The Itch

"In indigenous ways of knowing...a thing cannot be
understood until it is known by all four aspects of our being: mind, body, emotion, and spirit."

–Robin Wall Kimmerer

I started this blog to as way to encourage myself to write more, and to document a journey I am choosing voluntarily, but also one which is calling me and can’t be denied: to draw ever closer to nature, to form a deeper intimacy with nature, to form an ‘understanding’ using all four aspects of myself: mind, body, emotion, and spirit.

Intimate as a verb means “to make known” and as an adjective “on very familiar terms.”
I knew instinctively, but am just now able to articulate, that in order to create intimacy-I must be in relationship not just to snippets of “nature” as I encounter them here and there, but in a committed relationship, over time, to a particular place, a particular habitat, with particular plants, animals, seasonal changes, climate, and so on. And not just particular species of plants or animals, but particular, individual beings. (I'm thinking of Ernest Thompson Seton and his Wild Animals I Have Known, especially the wolf Lobo, and Julia Butterfly Hill and her relationship with Luna.)

And the time spent must be particular moments of my own “being,” that is, moments of ‘being’ fully engaged and present with these particular individual other “beings.”. And these moments must be strung together in clumps of continuous time, as large as I can make them, and must occur as frequently as possible.

Unfortunately, the phenomenon of blogging has started to detract from creating intimacy with nature. I find myself spending too much time looking at a computer screen and checking for comments.

Also, I have lost my way in learning the names of these beings. For example, I realized that it was important to learn native plant Latin names and/or common names. These names are a form of shorthand—a word or brief set of words that humans have agreed designate a group of beings who share certain fundamental characteristics that differentiate that group from other groups of beings. Species is a human concept, one that keeps shifting.

I hoped to use these words to document and convey to others my experiences of intimacy with individual plant beings in particular habitats at particular moments. Learning the names was fun at first, but rather quickly began to feel uncomfortable. I found it had become the primary goal, rather than simply a tool. The process of identification-looking things up in field guides- although fascinating, began to distance me from an experience of intimacy, rather than bring me further into it. Why was this happening?

Classifying species is the science of taxonomy. Taxonomy has a beauty all its own. It is essentially the arrangement of things or concepts in a hierarchical structure. It is something the human mind does automatically to order our experiences of reality. It is a way of seeing the world that is continually rewarded and reinforced by our culture. It has given us "dominion" over the earth. But it has its hazards.

Edward Abbey, in Desert Solitaire, wrote: The itch for naming things is almost as bad as the itch for possessing things.” And ponder these quotes from Walt Whitman:

"When I heard the learn’d astronomer; When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me; When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them; When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick; Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars."

AND

You must not know too much or be too precise or scientific about birds
and trees and flowers and watercraft; a certain free-margin, and even vagueness - ignorance, credulity - helps your enjoyment of these things.

Philosopher Martin Buber wrote about the I-Thou relationship versus the I-It relationship. According to wiki wisdom: I-Thou is one of mutuality and reciprocity, while I-It is a relationship of separateness and detachment. I-Thou stresses the mutual, holistic existence of two beings. I-It treats others as objects to be used and experienced.

I have not studied Buber’s work-only read a summary of it. While he wrote mostly about relationships between humans, Buber recognized I-Thou encounters could occur between humans and animals or human and trees. He also suggested that in order to experience I-Thou, a person has to be open to the idea of such a relationship, but not actively pursue it.

Naming and classifying, which the human mind does brilliantly, is almost like a weapon --or more accurately-a sharp tool, that must be handled very carefully and according to certain protocols if one does not want to destroy intimacy with the being/object to which it is applied (or the real being itself!).

I want an I-Thou encounter with nature using not only the tools of my mind-my left brain, but with all of me, right brain, body, emotions and spirit.

Does this mean I will stop learning the names of plants and other living things in English and Latin or any other human language? No. But I won’t be so quick to scramble to identify things. I will tap into more than my itch to name. I will sit quietly, observe. I will allow nature itself to speak to me. And I will listen more carefully to the language without words.

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