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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781555917821 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Fulcrum Publishing |
| Publication date: | 10/15/2002 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 160 |
| File size: | 348 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Playing With Nature
Midway through my life, I found myself in a dark wood. I'd undertaken
this
journey into Schmitz Park, Seattle's last stand of virgin trees, to show
a
visiting Cuban friend, who had never seen snow, how these dark,
ancient
woods glow like a fairyland full of white drifts and bent cedar
boughs.
Certainly I didn't expect fairies, but as we walked into the park,
footsteps
muffled by the dense whiteness, we heard a cry. From behind several
trees
leaped a band of medieval knights, their red crusader crosses blazing
across
white armor. On the snowy path, the knights bowed in deep courtesy to
a
gathering of black knights, a green-tailed dragon, various
velveteen
ladies-in-waiting, and a few elfin folk. Without a glance at us,
the pageant
passed by and we stepped aside.
"Maybe we are in a movie?" my friend suggested.
"But there are no cameras watching," I said. "Just us."
A large woman clad in black stepped from behind a hundred-year-old
western
red cedar. "Yes?" she asked.
"What is all this?" I said. "'Who are you?"
"I am the Dark Force," she said softly and let out a low, lovely laugh.
The
laugh lowered, resonant and soulful as a cello-but I didn't think she
was
smiling behind that veil.
"Strange things happen when it snows," my friend whispered. Then she
turned
to the dark woman. "In Cuba it's carnival time. Is this your
Northwest
carnival celebration?"
The woman laughed lightly now. "We do
this all the time. I usually play a
gypsy alchemist. And those changelings
over there are cat people, the Kzin.
These are their woods."
Indeed the
woods were full of cat-faced, fur-clad people who crept
stealthily along the
creekbed. I was struck by their feline attentiveness to
far-off cries, a
snapping twig overhead, that bird swooping low. A Kzin
scampered across the
path, and seconds later we saw a tall man dressed in a
richly embroidered
scarlet cloak; a silver dagger dangled from his thick
leather belt. He did
not greet us. His eyes were riveted on some distant
ridge where there was
faint shouting.
"That is our Gamemaster," the Dark Lady explained in a hushed tone.
Her
voice was subdued-more from stealth, I guessed, than respect. "He has
given
me the task of persuading the people to kill their unicorn.
"Why?" we asked.
"Because that is what they love most?"
She pressed a gold coin, stamped with the winged image of Pegasus, into
my
mittened palm. Then she turned and strode into the snowy woods. Pausing
at
the top of a hill, she made a mystic sign in the air, and I noticed she
wore
fluorescent orange gloves.
I would not recognize this Dark Force if I saw her again, for she hid
her
face from us. But I recognize the forces at work in those woods. It's
what
happens when we play with nature, using not our will but our
imagination.
What we witnessed that day was an elaborately organized group-at-play
called
The Fantasy Alternative. Their motto is "Entertainment through
Education'
and at regular meetings they plot intricate games to play against
natural
settings. As adults they are simply continuing what we all began
as
children-playing in the woods.
My friend and I ambled along the white trail, pausing every so often
to
listen to the sounds of a pitched battle. Was it black against
white
knights? Was it the Kzin purging their woods? Were they the penitent
cries
of the people who had sacrificed their unicorn- a beautiful beast we
never
did see?
My Cuban friend, Flor, is a Los Angeles psychologist who has spent most
of
her career "counseling children and other artists," as she explains
it.
While we watched the Kzin dart in and out of the woods, she commented,
"Our
fantasy life needs to include nature." In her work with children of
the
barrio-where gangs offer a surrogate family and drama is acted out in
the
streets-Flor has taken these children into the wilderness to participate
in
simple rituals. Using the traditional Native American concept of
the
spiritual quest into nature to find one's own vision and totem, or
animal
guide, these streetwise children develop deeper wisdom.
"At first the kids are afraid," Flor said. "One tough little
nine-year-old
boy, Renaldo, asked me, 'Do they have Nintendo there? Do they
have lights at
night? Are the bugs very big? Do snakes crawl into your
sleeping bag?' I
assured him he would be safe-that with a little practice and
listening he
would find his way in the woods." She lightly touched the bark
of an
old-growth fir as we walked. "On his weekend vision quest, Renaldo
really
did meet a snake. But it wasn't poisonous and it was much too shy to
sleep
with anybody. The snake just coiled there-black with beautiful
green
diamonds. It blinked at Renaldo, stared at him for several long
minutes,
then graciously slithered aside to share the path."
"I said the magic passwords," Renaldo told Flor, his voice full of
wonder
and pride. "That snake understood."
Renaldo's totemic animal became the snake, symbol of power and rebirth.
And
because the snake's home was the woods, Renaldo was no longer afraid of
the
forest-he had an ally there. In school, Renaldo made a terrarium and
bought
himself a pet black snake. He said it was his science project. But he
told
Flor with a sly smile, "You and I know who this snake really is."
On
every field trip, Renaldo's imagination grew more fused with the forest.
When
one of his ten-year-old friends was killed in a gang war, Renaldo
began
having nightmares of gang members breaking into his house and killing
his
family. Then in one dream, his snake appeared. "He grew big as a
tree,"
Renaldo proudly told Flor. "And my snake scared away the whole gang."
From
then on, Renaldo saw his snake as his secret protector at home, too.
We stopped a moment on the trail. "Without nature we are all
lonely
children," Flor said softly. "Part of our loneliness and addictive
behavior
is that we have lost the connection to nature... . Maybe that's why
even
ten-year-olds turn to drugs. When a whole tribe of people is cut off
from
its source and crying for a vision, drugs are a substitute for what
the
Native Americans call 'medicine' or 'healing.'"
Above us the wind shook the tallest trees and white showers fell down on
us
like a blessing. As Flor and I walked back home through the snow, I
thought
of all the snakes still hibernating underground. I remembered my own
early
years in the woods. My first rattle was made from a rattlesnake's tail
tied
to a twig with leather thongs. As I crawled, I'd clutch that little
rattle
in my fist and so startle towering adults who might mistakenly step on
me.
When I was four and a half years old, we left the forest for some years
by
the sea. It was thirty-eight years before I saw my forest birthplace
again.
I returned to the high Sierra at the tip of Northern California to
attend a
week-long women's summer solstice camp.
At first it felt odd to be back in the same woods I'd known as a child.
But
after a few days, it was simple: I was playing again in my woods. Over
the
week two hundred of us attended open-air classes in meadows and among
the
trees. We sat in circles on the ground while we heard speakers on
every
subject from "Basque Mythology" to "Eleusinian Mysteries of Ancient
Greece"
to "Mayan-Hopi Wheels of Transcendence." We slept in tents or under
the
stars and soon the sensible camping shorts, hiking boots, and visors
gave
way to long, colorful skirts, bare feet, and bright gypsy scarves. It
took
surprisingly little time to forget the polite strictures of society
and
remember our more primitive tribal roots. In this, we had
the
eight-thousand-foot altitude as our ally.
On the last day of this gathering, I took my part in the Dance of
the
Tonals. It is said that when we are born, a tonal, or power animal, is
born
with us to live alongside and offer itself as messenger between Earth
and
spiritual worlds.
Led by a woman who'd spent her apprenticeship with a Peruvian shaman,
our
study group of ten women spent a day together in silence and
meditation.
"You can call your tonals to come dance with you," the medicine woman
said.
"They will come gladly. They have never been far away from you. And
once you
remember them, they will always be here."
She told us that our tonals live alongside us like shadows, teaching us
what
animals know and humans have forgotten. "When you die," the medicine
woman
concluded, "the animal dies, too. And maybe next life, you trade
places."
Then we did a series of exercises to call our animals home to us.
Different
tonals were silently summoned to take up their spiritual residence
in each
of the body's chakras, or power centers-from root to belly to crown
of the
head. In my navel center I felt the intricate circlings of a
chambered
nautilus; in my heart a grizzly; in my root and crown chakras two
connecting
serpents, coiled and patient as if they'd waited there forever for
my memory
to return to me.
"At first I didn't see anything," a woman said when we finally broke
the
silence to sit in one cirde in the center of a stand of ponderosa pines.
A
thick blanket of dried needles cushioned us. Late afternoon heat shimmied
in
the air like a mirage. "Then all of a sudden I realized I wasn't
looking
up," the woman marveled. "I was gazing down at the tops of these
trees. I
was looking out the eyes of an eagle as it glided."
We all told of the animals who answered our silent calls. Next to me was
a
large woman who did have some of the gruff, maternal grizzly about her;
next
to her was a dove, several snow leopards, a dark-skinned jaguar, and
a
flaming-haired woman whose hooded black eyes gave her the regal
fierceness
of a red-tailed hawk. One woman I recognized from several of my
other
classes chose to keep her own counsel. She asked not to participate in
the
ritual painting and costuming that the rest of us undertook in
preparation
to dance in this ritual ceremony of recognizing and claiming our
animals.
I knew this woman Diana's story; she'd confided it to me earlier in the
week
as we sat by the lake in full sunlight. Her story was set in the
shadows:
Diana was a double incest survivor. When her family's secret was
discovered
by a relative, she'd been sent to a foster home. There Diana
lapsed into a
silence that lasted several years. All that would rouse the
child was
sitting in her rural backyard forest alone for hours at a stretch.
Even when
Diana began speaking again, she never talked about her parents. She
told
people they had died when she was very young.
Now Diana had children
of her own and a loyal husband. Still her
hunched-over shoulders bespoke the
hunted posture of the victim. When she
spoke, which she did rarely, she
cringed as if the sound of her own voice
were too loud. Of course, the other
women let her be. Of course, none asked
Diana to dance.
In preparation for our dance, we busied ourselves in the forest.
Grizzly
looked for pinecones to make a great necklace, the Eagle feathered
fallen
branches across her arms for wings, the black Jaguar crouched low in
a
feline wariness. One woman emerged from her nearby tent with a
leopard-skin
mask she'd saved from her childhood. Another woman, Elephants
remembered to
thud on the forest floor with her big, bare feet, pausing to
listen to her
own earthquakes.
At the sound of the drum's steady beat,
calling us from the forest, we came
back to make a circle in the pine
needles. Many of us had painted our faces.
I had silver zigzags running like
lightning down my arms and face. Several
women had elaborately painted bird
faces, and one woman, Salmon, showed
delicately etched blue-green scales up
her bare back and legs. In the deep
woods, without much clothing, with faces
painted and bodies adorned by
leaves and branches, anyone can become
aboriginal. Anyone can remember that
this is our native land and we are all
primitives. The child in us
remembers.
As I finished painting my legs, I was startled by a movement in the
forest.
Diana stepped lightly toward me, holding out a box of brightly
colored
watercolor crayons.
"Will you help paint me?" she asked.
Diana was so transformed, I just stared at her. Atop her head was a
branch,
a stretch of bark antlers. Her nose was painted black, proud and
sensitive
as she seemed to sniff the air for signs of hunters. Around each
bare breast
was painted a phosphorescent red-black-and-yellow bull's eye.
There was a
flat, heavy stone clenched in each hand-her sharpened hooves.
"Who... what are you?" I asked, though I already knew.
Diana's voice was low. "A stag," she said simply. Then she turned
around,
naked except for a branch encircling each ankle. "Will you paint my
ass like
my breasts?" she asked,
I didn't move. A fear came over me. "I can't. . . ." I said. "It's ...
It's
too terrible." I shook my head. "I don't want to help make you a
target
again."
Diana fixed me with dark, oval eyes that softened slightly.
"Please," she said. "It's part of my dance." Then she laughed huskily.
"I
can't be my stag without it."
I nodded. As she stood at her full height, I painted two bull's-eyes on
each
buttock, my hands shaking.
In the circle, the drum did all the talking, like a great heartbeat in
the
forest. After dancing together for what seemed hours, we all sat
silent.
Then each woman stepped alone into the center of the woods and, in
rhythm to
the drum, let her animal move with her.
Grizzly never left the earth; Eagle never touched down; Snow Leopard
danced
only a second, then as usual eluded us in the underbrush; Elephant
broke the
silence with a scream and shook the ground with her stomping
two-step. I did
my Cobra dance low in the pine needles, swaying to the drum
as the trees
above me swayed. On my belly, I felt the Earth pounding against
my navel.
At last it was the Stag who stepped into our center. A few women
caught
their breaths, hardly recognizing Diana, She had never moved like
this:
deliberate, forceful steps, massive head turning this way and that to
watch
us, eyes black like bullet holes in her impassive face. As Diana
danced, a
masculine sway to her wide hips, her hooves pawing the ground, I
remembered
a hunting scene I'd witnessed once in Colorado.
In a game preserve, I stood watching a herd of deer graze. Suddenly a
truck
pulled up and some drunken men jumped out. They were not hunters;
though
this was the season, they wore no orange jackets. They had no notion
of
tracking, the stealthy forest stalk. One man rested his rifle on
the
barbed-wire fence of the game preserve. Before he could get his aim,
a
subtle change ran through the herd. As if electrically charged, they
all
grouped together tightly and moved slowly backward. From their
center
stepped a huge buck, his antlers must have been six feet across.
Very
deliberately, the buck stepped forward, steadily moving toward the man,
his
head lowered. With a curse at what he thought was the buck's challenge,
the
man pulled the trigger.
The shot echoed off the far ridge. Like gazelles, the herd
scattered
swiftly. But the buck kept coming toward the man. Another shot. The
buck
dropped to his knees, stared straight at the man, and toppled. With a
hoot
of triumph, the men jumped back into their truck and took off. There was
no
ceremony, no asking forgiveness of the deer for his sacrifice, no ritual
to
clean and dress the buck, then partake in his great spirit so he might
live
on in our nourished bodies.
I crawled through the wire fence and ran toward that buck. It lay alone
in
the meadow. But I could feel the eyes of his herd watching me from
the
forest. I kept my proper distance; the buck was still alive. He lay
there
bleeding from two wounds, panting, his eyes liquid and dilated. At last
the
dark eyes fixed, rolled back. With a breath like a sigh, the deer died.
As
my father had taught me, I put a branch in the buck's mouth-food for
his
journey to the spirit world's forest. Then I laid my palm on his warm
flank,
tracing with one finger the bloodied bull's-eye.
That same stag danced again in Diana. She was all thunder and rage as
she
spun around within our circle. Some women fell back from this raw
display,
other women leaned forward, eyes riveting on the fierce antlers
adorned with
dangling brass earrings. The Cobra in me swayed as the ground
echoed
staccato poundings of drum and fading hoofbeats.
Much later Diana rejoined our circle. She still kept her own counsel. But
I
never saw her cringe again, not once.
The next day when we were all leaving that forest to return to our
homes,
Diana approached me quietly. "Thank you,"' she said, her eyes
steadily
holding mine.
"Yours was the most beautiful dance of all," I told her.
Diana threw her head back, then said in a deep voice, "The stag in me
was
never wounded." She laughed. "They missed me." They'll always miss
me."
Diana turned to leave, calling out,
"Goodbye, Cobra."
I have never since then seen a deer without thinking of Diana dancing
naked
in the woods, bull's-eyes all over her body. On my walks in the forest,
if I
see a snake slithering across my path, I think not only of my own
totemic
animal, but also of little Renaldo somewhere there in the wilds of
Los
Angeles fending off gangs like the rattler warns his predators.
Now when I find myself midlife walking in the dark woods, I know I am
not
alone. The animals are my allies; the trees are gods and goddesses who
in
deep stillness keep the Earth's counsel. All that is alive calls out to
me
to come play, to take my part in the dance.
Table of Contents
| Acknowledgments | vii | |
| Introduction | ix | |
| Shadow People | 1 | |
| Growing Up Game | 7 | |
| Animals as Brothers and Sisters | 13 | |
| Oil Spill Eulogy | 31 | |
| Wind on the Water | 37 | |
| Believing the Bond | 51 | |
| Watching for Whales in Winter | 68 | |
| Wild, for All the World to See | 73 | |
| Where the Green River Meets the Amazon | 80 | |
| Playing with Nature | 90 | |
| Moose Man | 102 | |
| On Drowning | 117 | |
| Living by Water | 133 |