Sudden knowing - oneness with nature

Sierra, Sept-Oct, 1992 by Hannah Hinchman

The other evening I glimpsed a bird-shape moving in the distance at the edge of the woods. My first impression was "woodpecker," which narrowed to "sapsucker or downy," then resolved into "sapsucker." Somehow, with just a moment's glimpse at dusk, I was able to recognize the bird. I knew it by a slight weakness in flight, a certain way of dipping up to the tree, by a complex of gestures and characteristics that add up to a particular species.

My ability to recognize birds in that manner is limited, and I want to cultivate it. I think it might be a good example of an old, intuitive kind of knowledge that we often use but don't have a name for--a subtle knowledge based on a perception of wholeness. Maybe it's a hunter-gatherer skill: Quick discrimination would have been useful to nomadic people, especially if accompanied by a clear mental map.

I'm heartened when I become aware of a skill of that kind--it balances the sensation that we are an affliction on the natural world. These days, we blunder when we go out among other species. It's the fumbling of ingrained arrogance; there's no reason for us to watch our movements, to blend in. The sounds we make--too many of them, too loud--are also a by-product of arrogance, and they serve to isolate us and further dim our perceptions. Even an exclamation of delight or a sweep of the arm toward a view makes a deer freeze in alarm.

On the other hand, the voices of a band of campfire storytellers, punctuated by laughter, or the shouts of kids running down a hill--why should we assume those sounds weren't part of the ancient sonic fabric? That the nuthatch hears them with distress? (In fact, one animal behaviorist suggests that the nuthatch would probably like to be asked a question by someone with a lilting voice.) Humans can elicit curiosity as well as fear. But most of the time now we carry with us, almost unacknowledged, the conviction that we are outsiders. Is it another level of arrogance to imagine ourselves fitting into a landscape, even adding to it?

I feel most acceptable in a wild place when I sit quietly, drawing. To a passing creature I look absorbed, predictably still, as though I were bedded down or grazing. Others of us might venture to say we are in accord with wildness while hunting, climbing, arranging a careful camp, picking berries, finding routes, reading weather. We can do these things in a way that animals might even admire.

Maybe other creatures are aware of our sadness and isolation. Maybe they've always known, from the lonely songs of the flute player and the intent look of the woman shaping the pot to fit her yearning. They've heard us tell our long stories and watched us cry for our lost ones. They know us by our ways, they know us from a distance.