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I'm not going to get into the book itself here, but I do want to write briefly about what has been stirred up in the soup pot of my skull.
It's about relationship ... discovering and renewing an intimate relationship with the world we live in. Not the earth as a whole, not the ecosystem as some concept, but with the streets we drive on, the sidewalks we walk on, the paths that carry our feet further than we imagined. I'ts about listening to bird calls and the songs of insects and the rustling of leaves in a strong wind or sweet breeze and to listen in a way that isn't about us. To know the world that we intimately live is each and every day, to respect it (respect ... to look again, perhaps with a new way of seeing), to enJoy it, to attempt to understand it on it's own terms, not ours.
To participate in this intimate relationship with the non-human world (foxes, hummingbirds, fireflies, pebbles, rivers, and clouds) takes the same kind of attention and time that we give to intimate relationships with our human companions. That's difficult for most of us. Certainly it has been for me.
I spent (like money? spent?) a winter afternoon when I lived in Sheffield, Massachusetts watching a fox in the field that spread outwards from my home. It was a sunny afternoon and the fox came out from the cover of a small copse of trees and began to play. Perhaps chasing a mouse, perhaps chasing sunbeams - it was a joyful expression of Life. And then, after it had finished with play, it rested ... curled up into a small bundle and napped in that winter sunshine. As I watched I could feel the silent clock of expectations: tick tick tick ... what are you doing ... tick tick tick ... what are you doing? It was difficult to justify to that part of self that had expectations of achievement that I was simply witnessing the Other. And that it was a worthy use of my time.
Another afternoon in the late summer I sat on the front stoop and watched the clouds sail overhead. One after another, forming and reforming, shifting forms and loosing pieces of themselves. I was fascinated as I witnessed a small and temporary inhabitant of my intimate world. Later, I wrote a small piece and had it published in some magazine ... both the piece and the name of the magazine are now lost to multiple moves and memory.
These experiences, Abrams' book, the articles and comments that I've been analyzing for my thesis, all these were on my mind this afternoon when I took a short stroll on 'my' path before heading up to campus to spend a few more hours on that thesis.
I silenced myself, I became attentive to the inhabitants of this piece of the world that I inhabit also. I became aware of the differences in the scattered trees, the snow-covered grasses how each of them moved differently in the winds shifting out of the west. I listened for what birdcalls there might be in the noticeable absence of ravens. I wondered about the experiences of snow, melting icewater, rocks glittering in sun. I did not try to 'become' them ... I tried to understand the momentary and emerging relationships between all of us in that moment. Complexity.
These are all important thoughts. I believe this because of the work of my thesis ... because of the words and thoughts and beliefs exposed by humans to humans about the non-human world ... because of what is not considered when choosing to destroy a pristine landscape in the search for gold and copper or when choosing which product to purchase in the supermarket or when choosing to have a(nother) child.
* * *
I'm still contemplating, considering, allowing myself to be open to new perspectives, allowing myself to become intimate with the human and non-human entities that inhabit my little world. I know that I'll be leaving Butte sometime in the next six months or so. I look for ways to allow Butte and southwest Montana to inhabit me also, so that I can carry that particular intimacy always.
