many centuries, even millennia. The native Kalapuya gathered camas bulbs, hunted, and camped here--we still find artifacts as we dig our garden beds--and more recently, a group of Christian seekers made this 87 acres their home. Lost Valley is merely the latest group of people drawn to this land; and over the last 13 years, many residents, visitors, and guests--both short- and long-term--have felt its power. Did we "decide" to come here, and did we choose who we'd be once we arrived? Or are we perhaps expressions of the land we have arrived on? Are we purely the autonomous individuals we sometimes think of ourselves as, or are we actually the fortunate results of rainfall, sunlight, soil, and air, with a good dose of genetic information and who knows what else thrown in? Tonight, I wonder, where do I stop, and the rainfall begin? And what is the boundary between me, and the path through the new forest that I run nearly every morning? Without me, that path would be different, less distinct, and perhaps less loved; and without that path, I too would be different, less distinct, and also less connected to the world around me. Without the forest, there would be no path; without the rain, there would be no forest; and where this leaves me is anybody's guess, except I know that my well-being and my self are inseparable from everything I've mentioned above and much that I haven't even started to mention.
Which is to say: "ecopsychology" and "self and place" are absurdly broad topics which cannot be confined to discussion through prose. It was gratifying to see so much poetry pour in for this issue; somehow, each poem or prose piece we selected seemed to flow into others, and they're ordered accordingly. However, what makes sense on this piece of land may not make sense somewhere else, so if you're confused by the flow of this issue, please blame it on the rain here in western Oregon.
Finally, this may be the last chance to obtain TL on a newsstand, due to a possible format change which would not affect our quality but would affect our distribution. Please see the "high water everywhere, financial buoys needed" alert on page three. If you've ever been tempted to support us financially or to give subscriptions to friends, now would be a very good time, and it might make a real difference in how we continue publishing and who has access to TL in the future.
Thanks for reading Talking Leaves.
©2002 Talking Leaves
Summer 2002
Volume 12, Number 2
Ecopsychology, Self and Place
Not mine, personally, though such trauma-related ambulance calls certainly took their toll on me. In my career of twelve years as a paramedic, through three states, I had handled perhaps one each year. 1979 was a whole lot different. Not only had I handled five that year, but each and every one of the people involved not only lived long enough to make it to the hospital, but went on living for at least a month each. I can't deny a certain amount of pride in the fact that by the time this call came about, I was damn good at "saving" them, yet, I carried a huge nagging question in my heart of "What have I done?" Knowing damn well at the time that there was no chance of their survival, it was still my duty to do everything I could to keep them alive. The result was producing a series of what we called in the trade, "bookends."
In the two hundred plus square miles of Santa Barbara County during 1979 through 1985, the years that I was a paramedic there, with the exception of that one year, there were maybe three such calls in any one year and they were quite spread out. Perhaps one in the North county, one in the South, and one somewhere in between. During that particular year, however, in that particular section of the county, which was only about 20 square miles, there were five, and I was on each and every one of them.
To make things just a bit more interesting, the last three of those calls occurred within about a four square mile radius. Now the thing that was even more exasperating--and of course I contemplated this for years--was that I could find no sensible, connecting factors amongst them that fell into our normal way of categorizing such incidents. One incident was drug related, one was spousal assault, one was a hunting accident that turned out not to be an accident, and each one occurred within the parameters of different neighborhoods, different socio-economic classes, different circumstances and even different sexes and races. Additionally, there appeared to be no correlation between the character of violence and the presence or absence of natural foliage--the influence of this aspect of nature. The other two calls in other sections of the 20 square mile radius, had the same lack of a clear pattern that would make one think, "Of course, this is what happens here."
The only things that were consistent were the location (a vague yet discernible sense that there were some sort of border or parameter that defined the land area itself), a relatively narrow window of time, and, now that I think of it, that I was there. This last is something that I'll take a closer look at when I become a whole lot more able to handle it!
I can't honestly say that at the time of going to these individual calls I sensed that I was entering what I now call a "hot spot." But in retrospect, I noticed that there was a certain mindlessness to the violence that occurred in this particular area over that period of time: a certain finality of action, as if each of the assailants involved got to a certain point and something else took over that pushed them to make sure their action dealt a fatal blow. I can claim this because in each case, I arrived at the scene early enough to have had contact with each assailant, none of whom carried the aura of a willful murderer, which my experience has taught me to recognize. They were as surprised as their victims. Willful murderers don't seem to register surprise.
In subsequent years as a medic, I started to identify and become more sensitive to certain hot spots--areas that seemed to attract a certain kind of call or violence or medical emergency; certain areas of a roadway that produced fatalities, for example, when there were no visible factors or patterning, like time of day or weather conditions, that would seem to increase the odds. The way this manifested sometimes was an almost comical similarity in the ways in which the participants related to each other, as if, in a particular area of a few blocks, people were compelled to panic in dramatic, boisterous ways. I began to be able to sense that I was entering a space that held a certain energy. Though mostly unable to predict what I would find, looking back I'd sense the connection and see the patterns. It was as if you were to place a hot plate under a flat metal map and then trace the influence of the heat on the behavior of the people, seeing that the heat's influence occurred with no respect to geographical, natural (including weather), political, societal, social, economic, or racial boundaries.
The questions that I ponder and have not been able to answer are: Is it the specific land area that attracts a certain kind of people? Is it a certain type of people--prone to specific behaviors, weaknesses, or self expression--that are drawn close to each other in a certain area? Is there a window in time and place that fosters a specific type of dis-ease, as if a virus descends upon an area and temporarily infects the people there? I have most recently been contemplating this in terms of such things as the troubles in Northern Ireland, the Israeli//Palestinian conflict, and slews of wars, as if a deadly virus that infects the people with hate lives for a while, causes its turmoil, and then leaves, like a plague.
I still don't have an answer. Yet, my experience as a medic launched me into a deeper understanding that, indeed, the environment influences our psychology and actions as much as our psychology and actions influence our environment. Today, I recognize this as one more face of "Mitakuye Oyasin"--all my relations--and must ascribe all the rest to being a part of the "Great Mystery."
While living on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation (Oglala) in South Dakota, I'd spend hours just sitting on the prairie, staring out over the land. The difference between land populated by the whites and that populated by the Native Americans was physically dramatic. The white-owned land was measured, lined evenly, cultivated, ordered, productive, yet feeling weak--perhaps dependent. Standing on it, I felt like an adjunct, designed to come in with a specific purpose and do something. The land populated by the Oglala was jagged, wild, seemingly unmanageable and unkempt, yet I could sense a certain energy that flowed through it that included me. It asked nothing of me but that I be with it.
One day, while just being with the prairie on 640 acres that was ceded to the progeny of Crazy Horse's Medicine Man, I had a bodily sense of what may very well be a piece of the puzzle: the land I was on had been looked upon as sacred for the last anywhere from one-hundred to thousand-plus years by its inhabitants and it reflected that view (whereas the white-owned land had its continuity broken). I was taught that if you ask this land and the living things upon it for help or cooperation--and ALL is considered living by the Traditionals--you would be answered as clearly as if you entered into conversation with another human being.
It became natural for me to find such simple things as the wind shifting to help me while I arranged blankets on the Inipi (sweat lodge) upon my request. Once, while tending sacred fire for a young woman stricken with cancer while she was doing Vision Quest for her healing (placed down into a six foot wide by eight foot deep pit wearing nothing more than a blanket, a half mile away from me and at about 2 a.m.), I knew from the fire that she was having a particularly difficult time. I prayed to the Tunkasilas (Grandfathers) for mercy for her. Within a half hour I felt a significant rise in temperature from, I'd estimate, around 35 to 45 degrees. The next day, she confirmed my experience, stating that the turning point for her Quest happened at right about that same time; she, too, was praying for strength and relief from the cold. Another time, a rattlesnake, startled by my sudden appearance, stopped its rattling and calmly turned and slithered away after I addressed it as a Brother. Once again, I emphasize that at the time I didn't sense that I was particularly special. All of these things were normal by-products of having an intimate relationship with what is.
It was there that I learned that when you move as if you are a part of nature, nature will bend over backwards to confirm this as truth.
My experience in South Dakota allowed me to experience a balanced give and take. Most of my experience as a medic had me cleaning up after others after they had been enveloped by influences beyond themselves, but there was one day as a medic, when I was buffeted around as clearly as my patients, and it changed the course of my life.
This one day, in Volusia County, Florida, a deep dark cloud cover had descended over the whole county, which stretches from just south of St. Petersburg in the north to just above Cape Kennedy in the south and 60 miles inland. The air was charged with ozone that made me a little light-headed. There were lightening bolts flashing in the clouds; not meeting the earth, but streaking across the blackness. There was no rain, though the air was particularly thick. I had not experienced a day like this before nor since.
From the beginning of my shift at 8:00 a.m. until the end of it 24 hours later, I ran four calls. Each call took place at different ends of the county--I'd estimate that there was an average of at least 30 miles in between each call, in towns separated by not only miles but cultures. One after another, I found myself in a situation where someone was at a crisis point, and, at the brink of realizing that they were about to do something awful, either they or someone close to them called for an ambulance. Once I got there, each patient requested that I bring them to a psychiatric ward for admission. Not once did I have to ask or "take" them against their will, which, as part of my training, I was empowered to do if I determined that they were a potential threat to themselves or others.
Still charged by the unchanging, hovering cloud cover, with each incident I became more manic. This was just too freaky, I said to myself, all these people suddenly coming to face the truth about themselves. Not one medical call or scheduled transport. After the third call I checked in with dispatch to find that none of the other ambulances--though everyone was busy, accounting for my being dispatched from one end of the county to the other, almost in a circle around its perimeter--had been handling such calls.
By number four, in Daytona Beach, where an elderly man had been speaking to his dead brother who told him he ought to check himself in and he decided to take his advice, I knew that there was something in my life that I could no longer avoid also. I had fallen in love with a girl who had just left for Los Angeles to visit her mom before going on to pre-med college in Illinois and I just had to know what was true.
As I wheeled the patient in through the emergency room, the manic energy surged through me. We dropped the patient off in the same psychiatric ward we'd been coming back and forth to all day, and then, on the way out, by the intake desk, there was a man in his twenties being interviewed by a nurse. He had all these little slips of toilet paper stuck to scratches in his face from a razor. He was telling the nurse, "I've been talking to the Devil all morning and he told me to cut myself up. Can you lock me up for a while?"
Pulling my partner out through the doors into the street, I looked up to the sky--unchanged all day, lightning still flashing, and the air still pulsing with ozone--I screamed to the heavens, "All right, Dammit!!!"
My partner, I realized, hadn't been having one millionth of the reaction that I was having this day. This sky, those clouds, that ozone, those patients were all configured to give me a personal message. At that point, I didn't give a damn if he dragged me back up to the psych ward and checked me in. As I got into the shotgun seat of the ambulance I let him know that, even though I had never even seriously thought of visiting California, I was going to close out my life in Florida, pack up my motorcycle, and go there.
Seven days later I was gone. Three days after that, after finding that what was true with the girl was not what I wanted to know, I moved to Santa Barbara where I ended up living for twenty years. Upon my arrival in Santa Barbara, I learned that the day I left Florida the biggest earthquake the region had seen since the '20s had shaken it to its core.
Russ Reina's most recent contemplation in these realms has to do with the fact that between 1969 and 1989 around 100,000 people came through the land that Lost Valley is on (when it was headquarters for a former community/cult called Shiloh), believing that it would be the site of Jesus' Second Coming.
©2002 Talking Leaves
Summer 2002
Volume 12, Number 2
Ecopsychology, Self and Place