Awakening to the earth

I had the most magical experience – I went walking through the Botanic Gardens in Melbourne, looking closely at all the trees.

It’s strange to admit that when I had been there in previous years – strolling through the gardens or picnicking with friends – the trees didn’t interest me much. Sure I’d felt their vibe, taken in the generally pleasant and calm ambience, but I never stopped to read their names and descriptions nor examine them in any detail. 

Now I was pausing at each one, reading their plaques, looking at their bark and leaves, the girth of their trunk, their canopy. I was acknowledging each one and even talking to some. There was the magnificent Queensland kauri and the bottle tree, the flame tree, the hoop pine and the cabbage tree palm. There was the coast banksia, reaching its distinctive cones high into the sky, and the bird catcher tree, which fertilises the soil for its seeds by trapping and killing birds with sticky fruit. 

I was in a kind of appreciative rapture, mesmerised by the beauty and incredible variety of what nature produces. I wanted to bow down before the kauri, with its massively broad, grey trunk – if there was anything that deserved veneration, this ancient giant certainly did. I spent several hours at the gardens, but only walked through one part.

I think of myself as going through a process of reintegration into nature, a gradual awakening to place and earth. I imagine it is what people who garden for pleasure experience, were they to drill down into it. It is a feeling of being solid and connected that brings joy and inspiration. I am learning about the plants in my neighbourhood, learning the names of the species that grow along the creek where I walk regularly. It’s a beginning. 

If you approach anything with patience, openness and grace, you can start to pick up its sound, the message that it is sending. The American author-activist Starhawk, in her book The Earth Path, says it is not enough for people who care about the environment to care in the abstract; you must know a place, be familiar with the plants and animals in your backyard, know their habits and uses and how each plays its part in the whole. To be truly connected is to enter “a world that is alive and dynamic, where everything is part of an interconnected whole, where everything is always speaking to us, if only we have ears to listen.”

Indigenous cultures understand and practise the kind of listening to which Starhawk is referring, basing their vision upon a fine awareness of the many voices emanating from the land, its plants and animals. From a Western perspective, there is nothing ultimately alien or crazy in this. Scientists are becoming increasingly aware that life exists as a totality of many symbiotic relationships – trees need fungi to break down dead matter into nutrients; the dispersal of fungal spores is dependent on small animals; insects need dead matter on the forest floor to lay their eggs; insects and birds disperse pollen from trees; humans and a myriad other species need healthy trees to produce oxygen to stay alive. The welfare of the whole depends on the condition of each part. And the way to understand and interact with each part and with the whole is simply to live close to nature. To appreciate the energy of a kauri tree does not require New Age beliefs – it means observing, feeling, being a little quiet around it. To listen to what a river is saying is more about spending time by that river with a receptive attitude than it is being an expert in hydrology.  

Western culture conditions us against paying attention to the intuitive connections we have with nature; intuition is left to artists, poets and other dreamers on the fringes of society. And it leaves the observation and understanding of nature to certain specialist professions, usually in the sciences, while the mass of people remain ignorant. Urbanisation further cuts people off from direct relationship with nature while effectively it is being used, abused and discarded. Starhawk mentions being stunned at one university talk she gave when a student asked her, “Why is the earth important?”

Fortunately, there are Western traditions that can be drawn from to support a move towards reconnection. There is the rich earth-based spirituality of pre-Christian Paganism, as well as contemporary neo-Paganism and Wicca. There are also the undercurrents of mysticism that have existed for centuries in Christianity and Judaism that can feed a “reanimation” of nature. Firstly and fundamentally, though, it is about getting to know your own patch; getting your hands into the soil; walking through the environment and learning its species; learning what makes it tick, the well springs from which it draws life.