Reconnecting with Mother Earth
(Page 2 of 3)
May - June 2008
by Chris Dodge
We need to read and write and think. And then we must act (and, when appropriate, refrain from acting). We must open our eyes and dirty our hands. Get down to earth and humble ourselves. Let’s go outside and look around. Are we tourists here, or residents? Whose land is it? How many lives can it sustain? Who owns it? Maybe nobody does. Maybe we all do.
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Read about it. A Sand County Almanac is a good place to start. But also: Eric Freyfogle’s Bounded People, Boundless Lands; Terry Tempest Williams’ Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert; Winona LaDuke’s All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life; and John Muir’s My First Summer in the Sierra.
Know words used to describe it. Cutbank. Drumlin. Moraine. Chaparral. Check out a copy of Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape (reviewed in the May-June 2007 issue of Utne Reader).
Know its history. Who built the structure you live in, and when? Who lived there before you? What flowers flourished? “What better expresses land than the plants that originally grew on it?” Leopold asks.
Know who lives there now. It’s not just you. Not just your wingless biped neighbors and their cats and dogs, not just the gray squirrels and catalpa trees, or the deer and Douglas firs. Find out what insects and spiders live in your yard (and house), what weeds and worms, what lichens and moss. Become an amateur bryologist.
Know it in parts. Invest in a magnifying lens. Use it. Look at beetle antennae, lily stamens, grass roots. Examine parts of parts. Get really serious and use a microscope. What lives in pond water and grows in snow?
Know it in art. Take photos of the same location in different seasons, in different weather conditions, at different times of day. Invest in a set of colored pencils and use them. Enjoy the work of those who paint or painted the land.
Sleep on it. Camp out. The land is different at night.
Learn the phenology of the land. When do flowers blossom? When do foxes den? When do fruits form and ripen? Keep a nature journal about the times of recurring natural phenomena—and find the answers yourself.