Susan Feathers

Years ago Vogue Magazine asked this question, “Why do we need nature?” and solicited essays for one winner to be published. At the time it seemed like a ridiculous question with an obvious answer – until I tried to answer it.  I tried to answer it through thinking about it.  I did not win of course.

Well, I just experienced the answer.  In July I left for a cabin in a semi-wilderness area of the Pisgah National Forest on privately owned land that abuts the Smoky Mountain National Park.  With only the Dogwood Flats Creek gurgling by and the sound of waterfalls below the cabin, and the echos of bird song ringing through the forest, I finally heard what my heart had to tell me as thoughts and cares of  urban living fell away like an old skin and suddenly I was Present.

It had been many years.  I also became aware of how unhealthy I was after many years of stress and working in an environment that does not promote activity and healthy eating.  But by American standards I even appear relatively healthy.  But up in the mountains, breathing clean air, getting lots of activity on hikes and watching birds; drinking spring water and being in the quiet all day, I realized the full cost of work that is centered around a computer.  It has drained my strength and dulled my imagination.

The only reason I had this chance to make the realization of my lifetime is because of the Queen family in Waynesville, NC who own the cabin and 100 acres on which it sits.  The “cabin” is a two-story log cabin with a large living area and three spacious bedrooms and two baths, a full kitchen and satellite TV.  So it’s a comfortable place to stay while giving guests the time to concentrate on the beauty of the natural surroundings, with lots of rocking chairs on the front porch to sit, rock, and let all the stress or whatever emotions may be present to minimize and finally slip away.  I was there to write and to find out what was ailing me.  The book of essays that I completed on this mountain retreat came easily in the space of this beautiful, isolated environment.  I realized that my original impulse to persuade the public to protect the Earth, in particular to encourage children, teachers and parents to take time in nature, is my true path.  Along the way I got off track mostly due to financial necessity.  Over the next ten months I will be making a transition to focus my energies and talents back in that direction.

I want to share the interview with Jacob Needleman at OnBeing.org, NPR this morning. I frequently listen to “Being” which is the creation of Krista Tibbet a wise and talented woman who brings the thinkers and religious leaders of our time to her program.

Jacob Needleman is a philosopher who grew up in Philadelphia.  He was not particularly inspired to explore American History due to the very stereotyped history classes he experienced – indeed most of us have experienced.  However, through his journey to understand how the wisdom traditions of all religions and philosophies related to the problems or our era, he rediscovered America and the need for America.

For the 4th of July, go here to find a deeper meaning to our democracy that has been lost or at least pushed to the background.  It is in this interview that I found perhaps a clue to why I have been feeling depressed and lost; the loss of this country’s great path to explore the truth and to uphold that freedom for all.  Needleman wrote The American Soul in which he describes what he has come to understand and how he answered this question: Is America necessary?  He contrasts the individual with our current craze of individualism.  He writes that obligations go along with freedoms.  And, he implores us to think together for a while, not act, not shout…but to stop and consider what being an American truly means.

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.  ~ John Muir

Tomorrow I “trek” to a cabin in the Pisgah National Forest.  The owner, a writer like myself, assures me it is quiet and its spring water the best tasting in that country, the Appalachians.  There is a stream with trout and waterfalls; a big porch with rocking chairs and forest.  I can’t tell you how much I need this time to refresh in nature, how much of my natural rhythm (if I even have one left)  may remain in tact after mind and body numbing technical writing in an isolated office at a university writing other people’s dreams.  The art is perception, some might say.  But I wonder now if that is just a fool’s strategy to drink the undrinkable.

But I am blunt in my ability to judge; worn from forcing that which goes against my grain.  Weary, foggy, and unsure…I go to the mountains to listen to a stream passing by, making melodies from the stones it must traverse on its journey.  I will learn something from the river full of trout outside the cabin door and maybe follow it for a while to see where it goes.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, whose the fairest one of all?

The Washington Post carried a good review of events at the 20-year convocation of the Rio Summit on the Environment.  Before it opened, an agreement was signed by world leaders that most experts and advocates of the environment agree was milk toast when it should have been garlic toast!  However, some leaders are not daunted by this outcome, accepting it as par for a world focused on short-term economic crises.  Others – leaders of less developed countries, many which harbor the world’s richest biodiversity – are outraged that the leaders of the U.S., China, India and other blockbuster economies are not properly assuming responsibility for the pollution of the atmosphere, massive use and diminution of resources, and impacts on people in countries that were historically conquered and colonized in past centuries.

I tire of these repeated dramas; regular as waves on a beach head.  Hunger rages on where despots reign or small subsistence communities have been disrupted by “progress” or capitalization.

The point made by less developed countries is well taken: we are more culpable than other countries.  As human beings, when we take time or get a chance to look another human being in the eye, compassion generally emerges, the altruistic side of us homo sapiens.  Its human touch that grounds two people to the realization they are linked by each others’ happiness and welfare.  Go a step further to take time to commune with nature.  Not hunting or running or hiking or even nature exploration. I am talking about something as simple as sitting outside to watch a sunset, taking in a deep long breath, and thinking nothing. Just feeling. The heart is beating in your chest, your skin prickles in a breeze. Again, the moment reminds us that we are not separate from the earth beneath our feet.

Can we really expect to make important very long range decisions on the run, multitasking, stimulating every neuron and orifice?

If we look into the Rio Summit Mirror, are we the fairest of all?

 

Everyone should be blessed with a father like mine.  At nearly 95 he is still active, alert, caring and very, very good company.  I am nearly 67 and my “little sister” is 53.  We spent a pleasant lunch with Dad discussing everything from outhouses to computers.  Born in 1917, he remembers no indoor toilets, rigging up a shower (bucket on a rope slung over a barn rafter), and when his farmhouse home in rural Tennessee was first wired with electricity – a bare bulb hanging on a wire.  How did he span from there to flying bombers, to living independently as a septuagenarian whose online chat group entertains friends and family?  He is a man who has continually reinvented himself and he is a man who has overcome great periods of difficulty and disappointment.  I believe my Dad’s daily routine of getting up at dawn, flinging back the drapes, opening the door, lighting up a pipe, making a good cup of coffee and sitting by the window to watch the sun rise, the birds  at the feeders he has managed for decades, and his quiet meditation on the gift of another day is the ground from which he draws such steadfastness.  Dad is gentle in spirit, mischievous in nature, and loving and compassionate in his heart.  He never harmed anyone in his entire near century of living.  That is saying something. But mostly, he has loved me and my sisters when we probably didn’t deserve it – through the vagaries of life – he has been a rock. Our children have also found a loving grandfather and refuge whenever they have needed him.  My gratitude is great today.

Anne Rudloe – author, scientist, conservationist, and Zen Teacher passed away on Friday, April 27th at her home in Panacea, Florida.  For those of you who have not read her books about the natural ecology of Florida habitats, you are in for a real treat when you do so.  She had just published a second book on Zen practice before  she died (Zen In a Wild Country).  Her passing leaves a cavern in the heart and soul of the Forgotten Coastal area where she and her husband Jack Rudloe founded the Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory and Environmental Education Center.  Anne and Jack Rudloe are passionate defenders of Florida’s long leaf pine communities, coastal marine life, and sea turtles.  Their efforts span decades and they are notorious for preventing development to overrun critical habitats in Florida.  Anne was an adjunct professor at Florida State University where she mentored many young scientists and future conservationists.

Anne’s best work of natural history in my view is Priceless Florida  coauthored with Elie Whitney and Bruce Means.  I spent days pouring over the descriptions of the State’s major ecosystems, watersheds, and wildlife communities. This is a Florida Nature Bible for readers who wish to learn the amazing and fragile landscapes and natural resources that humankind has been diminishing since we first arrived on its bays bayous swamps beaches and forested land.

To truly experience the expertise and care that Anne and Jack put into the books they wrote together, I recommend that you read Shrimp, The Endless Quest for Pink Gold.

I met Anne and Jack last summer on a trip to explore the Forgotten Coast and my quest as a new Floridian to find the “Olde Florida” way of life.  A year earlier my sister pointed me toward Jack’s books which she read and loved over the years:  The Living Dock, The Erotic Ocean, The Sea Brings Forth and others written in the 60s, 70s and on. I decided to visit the lab and see if I could chat with Jack and Anne about writing some grants for them.  I ended up spending the afternoon with them and buying a couple hundred dollars worth of their books and conscripting them into signing each one!  How fortunate I was to have any time at all with this wonderful family and the places that they have created for all of us to learn more about nature and thus more about ourselves.  Anne shared her experiences with cancer from when she first learned about it to that day when she was feeling good because she was in between chemotherapy treatments.

Jack drove me out into their beloved swamp – 18 acres that abuts a natural wildlife refuge – the place where Anne meditated.  We drove right up to her on no roads, Jack swerving around the broad base of a virgin cypress, as she sat dressed in all white flowing clothing and straw hat, a colorful umbrella over her head.  It was threatening rain.  How generous both Jack and Anne were to take me to lunch and then to spend hours describing how it all came to be – their dream, wrought out of years of toil and shaky finances – living on grants and what they gleaned from their marine specimen service to research labs all over the country.

For months after I met Anne and Jack I had Anne’s YouTube video – the Nature of Cancer – on my blog.  A close friend of mine received tremendous comfort from it as she was also going through her own struggle with cancer at the time. Many people wrote me that her words were profoundly meaningful to them.  Anne’s practice of Zen Buddhism undergirded her personal perspective on nature and toward the end of her life the full flowering of her understanding comes through dramatically in this latest book which I am reading.  In fact, two days before she passed away I thought of her and went online to the laboratory website and saw that she had a blog. She had made a recent post so I did not even imagine that she might be gone two days later.  I ordered the book and intended to drive down to Panacea in a few weeks to capture that signature again and see how everyone was doing.

To Anne:  I thank you for the legacy of your life’s work and dreams.  And, I bless you on your path into the wonderment that you glimpsed so recently.  May we all reach that place of wordless union with all things.