Spirit and Vision
Community. Interdependence. Connection.
I think about these words every time I’m out in the forest. There is so much life everywhere around me, bursting forth from a community of beings some of whom we call trees, shrubs, robins, and deer. There are those we can see, and many we cannot. The invertebrates and amphibians beneath a carpet of mosses, as well as the microscopic creatures that feed them and the snakes, raccoons, and martens that eat them. It is the world at its most complex, but there is a simplicity too, I think. A purpose to everything that exists and a purpose behind everything that happens.
Northwestern Salamander, (Ambystoma gracile)
When I sit beneath a 500-year-old Douglas-fir, I know things. I know that we all live only in relationship to each other. That the human species is wholly dependent on the existence of others. Eight years ago I wrote an article, “Little Critter With Big Influence”, on the ensatina salamander, a small terrestrial salamander crucial to the process of carbon cycling in western, temperate forests. Without ensatinas, a species people rarely see unless they’re looking for them, much more carbon from decomposing forest material would be released into the atmosphere, something the world doesn’t need. Our lives as human beings, living in our homes in cities and towns, literally depends on the well-being and efforts of the ensatina salamander.
I know too that connection among individuals is also key. The person who keeps bridges safe, and the person who conducts the train I ride on, both of whom may, for example, vote very differently from me, are people I need for my well-being. This truth seems so obvious and yet sometimes one must be reminded. For me, the forest is a good place for remembering such truths.
Family of North American River Otters, (Lontra canadensis), on Puget Sound
Today, my wife and friends and I visited the Suquamish Museum in Suquamish, Washington. In the display titled “Spirit and Vision” these words caught my eye:
“In ancient times, the first peoples of the Salish Sea saw all of existence as alive and feeling, having the same range of thoughts and emotions as humans. As the world’s most recent inhabitants, humans are believed to have the most to learn, through fasting, prayer, meditations, and rituals. Teachings are possible because all of life is related, forming a functioning whole.”
