There’s only a river in me

Since I started to learn an ecocentric worldview, I pay much more attention to nature. I often travel to new places for work. Sometimes they are cities - with or without trees, lovely or polluted, quiet or crowded. More often they are small towns, villages or guesthouses in the middle of the most enchanting nowhere. As these are mostly short trips, I appreciate all places, no matter how much the presence of nature can be felt there. However, over the last year I have been trying more and more to feel the nature of a particular place. Whether it's the warmth of the sun on my skin in a metropolitan bus station, or the sound of mud crunching under my boots as I walk along the paths of the local forest. And I'm just learning to be open to what's happening.

I have noticed that when I try to meditate in nature or "soak up" the sounds or smells of the meadow, I often remain there - in that moment of trying. But when practising different methods of ecocentrism, I find that I am best at giving up. What does this mean? I'm still trying, of course - to concentrate, to "tune in", whatever that means, to pay attention to all my senses. And then I get stuck waiting for some miracle. Several years ago I experienced something called 'eco-awakening' - it's a physical sensation and a really deep revelation that everything around me is alive, vibrating, present. Maybe I'm waiting to feel that again. I am even consciously trying to feel it. But I get stuck in that effort, and nothing really happens. However when I surrender, that is, when I stop waiting and "doing my tasks", when I just give in to the sounds, to the breath, to the thoughts, it is in these moments that I become much more aware of where I am, what is happening around me, and how it is reflected in me. 

I watch as the questions awaken in me - do the locals still see what animals these fjords resemble? Were there as many orange shades in the forest tops the day before yesterday? Where is this smell of rotting apples carrying me? How big a shadow was once cast by the tree that is now  just a huge stump? How would I continue the drawing of the ice-flower on this window? How do I feel if I only look at the rapids of the river through my palms, blocking the view of the banks? Sometimes, very rarely, it also happens that there is only the river inside me. Just that strange bird's voice. Just the frozen window of the city. Just the fjord wind. And the realisation - I am nature.

Does it make a difference? In a moment, I have to return to reality - to the emails, to the fear of war, to the doubts of my body, to the powerlessness in the face of today. But at the same time, amongst the tiredness and disbelief, there is also the reality of nature in me. Today is also the power of the rapids, the safety of the fjords, the beauty of the ice-flowers. This, too, exists and will exist long after human beings. In this awareness I find both, peace and the strength and meaning to keep doing, to keep practising my values, to keep supporting, fighting, explaining and creating. 

 

Project “Re-Wild” is financed by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union that in Romania is administrated by the National Agency for Community Programs in the Field of Education and Vocational Training. The article reflects only the opinion of the author.