Our car comes to a halt before a log in an inlet beside a back road. The log is used to stop off-roaders from tearing up the earth, but this is not our intention, so we gather our things and step into the bristling scrubland. We look to the shelter of a large mound of earth, and clear a space beneath it. Just earlier, I had been listening to a story of a reporter who was stranded in Afghanistan, hunted by the Taliban. There are no bullets flying at us now, yet I do not feel entirely alone, or entirely safe. Continue reading →
One of our greatest fears is to eat the wildness of the world.
Our mothers intuitively understood something essential: the green is poisonous to civilization. If we eat the wild, it begins to work inside us, altering us, changing us. Soon, if we eat too much, we will no longer fit the suit that has been made for us. Our hair will begin to grow long and ragged. Our gait and how we hold our body will change. A wild light begins to gleam in our eyes. Our words start to sound strange, nonlinear, emotional. Unpractical. Poetic.
Once we have tasted this wildness, we begin to hunger for a food long denied us, and the more we eat of it the more we will awaken.
It is no wonder that we are taught to close off our senses to Nature.
Through these channels, the green paws of Nature enter into us, climb over us, search within us, find all our hiding places, burst us open, and blind the intellectual eye with hanging tendrils of green.
The terror is an illusion, of course. For most of our million years on this planet human beings have daily eaten the wild. It’s just that the linear mind knows what will happen if you eat it now.
But we’ve gone astray with this, distracted from our task. Still, it’s a good reminder. When your hair begins to grow long and you think strange thoughts, sometimes you will wonder what is happening and will become afraid.
In Nature, human markers fade, lose significance. It takes awhile to learn the old markers again, to see the path that ancient humans took before us. In kindness, learn how to comfort yourself, to hold yourself as you would a child that is afraid of the light. (I suppose you could learn the poisonous plants first if you need to; there aren’t very many.) For on this journey, you mostly have yourself for company.
It helps if you become your own best friend
and find out what is true about all this for yourself.
Open the door and take a look around outside.
The air is shining there,
and there are wonders,
more wonderful than words can tell.
The ancient Mayans knew of Cacao’s nourishing qualities and held it sacred, and Aztec warriors prized it for its energy and nutrition. It’s time we reacquainted ourselves with the ancient wisdom regarding this amazing food. Here are some of raw cacao’s health benefits: Continue reading →
When I lived in India, I was appalled when I was told there would be no more mangoes until the season began again next year. I was not used to this. Back in the US, I had bananas and apples with my oatmeal every damn day. Continue reading →
The din of my mind overwhelms the ache of my heart, and I walk, tearing myself from this awful psychic place. I go to the only forest I can get to before dark–a few acres at the edge of town.
“When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
Varanasi, India. On the cement floor of a crumbling apartment, I sit before an ancient gas burner, wondering if I should add more turmeric. I decide I should, and pour in a little too much. As I stir it in, I listen to the voices of my companions, sitting in a circle around me.
“Many Indians have told me that the most basic difference between Western and indigenous ways of being is that Westerners view the world as dead, and not as filled with speaking, thinking, feeling subjects as worthy and valuable as themselves.”
–Derrick Jensen
The World is Alive! Photo by Michael Fertig.
Isn’t it interesting that as we become more civilized, we surround ourselves with more things that are not alive? Continue reading →
Though the gravel road is missing its population of cars, I can see life and movement spinning all around it. Trees bend and ache with the wind, flowers spire to the sun and awaken their brilliance. Ghosts of travelers walk this way with me, knowing I, too, search for something that they missed finding in their whole life’s wandering.
Three jars of superfoods sit on my shelf. Dark bottles, carrying ancient medicine. I dip my spoon into the jar of Spirulina, and draw out a green so dark it I could be looking at it in the bottom of the ocean. The next one is brighter, like grass sprinkled with emeralds. The third is brown, the color of root and bark. They contain nearly all the vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and adaptogens that my body needs.
What is the missing ingredient in our food?
I can see my ancestors harvesting these sacred foods, making medicinal meals from them. Continue reading →
