Let Nature Teach

David George Haskell is nothing if not a patient observer. In the course of one year, he stood watch over a single square meter of old-growth forest in Sewanee, Tennessee, where he teaches biology and environmental studies at the University of the South. Those observations resulted in Haskell’s first book, The Forest Unseen, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2013.

In his book, The Songs of Trees, Haskell takes those powers of observation and uses them to lyrically describe repeated visits to 12 trees around the world, including a ceibo in the Amazon rain forest in Ecuador, a pear tree on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and an olive tree in Jerusalem.

In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Haskell explains that, in writing the book, he wanted to explore not only individual trees, but their connections to the biological networks around them, including humans, and the often-unheard sounds that result from these interactions, from a beetle chewing the inside of a dead ash tree to waves washing over the roots of a palm tree.

“There is no such thing as an individual within biology,” says Haskell. “Instead, the fundamental unit of life is interconnection and relationship … Without interconnection life ends.”

The prisoner and the Weed – written for Medium.com by T.G.Blake

A prisoner was held in isolation. For exercise, once a day he was allowed out into a concrete yard. Twenty minutes. No standing still. Keep walking. Orbit. Shuffle. Orbit. He had admitted his guilt. That would have been punishment enough. It wasn’t premeditated, but too much alcohol and an angry reaction. Bad result. It happens. He accepted his punishment even though the isolation was hard. On the outside he had been the soul of the party.Here he felt alone, unloved, rejected.

One day, as he shuffled in the yard, he noticed a single weed poking through a crack in the concrete. It seemed alone and abandoned like him, probably dropped there as a seed by a greedy bird. A moment of chance that resulted in life for the weed, but hardly a great life either. The weed could have been in a forest or on a hillside, among like-minded flora. Surely the weed felt isolated too. It didn’t want to live in a crack in concrete. was this like prison for the weed?

No talking allowed. Keep shuffling. Orbiting.

The prisoner started talking to the weed in his thoughts. ‘We are alike you and I,’ he said. ‘We can be friends.’ The weed agreed or at least to the prisoner he imagined it did, but added ‘But you can at least walk. I must stay here looking at the same piece of concrete. You seem free to me.’ The prisoner contemplated that and felt compassion for the weed.

Through a chilly spring and a humid summer they kept talking. Each had a friend and it sustained them. The loneliness faded. Then autumn came and winter and the weed disappeared. The prisoner was grief stricken although he could not show weakness in front of the guards. He silently called out to his friend, but no answer came.

Then spring returned and the weed began to show in the cracks of the concrete. Larger this time and with several stems. The prisoner ran to it, fell to his knees and wept with delight for his friend. The guards punished him with blows and curses until he started shuffling again, but it was worth it.

All through spring and summer they chatted like excited lovers, but now it was no longer a one on one. The weed was larger and had branches and chatted like a crowd. The weeds told the prisoner about the fields and the forests they were connected to under the concrete, and in his mind the prisoner was transported there. He was free again and satiated in the wild moorland. When winter came, he no longer felt alone, because he knew the weed was simply resting and together they could go to the forest or the hills in his mind anytime he chose, and spring would soon be here.

1. Reconnecting with nature must be an every day discipline. No excuses. It should be considered as vital as eating and drinking. Schedule it like you would a trip to the grocery store or a vital business meeting. Nothing delays it. Nothing allows you to postpone. Your very life is at stake.
2. Reconnecting is as simple as observing a flower, saying hello to a bird, relocating an insect outdoors, standing barefoot on grass. You don’t have to climb Mount Everest and sit on a pointy rock in a vow of silence to get it. Nature will teach you. Just relax and listen.
3. Reconnecting requires no rules other than a sense of gratitude. Trees love to have you climb all over them. Flowers like to be admired. Animals and insects like to be respected and appreciated for their jobs.
4. Reconnecting with respect means total focus on nature. Don’t spoil a walk with conversations about last night’s reality TV, switch your phone to silence for a while, show respect for all living things. Listen to the sound of your feet on the earth. Feel the breeze playing with your arm hairs. Smell the scent of fir trees or sea air.
5. Never take from nature unless you have permission. Leave stones where they are unless they permit you to move them. Ask a tree before you pluck its fruit. Because nothing can die in our universe as everything is jiggling strings of energy, rest assured that you can’t harm nature if you pluck a flower or poison a weed. You just change its energy into another form. However, I always like to ask and explain when performing such activities.

My Prescription for reconnecting:

1. Stand barefoot on grass and direct all your five sensory attention to the sensation under your feet. Try to feel the needles of energy exchanging between your fermions and bosons and those of the earth.
2. Stand alone on a summit or high ground. Stretch your arms and legs out like a cross. Try to use your senses to feel the breeze on your hands and legs.
3. Take a walk through a pasture or wooded area. Don’t speak. Try not to think too much (hard I know). You may come to a stone or log or place where it just feels right to pause. So, pause. Imagine the incredible network of entaglement under the floor.
4. Understand that all of nature is a teacher. You don’t have to do anything other than be open to being taught. There are no expectations, just connections. Use your developing extra sensory perception to observe things. Maybe there is a small stone you have not noticed before. Ask its permission to pick it up and examine it. Stones and other minerals reveal themselves to us when we are ready. They teach too.
5. When nature trusts you are serious about reconnecting and being all you can be (takes different times for different people) it will bring you new experiences. Mammals will appear in the shallows, humming birds will nest near the house. A rabbit will show up and eat all your herbs. At these times stay still, silent and observe. Don’t try to put meaning into it. Observe.
6. If you live in a concrete jungle you may have to work harder to find nature, but she is all around. She is in the clouds, the window boxes, the grassy sidewalks. There is no difference or separation between a piece of grass in a disused parking lot and a giant oak in a woods. It is all a doorway to connection with the force of nature. Observe, admire, respect. Simple.
7. I am sorry, hunters. If you hunt or fish or kill for sport and/or pleasure you can never transform. Plants give up for a higher service to animals. Animals give up to a higher service to other animals. It is all respectful, all in perfect organization. Hunting when you don’t need to for survival sentences you to splendid isolation. Disharmony results and your life as a human will reflect that.  
8. Whatever your intuition tells you to do to get back into nature do it. Do it with presence. Phones off. It  is like an audience before a powerful Queen. First comes respect. Trust follows. Teaching commences. Adventures like you never imagined…

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