Project
NatureConnect
Millennium Global Community Activity
Archive II of Anonymous Responses
I was all out of focus last week and couldn't get going on anything. I went to where I usually walk on N. Douglas. After I got there I wasn't attracted to walking. I started back home because I'm working really hard on completing volume 2 of the wild edible/ medicinal plant book, but was feeling incomplete because I hadn't spent time outdoors for a couple of days. At Fish Creek the brilliant idea surfaced to go do Mike's natural sensory attraction string activity.
Walking down the trail I was drawn to the creek where salmon are spawning. I felt like I was in a daze from too much indoor time--pretty nature disconnected in other words.
On emerging from the woods I saw a raven taking a bath downstream a ways, splashing up a storm. I asked permission to connect and felt my natural sense of humor attraction string surface. I laughed at the commotion raven was making. That was the beginning of following natural attraction sensory strings for the next 45 minutes. Raven didn't give me permission to connect because he flew behind a tree and that was fine because one of my senses had already started balancing some of my out of balance-ness.
Next I was drawn to a salmon that was pretty discolored on its way to its spawning site. I felt sad knowing it would die after it buried its eggs or fertilized the eggs, depending on whether it was male or female. I asked permission to connect. It seemed to stop swimming, just staying there motionless somehow. I took that as permission and began repeating natural sensory attraction string. I felt tears, and let them come. The fish just stayed there, seemingly effortlessly, not even moving its tail or fins to offset the movement of the stream. It moved closer to me.
In awhile I felt myself drifting away from the fish (mostly my natural sensory attraction string to move away from the decaying smell of fish that had spawned and died). After thanking the fish for connecting me to a number of sensory strings, and as I was moving away from the stream, I heard a noise, turned toward it and saw a big porcupine starting to climb a big read alder. I asked for permission to visit. He responded by coming down from the tree and heading toward me... but got attracted to another alder and started climbing. I repeated natural sensory attraction string and became aware of my sense of joy at being so unthreatening to one of nature's wild creatures. Porcupine climbed right up to the top of the alder and I walked under the tree to see what he was doing. He looked down at me for awhile and I felt an easy connection with him.
Shortly I thanked porcupine for the natural sense attraction strings being shared and moved on. I walked over to the pond overlooking Mendenhall Glacier and was attracted to a small fish jumping. Then I was very attracted to a bird sound back on the creek. I thought maybe it was a water ouzel. I climbed up and over the bank. In the center of the stream I say two greater yellow legs. What pretty voices. I asked permission to visit because I sensed them getting ready to leave at my approach. They stayed. Walking slowly down the bank a water ouzel skimmed over the water right in front of my feet. I began saying natural sensory attraction string. My attention was divided between the greater yellow legs and other motions. Thanking my sense of motion attraction string, two immature eagles flew overhead and upstream. As I followed them I noticed something different upstream, but didn't know what it was. My old brain knew all along. It took awhile to get the message to my new brain, but saying natural sensory attraction string I eventually saw a great blue heron close by where i had connected with the spawning salmon earlier. My senses of shape and color had been engaged, which I was able to connect both outside of myself with the heron and inside myself with the senses that detected its presence, even though it was stationary and blended in with the rest of the rocks.
By repeating natural sensory attraction string so often in this 45 minute period, more of my senses automatically began engaging. I noticed the very slight movement of water up the bank, not directly, but more because I was part of my environment now instead of up in my head with my sense of language operating on automatic. Watching the water gliding over plants, rocks, dirt, closer to my feet, I saw a salmon float by right below me.
I asked permission to visit and right away I became aware of a difference between how I felt about this salmon on its way to spawn and die than the salmon I connected with when I first got there. Now as I repeated natural sensory attraction string I felt no pain around the natural transformation occurring in the salmon, in the river, in the birds I had been visiting, in me.
And I felt glad to be alive and able to participate so fully and richly with everything around and in me.
I am recommitted to nature connecting activities at least 3 times a week. They are what brought me to getting closer to financially supporting myself doing what I love in the first place--being outdoors!
Thank you, thank you, thank you Mike.
I'll submit something more for "public consumption soon, or I'll just let you go ahead and post this if you think it might be helpful for others. Perhaps my own score (100%) reaffirms my own path and the choices I've made in my life during the past 25 years.
Sometimes, I reflect on just how difficult it is to notice this runaway train we're riding upon called our CULTure. We all have a lot more unlearning to do! How could I make contact with the courageous young woman who knew in high school that she was being poisoned by a system that squeezes the life out of us all by disconnecting us from our natural environment and teaches us not to trust our most intuitive, awareness or our sensory passionate inclinations (life strings)?
I would like to share a story with her regarding my own experience of graduating from Harvard around the time she was escaping the "prison" of higher education. You might find it wonderfully synchronistic that after sitting on the floor with my lap top plugged into a wall jack and beginning to notice how uncomfortable I was, the moment we got to the activity page my daughter's cat came into the room, walked over to me and started bumping into me with his head. Then he jumped up on the bed I was leaning against and started butting his head into the lower part of my skull, just about my neck. It was the perfect reminder to awaken my OLD brain. . . his nudging sent tingles up and down my spine. then he jumped down, tried to crawl into my lap which I discouraged since my new brain didn't want cat hair in my keyboard. He walked around the screen and sat on my lower legs digging his claws into me as if to give me a free acupunture session to wake up my feet. A child hood memory surfaced regarding my dislike for cats since I usually ended up sneezing with itchy eyes and tremendous contracted discomfort in my throat and nasal pathways after each encounter. . . not to mention more than a few painful scratches delivered by cats for no apparent reason - I couldn't understand why cats would scratch me when I was little - I never taunted them. . . maybe they sensed my fear. Now, I find them to be extraordinary beings -- once again proving to be the perfect accomplice for your activity. He purred in my ear giving me a sense of deep connection to primal sound, he stroked my arms with his fur soothing my every sense as the softness of his being flowed across my skin with the kind of comforting motion a mother would offer to a new born child. . . A sensation of unconditional love swept through my body all from this simple yet profound "connection" to a member of the awesome cat family - a living part of the web of life.
Contact:
P.O. Box 1605, Friday Harbor WA 98250
(360) 378-6313.
Email: nature@pacificrim.net
Internet: www.ecopsych.com
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