Speaker 1: I don't want to be walking around without having to
Speaker 1: be attentive with movement that doesn't involve my mind, my intelligence,
Speaker 1: my imagination.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 2: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Lyanda Haupt,
Speaker 2: an award winning author, naturalist, eco philosopher, educator, and speaker
Speaker 2: whose work explores the beautiful, complicated connections between humans and
Speaker 2: the wild natural world. Leanda's writing is acclaimed for a
Speaker 2: combining scientific knowledge with literary poetic prose. She's a winner
Speaker 2: of the sigourd Olsen Nature Writing Award, the Nautilus Book Award,
Speaker 2: a finalist for the Orion Book Award, and two time
Speaker 2: winner of the Washington State Book Award. Leanda has created
Speaker 2: and directed educational programs for Seattle Audubon, worked in raptor
Speaker 2: rehabilitation in Vermont, and has been a seabird researcher for
Speaker 2: the US Fish and Wildlife Service in the remote tropical Pacific.
Speaker 2: Her newest book is Rooted Life in the Crossroads of Science,
Speaker 2: Nature and Spirit.
Speaker 3: Hi Land and welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hi, Eric, I am so happy to be here.
Speaker 3: We're going to be discussing your book called Rooted Life
Speaker 3: at the Crossroads of Science, Nature and Spirit. But before
Speaker 3: we do that, we'll start like we always do, which
Speaker 3: is with the parable. There's a parable where there's a
Speaker 3: grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life,
Speaker 3: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 3: at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 3: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is
Speaker 3: a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred
Speaker 3: and fear. And the grandchild stops and they think about
Speaker 3: it for a second, and they look up at their
Speaker 3: grandparent and they say, well, which one wins, and the
Speaker 3: grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to
Speaker 3: start off by asking you what that parable means to
Speaker 3: you in your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Eric, you know, thinking about this before speaking
Speaker 1: with you, I went back in my mind to the
Speaker 1: very first time i'd heard that parable. It's been out
Speaker 1: in the world for a while and there are a
Speaker 1: lot of thoughts about it, but the first time I
Speaker 1: heard it was maybe ten or twelve years ago at
Speaker 1: a huge venue, like probably a Ted talk or something.
Speaker 1: So there's thousands of people in the room, most of
Speaker 1: us haven't heard this story. And when the speaker gets
Speaker 1: to that line, you know which one is going to win.
Speaker 1: With thousands of people, there's always kind of a hum
Speaker 1: of conversation or just a little background noise, even if
Speaker 1: people are being basically quiet, And at that question, there
Speaker 1: was this hush, and when the speaker said the one
Speaker 1: you feed, you heard this palpable kind of kind of
Speaker 1: a gasp of recognition. You know, it just landed. Never heard.
Speaker 1: It was like, we know what that means. It's like
Speaker 1: and we have that wolf right in this moment, all
Speaker 1: of us in different ways. And so since that time,
Speaker 1: I've heard this parable deconstructed and interrogated and complexified and
Speaker 1: non dualized, and you know, all this stuff, which I
Speaker 1: think is fascinating and valuable. But I just wanted to
Speaker 1: go back to that beginner's mind that just thunk. I
Speaker 1: know what that means, yea. And for me personally right now,
Speaker 1: I am in a transitional moment. A year ago, my
Speaker 1: now former husband and I decided to complete our twenty
Speaker 1: five year marriage, and we just signed the papers on
Speaker 1: that really a couple of weeks ago. So I'm in
Speaker 1: this sort of shedding of a certain kind of skin,
Speaker 1: a certain molting of feathers that leaves when raw and open.
Speaker 1: And for me in this time, I've been struggling with
Speaker 1: a little bit of acdia, that kind of fear and
Speaker 1: uncertainty that leads to a listlessness with regard to the
Speaker 1: choices we make. And so for me, feeding the good
Speaker 1: wolf is all right here, Eric. I'm on the very
Speaker 1: most basic things, like putting my yoga clothes at the
Speaker 1: end of the bed so I get up, you know,
Speaker 1: having that already so I don't even have to make
Speaker 1: the choice to do yoga before going into the sort
Speaker 1: of overcultural productivity day. Literally keeping good food in you know,
Speaker 1: holy basal tea and blueberries in my fridge right now,
Speaker 1: to nourish body and mind and spirit, just all those
Speaker 1: little basics that move me into brightness and awakeness and
Speaker 1: a lifeness and also turning to some of the earth
Speaker 1: based practices in my book. So the way that manifests
Speaker 1: in my work life is on not so basic a scale,
Speaker 1: that idea of drawing people through connection to the ecological whole,
Speaker 1: into their truest, most life selves from which they can
Speaker 1: be in service to the earth and community.
Speaker 3: It's interesting the way you put completed your twenty five
Speaker 3: year marriage. I love that phrase, and even with that,
Speaker 3: I will offer my understanding of how difficult that period is.
Speaker 3: And I love how you're doing the very simple things
Speaker 3: when life feels difficult, because that's the way we get
Speaker 3: through these things. So maybe we could explore that word completion,
Speaker 3: because that is a very different word than we ended
Speaker 3: our twenty five year marriage. We're getting a divorce, which
Speaker 3: is technically what's happening. But I'd love to know a
Speaker 3: little bit more about the use of the word completion
Speaker 3: and how that helped you in the process, and maybe
Speaker 3: how it helped you and your husband's relationship in the process.
Speaker 1: Right. Well, I don't want to sound overly enlightened. The
Speaker 1: mediation process of the last year, you know, was hard,
Speaker 1: and it does not bring out the best in anyone.
Speaker 1: I pictured myself being, you know, this sweet body sought
Speaker 1: for like being during the process, seeking both of our
Speaker 1: higher good. But uh fell off that way and know
Speaker 1: and then as did my former partners. So but that's okay.
Speaker 1: It's part of the process. But that language completion, I
Speaker 1: thought was really meaningful because the cultural language around divorce
Speaker 1: and ending the marriage is the language of failure, and
Speaker 1: we talk about failed marriages, and people have always even
Speaker 1: said that to me, Oh, I never thought your marriage
Speaker 1: would fail, And I think, what are you talking about.
Speaker 1: It didn't fail. We lived together for twenty five years,
Speaker 1: We created a beautiful household, We raised this daughter to completion. Eric,
Speaker 1: you and I both have a twenty four year old offspring,
Speaker 1: and she's radiant and wondrous, and I'm proud of everything
Speaker 1: we did. That is not a failure. You know, in
Speaker 1: our culture, the only successful marriage is one in which
Speaker 1: both partners, you know, just kind of limps along until
Speaker 1: someone dies. I mean, maybe they do really well until
Speaker 1: someone does. But one person dying, right, is what a
Speaker 1: successful marriage is. And I'm thinking we have to reframe
Speaker 1: that and bring back the honoring of you know, the
Speaker 1: families and the homes and the lives that we create,
Speaker 1: and then recognizing when we grow apart that what's best
Speaker 1: for our journey might be a farewell. It might be
Speaker 1: a certain kind of closure, a completion, a different framework
Speaker 1: for being family. And so I want to rethink that
Speaker 1: language of failure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that idea because it assumes that the
Speaker 3: only metric of a successful relationship is its permanence, right,
Speaker 3: And I, like, you don't think that's really true. I
Speaker 3: think there are lots of different ways to think about relationships.
Speaker 3: And I have had two, if we call them that,
Speaker 3: failed marriages, but I don't think of them as failures.
Speaker 3: I think I learned a lot from them. And like you,
Speaker 3: I've got a twenty five year old child who was
Speaker 3: part of both of those marriages, and I'm so grateful
Speaker 3: for how he has turned out. And you know, we
Speaker 3: just we never know what the past would be. And
Speaker 3: so I really like that way of thinking of sort
Speaker 3: of completing something and transitioning into a new way of family.
Speaker 3: And my thoughts are with you as you go through that,
Speaker 3: because it is a big change and can bring up
Speaker 3: some strong feelings.
Speaker 1: Right, no matter how right it is, there's still some
Speaker 1: grief around. Yes, you know what you had imagined, loss
Speaker 1: of a certain kind of identity.
Speaker 3: Yep. Yeah. So let's pivot now into talking about the book.
Speaker 3: And I want to start with where I thought you
Speaker 3: might go with the wolf parable, which is to talk
Speaker 3: about Francis and the wolf, because I don't know if
Speaker 3: that story has ever been told on this show, and
Speaker 3: if it has, it's been once sometime in the distant past.
Speaker 3: So I love Saint Francis, that prayer of peace that's
Speaker 3: traditionally attributed to him as such a beautiful piece of
Speaker 3: writing and was so instrumental to me early in my
Speaker 3: journey of sobriety. So I've always had sort of a
Speaker 3: warm feeling for him. So tell us the story about
Speaker 3: Francis and the wolf.
Speaker 1: Okay, And you're right, there are a lot of wolves
Speaker 1: in my book, and I pondered that, but I still
Speaker 1: went back to that original telling. But there's the wolf
Speaker 1: that Little Red meets in the forest. There's the literal
Speaker 1: wolves that are you know, clyying for continuation as climate
Speaker 1: changes and as they continue to be reviled as predators.
Speaker 1: And then there's this beautiful story about Saint Francis. So
Speaker 1: as the story goes, so it's the twelve hundreds, he'll
Speaker 1: site in Italy called Gubio, and the mayor calls on
Speaker 1: Saint Francis because he has a reputation for being peaceful
Speaker 1: and maybe being able to speak beyond you know, the
Speaker 1: human species boundary. He's known for giving sermons to birds
Speaker 1: who come to perch and listen. So he calls upon
Speaker 1: this wild Saint Francis, and he says, you know, we
Speaker 1: have this problem. This wild, hungry beast, ferocious wolf is
Speaker 1: surrounding our town, eating our shepherds, carrying away children. You know,
Speaker 1: Soldiers go out to kill the wolf and they come
Speaker 1: back either dead or their sword is snapped, and everyone's
Speaker 1: living in fear. And you know, the more these tales
Speaker 1: are told, the more ferocious and horrible the wolf becomes
Speaker 1: in the people's imagination. Now they're all just staying indoors
Speaker 1: and inside the gates of the city. So Francis arrives
Speaker 1: and he says, well, I'm just gonna seek out this
Speaker 1: wolf and see what I can find out. So he
Speaker 1: finds her, and he speaks with her, and he listens
Speaker 1: to her story as she tells tell him that she
Speaker 1: has been injured, she's separated from her own pack of wolves,
Speaker 1: she's struggling to find sustenance, she's starving. She hates killing
Speaker 1: the villagers. It is not what she wants, but she
Speaker 1: has no other way of sustaining herself and the cubs
Speaker 1: that she is about to bear. It's the only thing
Speaker 1: that she can do. So Francis goes back and he
Speaker 1: reports this to the villagers and they listen, and they
Speaker 1: figure out a way to offer the wolf food so
Speaker 1: that she can sustain herself, and she, for her part,
Speaker 1: leaves the village alone. So the interesting turn that I
Speaker 1: want to make on this story is that in almost
Speaker 1: every telling, the title of the story is Saint Francis
Speaker 1: tames the wolf, tames the wolf as if he makes
Speaker 1: it subservient to human wants and needs. And what I
Speaker 1: get from this is that he hasn't tamed the wolf.
Speaker 1: He just listened to the wolf in a way that
Speaker 1: allows her continued true wildness.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that story, and unlike you, I think
Speaker 3: that the parable hits immediately and you immediately get it right.
Speaker 3: It's as a boom, right. But the interpretation of it
Speaker 3: that I get more and more from people as we
Speaker 3: begin to learn more about our trauma responses, as we
Speaker 3: begin to learn more about how our circumstances have shaped
Speaker 3: us and all these different things, is that we do
Speaker 3: want to listen to the bad wolf. We want to
Speaker 3: understand what's happening there, right, you know, we don't want
Speaker 3: to starve it. And so that story speaks to that
Speaker 3: so much, because it really shows that, you know, the
Speaker 3: wolf was acting a certain way for a reason, and
Speaker 3: when the wolf was given other options, it chose to
Speaker 3: do the less destructive things. And I think that is
Speaker 3: often so true in our lives, is that these things
Speaker 3: we would call the bad wolf, when we give it
Speaker 3: different options, when we give it what it needs in
Speaker 3: a healthy or less destructive way, it will often, you know,
Speaker 3: turn into our good wolf in many ways. And so
Speaker 3: I love that story both because I love Saint Francis
Speaker 3: and I like that way of thinking about these darker
Speaker 3: sides of ourselves.
Speaker 1: Right, And I love too, that it's not just a
Speaker 1: story about giving the wolf options, but realizing that from
Speaker 1: the side that is afraid of the wolf, Understanding the
Speaker 1: fear from the other side is you know, a form
Speaker 1: of integration. And I think so often in your Wolf parable,
Speaker 1: the so called bad wolf becomes conflated with things like
Speaker 1: our anxiety or our fear of death, or our grief,
Speaker 1: you know, pushing those things down. And as you so
Speaker 1: often discussed, that's not what's bad. That can be part
Speaker 1: of the good side. What's bad, if we want to
Speaker 1: use that word, is are the actions that remove us
Speaker 1: from bringing those things into wholeness, that keep us in
Speaker 1: isolation and disconnection. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I interviewed somebody yesterday and she had a line in
Speaker 3: her book which is just a very simple statement of
Speaker 3: a very obvious truth, but one that we can all hear,
Speaker 3: which is, emotions are not bad, but the behaviors that
Speaker 3: spring from emotions can be bad, you know. And I think,
Speaker 3: you know, that's certainly been very true in my life.
Speaker 3: And there's another line from one of the first probably
Speaker 3: fifteen podcasts we did that just came into my mind.
Speaker 3: It does periodically because it hit me so hard and
Speaker 3: the basic idea he was saying was when our behavior
Speaker 3: is under control, we are safe to really feel our emotions. Yes,
Speaker 3: And that really hit me because once upon a time,
Speaker 3: strong emotions caused me to go into just deep, deeply
Speaker 3: self destructive behaviors that were nearly fatal. But now that
Speaker 3: I know that's not going to happen, I have a
Speaker 3: whole lot more window to say, Okay, I can feel
Speaker 3: the emotions that are coming up, and now I know
Speaker 3: how to work with them in a far more skilful way.
Speaker 1: Just yesterday, I was thinking about it in terms of
Speaker 1: this parable the idea of food, you know, and what
Speaker 1: the feeding and food food is in the story. You know,
Speaker 1: As a writer, I'm cognizant of not wanting to over
Speaker 1: torture the metaphorm. But I was thinking as I fed
Speaker 1: my cat. You know, when we're feeding our cats or
Speaker 1: our dogs, or ourselves our own bodies, we don't wait,
Speaker 1: you know, meal by meal to go oh, meal time,
Speaker 1: I got to go out and get some food, you know,
Speaker 1: to feed the cat or myself. We have a stockpile.
Speaker 1: And so I was thinking for myself, in this sort
Speaker 1: of marriage completion Acedia, what is the stockpile? Yes, it's
Speaker 1: literal good food. It is the yoga clothes, it is
Speaker 1: the meditation practices, it is the nature connection practices. In
Speaker 1: terms of our seeking to deepen our connection as members
Speaker 1: of the earth community. You know, all of the practices
Speaker 1: of rootedness that I explore in the book and life,
Speaker 1: you know, of putting our bare feet on the earth,
Speaker 1: of being in communion with trees and every day weather
Speaker 1: and wildness. Now having that stockpile of practices and things
Speaker 1: that positive physical comfort, this is the kind of literal food.
Speaker 1: I sort of like that idea about having all these
Speaker 1: things in the cupboard so that when the wolves are there,
Speaker 1: we have the right food for the right wolf.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, as we move into the book, I'd like to
Speaker 3: talk about a theme that shows up in this book
Speaker 3: and in several of your other books, also around the
Speaker 3: idea of hope, And I just want to read something
Speaker 3: that you wrote to sort of set it up. You say,
Speaker 3: hope is our positive orientation towards the future, a future
Speaker 3: in which we simultaneously recognize difficulty, responsibility, and delight. Hope
Speaker 3: is not relative to the present situation, nor is it
Speaker 3: dependent upon a specific outcome. It's not an antidote to
Speaker 3: despair or a sidestepping of a difficulty, but a companion
Speaker 3: to all these things. Talk to me about hope.
Speaker 1: We live at a time where hope is presented I
Speaker 1: think so often as a shiny ideal, an expectation that
Speaker 1: things are going to go well and look better in
Speaker 1: the future. And there is alongside that the sense that
Speaker 1: the reason that we participate in the unfolding of the future,
Speaker 1: the reason that we create selves that are able to
Speaker 1: be responsible activists and artists in the world, is because
Speaker 1: we are creating a future that is going to look better.
Speaker 1: And I hope that that is true, But I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's true. I don't know. I mean, we
Speaker 1: look at the science around climate crisis right now, we
Speaker 1: look at the things that we know we are no
Speaker 1: matter what happens, or unless something very extreme happens, we
Speaker 1: know that we're not going to be able to turn
Speaker 1: so many things around, and that there are things very
Speaker 1: very difficult unfolding in our ecological future. Does that mean
Speaker 1: that we throw up our hands and say, well, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to do anything because there's no hope, or
Speaker 1: that we act only because we think that we can
Speaker 1: absolutely turn that around and create an ecotopia. No, I
Speaker 1: just think we have to absolutely decouple the rightness of
Speaker 1: our actions in the world. The acting with love, the
Speaker 1: acting with compassion, the acting with an eye towards the
Speaker 1: unfolding future, whatever that may be, has to be absolutely
Speaker 1: decoupled from Uh. It's hard to speak about this without
Speaker 1: using the word help, without hope that it's going to
Speaker 1: look a certain way that it does in our imagination.
Speaker 1: I mean, we just can't wait for that, because if
Speaker 1: we do, we'll either become mired in an inability to
Speaker 1: go forward, admired in a kind of paralysis because we're
Speaker 1: scared that it's not going to work. You know, if
Speaker 1: all we're hoping for is a certain outcome, and we
Speaker 1: see how difficult that is, I think part of us
Speaker 1: just want to, you know, go in a cave and
Speaker 1: eat pizza and drink red wine, and you know, we
Speaker 1: act in hope just as we act in love. This
Speaker 1: is kind of a difficult metaphor, but I'm thinking, if
Speaker 1: we have a loved one who is very ill and
Speaker 1: who may not survive, we don't just go out the
Speaker 1: door and say, oh, well, I know they're not going
Speaker 1: to make it. Now, what do we do we go
Speaker 1: by the bedside, we hospice, we hold the hand of
Speaker 1: our beloved, and in a sense, that's what we're doing
Speaker 1: in this earth and community. Maybe not, maybe there are
Speaker 1: still many many things that can improve, but we show
Speaker 1: up with that love no matter what.
Speaker 3: I love that idea. And there was an ecological writer
Speaker 3: and I cannot remember her name right now, which is
Speaker 3: a shame, but I saw her speak in Atlanta, Georgia,
Speaker 3: and she was talking, you know, she was alluding to
Speaker 3: hope a little bit, and I was working on a
Speaker 3: workshop around hope, and so I just asked her, I said,
Speaker 3: you know, given everything you've said about the climate crisis
Speaker 3: and all the fears and how bad things are, is
Speaker 3: hope and appropriate response or do you have hope? And
Speaker 3: what I remember from her response was basically she just
Speaker 3: focuses on love and when you love something, you take
Speaker 3: care of it. I think that's a great analogy with
Speaker 3: someone in our family. It's not like we give up
Speaker 3: caring for someone and if we don't know whether they're
Speaker 3: going to make it or not, because honestly, none of
Speaker 3: us are going to make it at the end of
Speaker 3: the day, right, So that's not how we orient to
Speaker 3: so many things we orient out of care and love,
Speaker 3: and that is a way of I think, relating to
Speaker 3: most all challenges where we can sort of get out
Speaker 3: of this hope or despair element, but it is hard
Speaker 3: to stay that way. I mean, I think I saw
Speaker 3: yesterday that maybe the hottest day ever on record happened
Speaker 3: yesterday or the day before anywhere, you know, and you
Speaker 3: hear that, and there's just a party that just feels
Speaker 3: like ough, you know, inside just like oh. And so
Speaker 3: I think some degree of hope is important in moving
Speaker 3: forward in our lives, but I think, like you said,
Speaker 3: sort of turning it away from hope in a specific outcome.
Speaker 3: I know in my own life, what I tend to
Speaker 3: have hope towards is when I'm looking at my own challenges,
Speaker 3: is my ability to find a way through them. Like
Speaker 3: I don't know what the outcome is, and I often
Speaker 3: don't even know what the right outcome is, but I
Speaker 3: know I can find my way through. You also say
Speaker 3: elsewhere I chose to dwell, as Emily Dickinson famously suggested, impossibility,
Speaker 3: where we cannot predict what will happen, but we make
Speaker 3: space for whatever it is and realize that our participation
Speaker 3: has value. And then you have a line that I love.
Speaker 3: This is grown up optimism. That is a phrase I love,
Speaker 3: grown up optimism.
Speaker 1: Grown Up optimism means we know that we're not necessarily
Speaker 1: going to get our way, and yet we act from
Speaker 1: our highest self. Anyway, I think about the work that
Speaker 1: Joanna Macy is doing in the world that honors both
Speaker 1: our love and our hope in terms of our ecological
Speaker 1: connection and our ecological responsibility. But recognize is further that
Speaker 1: our grief has to be part of that that. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're kind of going back to that parable again, right,
Speaker 1: the integration of that parable that our grief has a
Speaker 1: place in our love, our optimism doesn't outweigh the reckon
Speaker 1: of the depth of our grief and the love that
Speaker 1: both of those things dim from sorrow and optimism.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you use a phrase in the new book. I
Speaker 3: don't know if I'm going to pronounce it right, add
Speaker 3: some oh, adsume and soon Okay, Yes, any sort of
Speaker 3: word that needs pronunciation, you can be fairly certain I
Speaker 3: will get it wrong. So ad soom talk about that? Right?
Speaker 1: So I have a friend who is a monk and
Speaker 1: a Benedictine monastery and actually the process by which they
Speaker 1: make their profession of vows is usually really sacret. But
Speaker 1: he spoke to me about it one night and told
Speaker 1: me this one part where they are asked to commit
Speaker 1: to this life of psychological wilderness. Basically, it's when you're
Speaker 1: committing to a community, but you are also committing to
Speaker 1: a certain kind of solitude and psychological depth and exploration,
Speaker 1: which in a sense is the life that we all,
Speaker 1: you know, where we don't know what's going to happen,
Speaker 1: but we're asked to commit wholeheartedly to it anyway, And
Speaker 1: that Abbott says, will you do this? And the monk
Speaker 1: who is professing says, at zoom, it's Latin. It means
Speaker 1: I am here. And I talk about that in the
Speaker 1: book in relation to I Think, I have a section
Speaker 1: called that I Am here of hope. It ties in
Speaker 1: looks like we look at all this tangled complexity, we
Speaker 1: turn our ear to the other beings, to the beyond
Speaker 1: human world, to the voices of the trees and the
Speaker 1: birds and the earth, and we hear the call to presence,
Speaker 1: to service, to meaning, and we just kind of go, well,
Speaker 1: what do I do? The first thing is just that
Speaker 1: response at zoom I am here, I am listening, I'm here.
Speaker 3: We all know that genuine self compassion and self love
Speaker 3: are absolutely crucial in the quest for healing, transformation, and
Speaker 3: everyday growth, But what if we struggle to get there.
Speaker 3: One of the most powerful, yet effortless ways to settle
Speaker 3: our nervous system and reconnect with our true selves is
Speaker 3: by spending quality time in nature. It's for this reason
Speaker 3: that this August I'll be offering an in person Awakening
Speaker 3: in the Outdoors Retreat at the Beautiful Cropollu Center. This summer,
Speaker 3: I'll be co teaching the retreat with Ralph de l Rosa,
Speaker 3: who's a three time guest of the podcast, author, psychologist,
Speaker 3: meditation teacher and friend. During these five days together, will
Speaker 3: enjoy hikes, outdoor meditations, art in, insightful workshops, and lively discussions.
Speaker 3: Our goal is for you to walk away feeling restored,
Speaker 3: with a firm awareness of new resources and a new
Speaker 3: relationship with the gifts nature holds for us. To learn
Speaker 3: more about this special retreat and sign up, go to
Speaker 3: oneufeed dot net slash nature. I'd like to change direction
Speaker 3: a little bit and talk about attention and being with
Speaker 3: things in our world. In a different way. You quote,
Speaker 3: here's another name. I'm going to mess up, Paul Ellard.
Speaker 1: I think that's good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, it was close. Okay.
Speaker 1: I actually don't know any better than you. So let's okay,
Speaker 1: let's go with that.
Speaker 3: Let's go with it, all right. Paul be forgiving. He says,
Speaker 3: there's another world, but it is in this one. And
Speaker 3: you also talk about, you know, believing in the power
Speaker 3: of sacrament, not as a Catholic, but as a human
Speaker 3: who's open to the truth that something can be made
Speaker 3: sacred by the attention we grant it.
Speaker 1: We live in a time I think where, especially with
Speaker 1: a lot of the health based approaches to nature, you know,
Speaker 1: where we're looking at the natural world and thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: if we go outside, we feel better. Oh, when we
Speaker 1: go outside, it activates our parasympathetic nervous system, and so
Speaker 1: we are going out looking for something for ourselves. You know.
Speaker 1: I spend twenty minutes in nature, I feel better. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking I want to be very, very careful in this
Speaker 1: time where literally the earth is burning because of in
Speaker 1: large part commodification, in terms of you know, are extracting
Speaker 1: our resources for our use and human consumption. I want
Speaker 1: to be really careful when we're using these beautiful new
Speaker 1: sciences that connect our health, the health of our bodies
Speaker 1: and spirits to nature, that we don't flip that into
Speaker 1: another form of commodifying nature. And so I'm getting around
Speaker 1: to your question, which is what we bring to that then,
Speaker 1: is the idea of reciprocity. Not when I walk into
Speaker 1: the world, what can I get? But we will receive.
Speaker 1: But in that receiving, what do we offer in return
Speaker 1: to make that continue to spin and spin? And what
Speaker 1: we offer it doesn't have to be huge, It doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be you know, the creation of a new
Speaker 1: nonprofit organization. It can be attention, It can be witness,
Speaker 1: simple witness. It can be gratitude in the form of praise,
Speaker 1: and I mean that very expansively, a kind of honoring
Speaker 1: and recognition of beauty. Just taking that in and loving
Speaker 1: it and offering gratitude for that. That is one of
Speaker 1: the kinds of attentiveness that is most important to me,
Speaker 1: just like offering our deep, sweet, quiet witness to this
Speaker 1: earth that offers us so much, and it's one of
Speaker 1: the things that we have to offer in return. So
Speaker 1: often too, we just impose our own story upon the
Speaker 1: natural world like we think animals are like, or what
Speaker 1: they want or what things need. And it's also that
Speaker 1: attentive listening that can bring us into a deeper communion
Speaker 1: where we can respond from the truth of what the
Speaker 1: natural world is speaking, rather than what we impose on it.
Speaker 1: In terms of the human story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I always love that idea of the reciprocity and
Speaker 3: of recognizing that when I am in nature, as you said,
Speaker 3: there can be a way in which you could think
Speaker 3: of me as consuming nature, you know, or I'm paying
Speaker 3: attention to nature, but it's also paying attention to me,
Speaker 3: like it knows I'm there. You know. When I say it,
Speaker 3: I mean I don't mean in a grand sense, I
Speaker 3: mean like the squirrel knows I'm there. The various creatures,
Speaker 3: the birds, they all there is a two way relationship
Speaker 3: there where they know I'm there. And I love to
Speaker 3: think about that, that there's this interplay and as you said,
Speaker 3: sort of reciprocity. And I also just love the idea
Speaker 3: of attention. I don't know if it was in your
Speaker 3: book or on a podcast interview, but you talk about
Speaker 3: the Zen tradition of bringing yourself wholeheartedly to everything that
Speaker 3: you do. And as I was reading that line about
Speaker 3: there's another world, but it's in this one, it made
Speaker 3: me think of one of my favorite phrases by a
Speaker 3: Zen teacher I've been a Zen student long time, is
Speaker 3: from Zenmaster Dogan, who says enlightenment is intimacy with all things.
Speaker 3: And I love that idea that the more we're intimate
Speaker 3: with the things around us, you know, the closer we
Speaker 3: get towards quote unquote enlightenment or awakening. It's that attention
Speaker 3: to something that's not just ourselves that is that opening.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And as you speak, I'm thinking about the ways
Speaker 1: that our modern kind of overculture way of being in
Speaker 1: society is one that contrives to separate us from that intimacy,
Speaker 1: you know, just the we are so isolated in our
Speaker 1: work right now, we're so removed from the natural world
Speaker 1: because we are so dependent upon the built environment. There's
Speaker 1: a statistic that says that ninety three percent of our
Speaker 1: modern human lives here in North America are spent inside
Speaker 1: buildings and most of the other seven percent is spent
Speaker 1: walking bad between our cars and building things.
Speaker 3: And so it does not surprise.
Speaker 1: Me, right, and so it's no wonder that we are
Speaker 1: suffering this sense of disconnection and isolation in large part
Speaker 1: where we're struggling with a sort of mismatch disorder right
Speaker 1: where organisms are not adapted, they're not up to speed
Speaker 1: on a changing external environment. Here, we've spent ninety nine
Speaker 1: ninety nine percent of our lives living in closer relationship
Speaker 1: with the earth out of doors, and so here we
Speaker 1: are spending most of our time removed from that. We're
Speaker 1: in this constant stress state because our bodies, in our
Speaker 1: minds are wired to be attuned to the wild earth,
Speaker 1: and yet we're separated from that, and we're in this
Speaker 1: horrible like mismatch or dysphoria that prevents that kind of
Speaker 1: intimacy and attention. So that's why I'm so obsessed practices
Speaker 1: that will bring us back into that intimacy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so let's maybe turn towards some of those practices
Speaker 3: right now. I'm curious what sort of things you would
Speaker 3: offer to the general listener out there who says, yes,
Speaker 3: I do want to be a little bit more connected
Speaker 3: to nature, you know, And yeah, some of it is
Speaker 3: because the science says it's good for me, and like
Speaker 3: we all do things because you know, it's why we
Speaker 3: do yoga. We know it to be good for us
Speaker 3: on some level and just to have a deeper connection
Speaker 3: with something more meaningful. What are some practices that you
Speaker 3: often recommend to people.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to start at the most basic. For
Speaker 1: people that are living in urban places, we'll just sort
Speaker 1: of often ask the question, you know, what do I do?
Speaker 1: I don't have trees all around me, I don't have
Speaker 1: a body of water to contemplate. There's no coyotes roaming
Speaker 1: my neighborhood, which you know, you may or may not
Speaker 1: be right about that. We're in Portland or Seattle. We
Speaker 1: know there's plenty of them around Chicago. There's coyotes among
Speaker 1: us anyway.
Speaker 3: There's coyotes in Chicago.
Speaker 1: Oh, so many coyotes in Chicago. Some of the deepest
Speaker 1: research on urban coyotes that took place in Chicago.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, well I learned something new today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, payeties among us. But anyway, one of the things
Speaker 1: I want to offer is that we are connected to
Speaker 1: the natural world no matter where we live. If we
Speaker 1: open our window, we put our head out out of
Speaker 1: the window, become aware of the ground beneath us, the
Speaker 1: sky above us, the wind that teases our hair, and
Speaker 1: the same way it teases the leaves on the trees,
Speaker 1: the rain falls on our face, just as it's falling
Speaker 1: on you know, the forests far from us, just the
Speaker 1: moon is turning in her faces above our head, just
Speaker 1: as all over the rest of the earth. And so
Speaker 1: just being aware of the cycles of life, allowing that
Speaker 1: into our daily life, with just recognition moments of pausing
Speaker 1: to acknowledge our place in these cycles is a form
Speaker 1: of connection. It's a very radical form of connection, even
Speaker 1: and in the way that our culture is currently structured
Speaker 1: to keep us separate from those moments of intimacy. I
Speaker 1: also think it's important to realize, you know, we hear
Speaker 1: so often that oh, these little things that we do
Speaker 1: from our homes don't matter. You know, we recycle about
Speaker 1: what doesn't matter if I get on a plane the
Speaker 1: next day. And for that I want to return to
Speaker 1: kind of the discussion we were just having that we
Speaker 1: act from our highest self, We act from the place
Speaker 1: that we know is right. And people think that we
Speaker 1: need to, you know, get in the suv and go
Speaker 1: way out to the wilderness to go on a hike
Speaker 1: to connect with nature. But the truth is that ecologically
Speaker 1: the choices that we make from our home, how we
Speaker 1: feed ourselves, how we clothe ourselves, how we heat our
Speaker 1: homes and use our water. These are the things that
Speaker 1: tie us into the very very stuff of the life
Speaker 1: of the earth. And so we have every moment an
Speaker 1: opportunity to recognize that constant continuation in the lives that
Speaker 1: we live. So that's just the most basic level. But
Speaker 1: I do have in the book a lot of ways
Speaker 1: to just you know, connect with trees and connect with
Speaker 1: our own solitude, and we can talk about those. But
Speaker 1: a very first kind of next step beyond the household
Speaker 1: that I throw out is the idea of removing our
Speaker 1: shoes and socks and putting our feet directly on the earth.
Speaker 1: And if that can't be the soft earth of a
Speaker 1: woodland trail for you, then the soft grass of a
Speaker 1: parking strip or an urban park can bring this very,
Speaker 1: very lively, neurologically connected part of our body into connection
Speaker 1: with the complexity that our feet were meant to know
Speaker 1: and walk upon, and that enlivens our whole sense of
Speaker 1: creativity and connection.
Speaker 3: So one of the things I love about your work,
Speaker 3: and it's in the very title of the book, is
Speaker 3: the life at the crossroads of science, nature and spirit.
Speaker 3: And so you are a scientist among other things. And
Speaker 3: you know when I hear take your shoes off and
Speaker 3: walk on the earth, and there's something the old punk
Speaker 3: rocker in me just has a little bit of a
Speaker 3: feeling towards it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's a crunchy granola yes.
Speaker 3: Yes, which as I've gotten older, I've realized I'm very
Speaker 3: much a crunchy granola little kind of guy. But my
Speaker 3: eighteen year old is like, I'm not in favor of this,
Speaker 3: but I have a mohawk, so I'm giving him some degree.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm keeping some of my eighteen year old
Speaker 3: self alive. Talk to me about is there science around
Speaker 3: this groundedness idea?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, I mean there's this weird earth thing, and
Speaker 1: I want to tease that out. A little bit. Before
Speaker 1: I wrote this book, I was walking. I've taken barefoot
Speaker 1: walks for years, and I was walking in the wooded
Speaker 1: park near my home and there was this other woman
Speaker 1: who just seemed to be I was carrying my sneakers
Speaker 1: in my hand, and this other woman came towards me
Speaker 1: and she had her sneakers in her hand too, and
Speaker 1: she had this lovely ethereal look on her face, and
Speaker 1: I should have respected the silence, but just you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes things pop out of our mouths, right, So I said, oh,
Speaker 1: happy barefoot walking. I was thinking maybe I was making
Speaker 1: a little clever connection with her, and she just kind
Speaker 1: of set her gaze above me, off into the world,
Speaker 1: and she said, I am earthing and she floated past,
Speaker 1: and I thought, oh, oh, well, then I'm earthing too,
Speaker 1: And I kind of remembered that phrase. Do you recognize
Speaker 1: that phrase earthing?
Speaker 3: I've only heard it one other time, so yes, I
Speaker 3: know a little bit about it, but relatively very recently, actually, yeah.
Speaker 1: So after she said that, I kind of thought, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, I know this word. It's some kind of trend.
Speaker 1: And I went home and googled it and sure enough,
Speaker 1: it was. In the eighties, this group of kind of
Speaker 1: a Motley science adjacent group of folks explored this idea
Speaker 1: that in a nutshell, that the Earth has a negative
Speaker 1: ionic charge and our human bodies have a positive ionic charge,
Speaker 1: and by separating our feet from the negative ionic charge
Speaker 1: of the Earth with shoes that don't conduct, like if
Speaker 1: we were wearing leather, it would be okay, we are
Speaker 1: causing inflammation and all of the kinds of attendant ailments
Speaker 1: of that. And I thought, wow, that's kind of this
Speaker 1: beautiful poetic idea that we actually need to walk barefoot
Speaker 1: to be in full health. But I explored it. I
Speaker 1: threw myself into it. I talked to physicists, I talk to,
Speaker 1: you know, electricians. I looked at the papers that these
Speaker 1: people had written in support of it, and unfortunately, all
Speaker 1: of the footnotes that they had referred back to other
Speaker 1: papers they had written. I couldn't find anything external. And
Speaker 1: the physics people I talked to about it said, this
Speaker 1: is just not how things work. It's not how things work.
Speaker 1: So leave that out there in the world. Maybe something
Speaker 1: will come of it in the future, will learn something more.
Speaker 1: But for now I want to keep the word because
Speaker 1: I think it's very intentional. And that woman said that
Speaker 1: I didn't know anything about the ions and all of that,
Speaker 1: but when she said earthing, I thought, oh, I know
Speaker 1: what that means. It means walking with attentiveness, with consciousness,
Speaker 1: something I do intentionally. I'm not just like playing in
Speaker 1: the beach, which is a great way to be barefoot,
Speaker 1: but I'm making this choice intentionally to create a connection,
Speaker 1: and so I love that beautiful word. So I did
Speaker 1: look further into the benefits of walking barefoot and found
Speaker 1: another kind. There's science that supports it, which is biomechanics.
Speaker 1: It relates with the way that our bodies move in
Speaker 1: the world. And it turns out that walking barefoot is
Speaker 1: an ancient human intelligence, you know, it's one of those things.
Speaker 1: Until very very recently, our feet evolved around contact with
Speaker 1: a complex substrate, and so we cast our feet. As
Speaker 1: biomechanist Kay Bowman says, I really love her work. She
Speaker 1: has a book called Move Your DNA, which I just
Speaker 1: highly recommend. She says that when we basically put our
Speaker 1: feet in little casts, which sometimes we need casts, our
Speaker 1: feet are injured and we need to keep them from
Speaker 1: movement to protect them. But for the most part, we
Speaker 1: put them in these highly engineered shoes where we can't
Speaker 1: feel the earth, they don't move, and so it weakens
Speaker 1: all those little tendons and muscles that if we were
Speaker 1: walking barefoot would be strengthened. And so when we finally
Speaker 1: do go barefoot, or try, god forbid, running barefoot without
Speaker 1: just you know, right out of the gate, without strengthening
Speaker 1: those feet, we injure ourselves and then everyone goes, oh, see,
Speaker 1: we're not meant to walk barefoot. What we are met
Speaker 1: to do is to work out very slowly to having
Speaker 1: feet that can be responsive to all of the contours
Speaker 1: of the earth. Katie Bowman says that most of our
Speaker 1: walking involves mind anecessary movement, and I thought, Wow, that
Speaker 1: just hit me really hard. I don't want to be
Speaker 1: walking around without having to be attentive with movement that
Speaker 1: doesn't involve my mind, my intelligence, my imagination. And when
Speaker 1: we take off our shoes automatically we're attentive. We drop
Speaker 1: into mind active movement. And we have learned too that
Speaker 1: even though we can walk faster and take more steps
Speaker 1: when we put on our engineered shoes and walk on
Speaker 1: a concrete, flat substrate, whether up and downhill or not,
Speaker 1: when we take off our shoes and we walk on
Speaker 1: a natural substrate, our minds become more active, our creativity
Speaker 1: is enlivened. But also we work our bodies just as hard. Yes,
Speaker 1: we might have to move so for fitness people we
Speaker 1: might be moving slower, but we're working just as much.
Speaker 1: But it's a beautiful, ancient, innate human movement that are
Speaker 1: bodies and minds where created to experience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting. I work out at a gym with
Speaker 3: a physical therapist. She's a physical therapist slash trainer, and
Speaker 3: I started working out with her when I had injuries,
Speaker 3: and I've just kind of kept doing it because I
Speaker 3: seem to periodically always have something in my body that's like,
Speaker 3: oh whch that hurts. But she trains a lot of athletes,
Speaker 3: like she consults for many of the athletic departments across
Speaker 3: the country, and there is some of their work where
Speaker 3: they are very much focusing on, particularly on rehab with
Speaker 3: people about having them work out in bare feet because
Speaker 3: there's something again about the biomechanics of it that produces
Speaker 3: more stability and strengthens muscles and tendons in very different ways.
Speaker 3: And so you know, from somebody who's a little bit
Speaker 3: more science based or to point into like, there's real
Speaker 3: benefit to this barefoot idea. And for sure, when you
Speaker 3: you start walking barefoot, I mean I do pay more attention,
Speaker 3: if for no other reason because I'm like, well, I
Speaker 3: don't want to step on a piece of glass or
Speaker 3: you know, my feet are tender, I'm going to be careful.
Speaker 3: It does bring the experience of walking into much more
Speaker 3: consciousness and reminds me of a zen idea.
Speaker 2: That I love.
Speaker 3: It's called work practice, Samu, and it's a way of
Speaker 3: developing our attentiveness, and it basically means you take something
Speaker 3: that you could do without thinking about it. Wash the
Speaker 3: dishes as an example. You could do it without thinking
Speaker 3: about it most of us do. But by giving it
Speaker 3: your full attention, you actually strengthen your ability to pay attention.
Speaker 3: You strengthen your ability to be present with what's happening.
Speaker 3: It's seen as a bridge between like seated meditation and
Speaker 3: the rest of life.
Speaker 1: And then in just like the biological or the physical
Speaker 1: science of it strengthens our feet, it makes them healthier,
Speaker 1: and that goes up we know it's all connected, goes
Speaker 1: up to making our legs, makes our knees stronger, brings
Speaker 1: all the joints all the way up to our head
Speaker 1: and our necks. So can I riff on the philosophical
Speaker 1: side of this?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 1: So one of the things that because you can tell
Speaker 1: now I'm really obsessed, I went down the rabbit hole
Speaker 1: of barefootedness, and one of the most famous admonitions to
Speaker 1: take off our shoes is from the Hebrew Testament where
Speaker 1: Moses is approaching the burning bush the voice of the divine,
Speaker 1: and the divine speaks and says Moses, and the translation
Speaker 1: that we almost always see is take off your shoes
Speaker 1: or remove your sandals. But I learned when you go
Speaker 1: into the Hebrew Aramaic history of this word, the word
Speaker 1: is a stronger word. It's shed or it is shed.
Speaker 1: And I think that is a powerful exclamation or proclamation
Speaker 1: of transformation. Right what do we shed? Snakes shed their
Speaker 1: skins in the Great turning, Deers shed their antlers. An
Speaker 1: antler is an organ, you know, it's innervated blood. It's
Speaker 1: the leaving behind of something that was once an organ
Speaker 1: of our body, like skin or antlers, to make way
Speaker 1: for the next space. And I thought to myself when
Speaker 1: I was writing that chapter, I thought, shed, what do
Speaker 1: I shed? What if by removing my shoes figuratively, what
Speaker 1: am I shedding? And I put a big piece of
Speaker 1: paper and a bunch of crayons out so every time
Speaker 1: I walked by, I could sort of think of something
Speaker 1: and add to this list or something that had come
Speaker 1: to me through the day. And I had this list
Speaker 1: of what you know by removing my shoes, I remove
Speaker 1: a certain kind of security, right, a certain kind of beauty,
Speaker 1: an otherness, a separateness, an elevation, potentially a certain kind
Speaker 1: of comfort, a certain kind of complexity leads me into
Speaker 1: this deep, deep simplicity. And so it can be a
Speaker 1: metaphor for just kind of doffing all of the cultural
Speaker 1: modes of separation that keep us from deeper connection. So
Speaker 1: taking up her she works on so many levels.
Speaker 3: Let's change directions to birds. Oh yeah, I guess I've
Speaker 3: always appreciated birds, but we have become we can't even
Speaker 3: call ourselves backyard birders. So we don't have a backyard.
Speaker 3: We simply have a balcony that I have managed to
Speaker 3: buy hook or crook, string up a couple bird feeders.
Speaker 3: But the joy that comes from just seeing these birds
Speaker 3: that close to us consistently is sort of surprising to me,
Speaker 3: just how much we enjoy it. Particularly Jenny. Jenny's just
Speaker 3: over the moon about the birds. She's always talking about
Speaker 3: you know, listen to that song and that song, and
Speaker 3: you know, so talk to me about birds, because you've
Speaker 3: written a lot about birds. You wrote a book about
Speaker 3: Mozart Sterling, and I think you have an entire book
Speaker 3: about birds, right, I do.
Speaker 1: My very first book was Rare Encounters with Ordinary Birds.
Speaker 1: I read a book about crows, and yes, Mozart starling.
Speaker 1: I don't want to go off format here, but I'm
Speaker 1: curious what makes you feel joyful about watching birds? Like,
Speaker 1: what do you think it is for you?
Speaker 3: Well? I have always love to watch animals. I love
Speaker 3: to see them move. I mean, I love to think
Speaker 3: about the fact that they're interacting with the world in
Speaker 3: a way that I can't imagine really, and to try
Speaker 3: and imagine what that might be like, even though I
Speaker 3: know I can't because it sort of stretches my mind.
Speaker 3: It feels like, you know, I've just always loved animals generally,
Speaker 3: I haven't had animals that close to me, you know, dogs,
Speaker 3: But you know, most animals I see are either kind
Speaker 3: of off in a distance or I've seen them on TV.
Speaker 3: But here are these birds right outside and we get
Speaker 3: to see their patterns, be like, oh yeah, that guy
Speaker 3: comes by every day around seven o'clock and sings his
Speaker 3: little song and he comes with his partner or he
Speaker 3: comes alone. And I just love to watch the way
Speaker 3: they eat. I don't have words for it. It just
Speaker 3: fills me with a certain buoyancy.
Speaker 1: I love that. I think that you're hitting on something
Speaker 1: when you say that you don't get to see wild
Speaker 1: animals that close very often, because I do think that
Speaker 1: birds will allow us to come close to them. There's
Speaker 1: this thrill of being in proximity to a wild creature
Speaker 1: who could choose to leave. She has wings, right, they
Speaker 1: could fly away. And yet here we are being close
Speaker 1: together and creating this kind of intimacy, and that makes
Speaker 1: us feel excited. And there's this psychological word for something
Speaker 1: we're feeling now, which is called species loneliness. That humans
Speaker 1: are so separate from the wild earth that we kind
Speaker 1: of miss once again, that proximity to wild creatures that
Speaker 1: we have evolved alongside. And here birds interrupt that species
Speaker 1: loneliness by coming near or allow us to approach. I
Speaker 1: think it's important to remember, you know, when we feed birds,
Speaker 1: we're not really doing it for the birds. The birds
Speaker 1: are fine if they're around, there's enough food for them.
Speaker 1: We're doing it for us. But that's a perfectly good
Speaker 1: reason to do it. It enlivens our spirits and also
Speaker 1: makes us more aware of the wildness that's around us.
Speaker 1: I mean they're hanging out and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I also love this moment with birds. They have that
Speaker 1: kind of poetic beauty right being winged, unlike us, most
Speaker 1: of them. When we're sitting there and we're just hanging
Speaker 1: out with them, we're like, oh, here we are being
Speaker 1: with the birds. They're so pretty. I love them. And
Speaker 1: then they fly all of a sudden, We're like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, they take flight. There's the sky. Off they
Speaker 1: go into this wild world that we are now connected to.
Speaker 1: They were with us and now they fly off with
Speaker 1: maybe a little piece of our heart and imagination along
Speaker 1: with them. So they offer a rare, rare thread between
Speaker 1: us and the wilder.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The more I learn about them, the more fascinating
Speaker 3: they are. As I have a question for you that
Speaker 3: I wonder about my birds. And maybe you know the
Speaker 3: answer to this, maybe you don't, but I think that
Speaker 3: I recognize like we get, you know, a certain set
Speaker 3: of cardinals that tend to come by. We get a
Speaker 3: certain set of goldfinches that come by. There's some other
Speaker 3: birds that are more common that I can't remember, their
Speaker 3: different names that we see a lot of. Do the
Speaker 3: birds recognize each other? Do you think, are they like, Oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's that cardinal that comes by. I see him hanging
Speaker 3: around the neighborhood. Again, I know birds don't think like
Speaker 3: a human does, but I'm kind of curious what their
Speaker 3: relationship with each other is.
Speaker 1: Right. So, for the most part, the birds that we
Speaker 1: see regularly in our backyards or our balconies are the
Speaker 1: same birds from day to day. So that's not always
Speaker 1: true because there are migration times so different birds come through,
Speaker 1: and birds can fly, so they can go to different yards.
Speaker 1: But by and large, the residential birds, we're seeing the
Speaker 1: same ones over and over again, and they absolutely recognize
Speaker 1: the other birds in their close group through a whole
Speaker 1: variety of ways of apprehending, and that, like you say,
Speaker 1: we don't always understand. So some birds really connect with
Speaker 1: one another through vocalizations, some connect with one another through
Speaker 1: physical movements that they make. And we'll find like different
Speaker 1: family groups that have the same kind of physical ticks
Speaker 1: or vocal ticks. But it's also just like you know,
Speaker 1: people that look at, you know, a family and say, oh,
Speaker 1: you guys all look alike. You know, I can't tell
Speaker 1: you apart. Or we'll look at twins that we don't know,
Speaker 1: or triplets and we'll say, how do we tell them apart?
Speaker 1: And their parents are like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: You know, maybe we think they're identical, but they're absolutely not.
Speaker 1: And so bird communities are like that with each other
Speaker 1: as far as we know. There's many studies that have
Speaker 1: been done that prove to us that they do recognize
Speaker 1: one another, or they recognize when another bird from another
Speaker 1: flock comes in. So yeah, they do.
Speaker 3: It makes me think of like how dogs just they
Speaker 3: key into each other. Like I take my dogs out
Speaker 3: every morning, and you know, there are other dogs on
Speaker 3: the other side of the street that walk by. And
Speaker 3: my dog, Beansy is very old and she's nearing the end,
Speaker 3: although I keep saying that, so she doesn't pay much
Speaker 3: attention anymore, but she used to. But you know, there's
Speaker 3: just certain dogs they just stop and they're like, there's
Speaker 3: a dog over there, Like they are very keyed in.
Speaker 3: They wouldn't be keyed in necessarily to me, they'd be
Speaker 3: like whatever, they'd pay no attention, but the fact that
Speaker 3: it's another dog, they're like, oh, I got to check
Speaker 3: this out.
Speaker 1: Being a parent, have you noticed that with raising a
Speaker 1: kid too? You're out with your two year old, and
Speaker 1: they spot each other. While the two year olds spot
Speaker 1: each other, and then the same with the teenagers you're
Speaker 1: going out. They all spot each other. They don't notice
Speaker 1: the two year olds, they don't notice the thirty year olds,
Speaker 1: but they notice one another. And I think that continues on.
Speaker 1: That's really fascinating and probably has evolutionary value to find
Speaker 1: our people.
Speaker 3: It probably does. In your book, you have a number
Speaker 3: of what you call the tenants of rootedness, and we're
Speaker 3: not going to have time to go through all of them,
Speaker 3: but I thought I might pull a couple out that
Speaker 3: I wanted to talk about, and one was that truth
Speaker 3: and fact are not synonyms. Say more about that. I
Speaker 3: think that's a really interesting idea.
Speaker 1: We are one of the only cultures in all of
Speaker 1: history that has conflated truth with scientific fact. Now, I
Speaker 1: want to be really careful right now, because we are
Speaker 1: in a time when science is being questioned, and I
Speaker 1: want to absolutely honor the significance of science in our
Speaker 1: conservation choices and climate crisis and health. Then I'm saying
Speaker 1: something a little bit different, and that is that sometimes
Speaker 1: we know things. We know things with a capital and
Speaker 1: we know things with our heart knowing, and our spiritual
Speaker 1: dimension of apprehension. And I mean that non religiously. By spiritual,
Speaker 1: I mean those kind of non quantifiable ways of accessing
Speaker 1: or apprehending the world. Are wonder our sense of beauty,
Speaker 1: even our sense of anxiety and grief, all of these
Speaker 1: things that can't be reduced to scientific quantification but still
Speaker 1: have everything to do with human intelligence and imagination. So
Speaker 1: these are all ways of knowing that though we can't
Speaker 1: find them in quantifiable or lexiconic language of science, we
Speaker 1: know that we honor them as a kind of truth
Speaker 1: with a capital T. It's sort of like looking at
Speaker 1: a poem a beautiful poem. Is the poem factual? We
Speaker 1: look at a piece of literature, a beautiful novel. Is
Speaker 1: it true? Did it happen? Or is it factual? Did
Speaker 1: this really happen?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: But is it true? Absolutely? Is it true in the
Speaker 1: sense of art, in the sense of that expansive sense
Speaker 1: of spirit I was just speaking to. Is it true
Speaker 1: in the sense that we know it in our heart? Absolutely? So.
Speaker 1: The problem when we pit science against what we would
Speaker 1: normally call spirit, I think that is a false dichotomy.
Speaker 1: I think that science, as we find more and more
Speaker 1: of the minutia of how the wild earth works, the
Speaker 1: more enamored we can become with fascination and wonder, it's
Speaker 1: just really gorgeous. And so that is in itself a
Speaker 1: kind of poetry. And then when we look at the
Speaker 1: stories and mythology of science and we bring to it
Speaker 1: our own imaginations, when we bring that knowledge into our
Speaker 1: own human stories, then the science becomes enlivened and sold.
Speaker 1: So I think the problem comes when science is the
Speaker 1: soul arbiter of validity of any thought or way of
Speaker 1: being that we have. And yes, sometimes it has to
Speaker 1: be that the stringent science is so meaningful right now,
Speaker 1: So I don't want to say in any way that
Speaker 1: I'm diminishing the role of science in our conservation and
Speaker 1: health choices, but recognizing that in creating whole humans that
Speaker 1: relate to a more than human world, there are other
Speaker 1: dimensions of knowing that are also true.
Speaker 3: I think that example of a poem and a novel
Speaker 3: makes a lot of sense, and you know, knowing what
Speaker 3: mode of apprehending might be most useful. You know, as
Speaker 3: soon as we start talking talking about like that, we
Speaker 3: absolutely know something like intuitively, I always get a little
Speaker 3: anxious around that, because that is how often, you know,
Speaker 3: many misguided people are misguided. They're like, I just well,
Speaker 3: I know the science says this, but I know that
Speaker 3: vaccines are dangerous, And you're like, well, all right, this
Speaker 3: is a science based conversation probably that we should be having.
Speaker 3: You know, I used to know on a deep level
Speaker 3: that Heroin was a good idea for me, right, it
Speaker 3: felt so true. And yet there is a way of
Speaker 3: apprehending the world and engaging with the world. It is
Speaker 3: not strictly scientific. And you know, I know I have
Speaker 3: changed in this way over the years, where I've moved
Speaker 3: from feeling like everything should be explainable via science to
Speaker 3: recognizing that even when science explains many things, it doesn't
Speaker 3: necessarily really explain them to me on the deepest level
Speaker 3: about how life came to be and how things are.
Speaker 3: There are these deeper mysteries that I've become I'm a
Speaker 3: lot more comfortable with over the years about saying like, well,
Speaker 3: who knows, this is a mystery that is very alive
Speaker 3: for me.
Speaker 1: Just thinking of a really practical example of something like
Speaker 1: that is spending time with a tree, and this is
Speaker 1: a beautiful practice even if you just have a backyard
Speaker 1: or a city park. Is finding a tree that you
Speaker 1: are drawn to, you know, that you respond to in
Speaker 1: some way, and then spending time repeatedly over and over
Speaker 1: again with that same tree. We have this sense of responsiveness.
Speaker 1: You know, we might be walking along and kind of go, oh,
Speaker 1: there's my tree. Just this kind of recognition and then
Speaker 1: this sense of responsiveness from the tree. If we return
Speaker 1: over and over again, sometimes you'll get that sense that
Speaker 1: maybe a breeze passes over and the leaves are fluttering
Speaker 1: and you think, oh, the tree is saying hello to me. Now.
Speaker 1: Is that scientifically factual? Maybe, but we don't know that now,
Speaker 1: and maybe we will come to know that someday. But
Speaker 1: is it true for me? Is it meaningful to me?
Speaker 1: Am I in a kind of relationship with this tree
Speaker 1: that has a poetic truth? That is an absolutely beautiful
Speaker 1: thing to live under the.
Speaker 3: Influence of That makes me think a little bit about
Speaker 3: a maxim that's often used in psychology around working with
Speaker 3: your thoughts, and one of the ones that I found
Speaker 3: to be the most helpful starting point is is this useful? Right?
Speaker 3: You know? Because thoughts aren't exactly true or untrue to
Speaker 3: a large extent. Now, there can be facts within thoughts
Speaker 3: that are true or not true, And maybe this is
Speaker 3: a good analogy for what we're also talking about. But
Speaker 3: a lot of our thought is interpretation. It's meaning based, right,
Speaker 3: and so knowing that it's not necessarily strictly true or untrue,
Speaker 3: this idea of is it useful is a really helpful framework.
Speaker 3: And if it's a thought that's leading me towards being kinder,
Speaker 3: more compassionate to myself, to others, to responding more wise
Speaker 3: ly to the world, to all those things, then it's
Speaker 3: a thought that's worth keeping around. And if, on the
Speaker 3: other hand, it's a thought that isn't contributing to any
Speaker 3: of those things, it might be a good idea say, well,
Speaker 3: what can I do to work with this to sort
Speaker 3: of move it to the side because it's not contributing anything.
Speaker 3: And I think there's a little bit of that in
Speaker 3: kind of what you're talking about, Like, is the tree
Speaker 3: responding to me? We don't really know. I mean, the
Speaker 3: trees are responding in ways that fifty years ago we
Speaker 3: couldn't have imagined. You know, it's astounding the ways the
Speaker 3: trees are are responsive to their environment that fifty years ago,
Speaker 3: people would have said you're crazy. So is the idea
Speaker 3: that the trees responding to you strictly factual? Not necessarily,
Speaker 3: But is it a useful thought if it brings you
Speaker 3: into closer community with the world around you. Absolutely right?
Speaker 1: And is it true from a poetic sensibility, Absolutely.
Speaker 3: Right, because a poetic sensibility is exactly that. I think
Speaker 3: the novel is a great, great example of that. I
Speaker 3: love fiction. I don't get to read as much of
Speaker 3: it as i'd like with all the work I do
Speaker 3: for this show. But over the last month I've had
Speaker 3: a lot less interviews, so I've been reading a lot
Speaker 3: of it, and I've been thinking a little bit about
Speaker 3: that aspect of, well, these things aren't factual, but there's
Speaker 3: a tree truth in them that is deeply profound, that
Speaker 3: is there and feels very true, even though it's to
Speaker 3: your point, not factual.
Speaker 1: And I also think there's an innate sort of human sensibility.
Speaker 1: I don't want to press this too far when because,
Speaker 1: as you say, there comes a point when anyone can say, well,
Speaker 1: I just know this to be true. I just know it.
Speaker 1: But in terms of things that tend to be ecologically helpful,
Speaker 1: I think we often have a sense of that. Sometimes
Speaker 1: we don't need a scientific paper to tell us that
Speaker 1: when we plant a tree more birds come. We have
Speaker 1: eyes and we have hands, so we know that. So
Speaker 1: these kinds of things like sometimes we just have this
Speaker 1: basic common sense knowing that we don't have to wait
Speaker 1: for science to validate. It comes from observation, It comes
Speaker 1: from attentiveness, It comes from just walking on the earth
Speaker 1: with a sense of connection and willingness to listen.
Speaker 3: Going back to that, Yeah, And like I said, that's
Speaker 3: one of the things I've loved about your work is
Speaker 3: you bring a scientist's view to it, but it's not
Speaker 3: the only view that you bring. I love it, and
Speaker 3: I've often thought about You mentioned the nature studies earlier
Speaker 3: about where we start to quantify the benefits of being
Speaker 3: in nature, and it made me think a little bit
Speaker 3: about kind of what's happened with meditation and mindfulness in
Speaker 3: the modern world. Right, we've quantified in many ways why
Speaker 3: it's helpful, and there can be ways in which that
Speaker 3: strips away some of the broader contexts that have gone
Speaker 3: around them. You know, there's the term mick mindfulness, right,
Speaker 3: because you've stripped away everything except that just the thing itself.
Speaker 3: So there are ways in which that can be problematic,
Speaker 3: but there are also wonderful ways in which science is
Speaker 3: backing up. We see this in a lot of the
Speaker 3: ecological research, right, is that we see that this interconnection
Speaker 3: that the mystics have been talking about forever is really
Speaker 3: absolutely true. And so you know, I kind of tend
Speaker 3: to like it when different areas of interest in mind
Speaker 3: sort of align and overlap, and I know that to
Speaker 3: be true.
Speaker 1: For you also, right, And in fact, that was sort
Speaker 1: of the root of this book. Rooted was a lot
Speaker 1: of this new science that's coming out that is affirming
Speaker 1: that the health of our bodies are strongest when we
Speaker 1: are in continuity with nature, and when we have exposure
Speaker 1: to nature. We're learning things like trees do communicate both
Speaker 1: through you know, the movement of their limbs and the
Speaker 1: chemicals that they release in the wind from that down
Speaker 1: to their roots and the mycalial network. We're learning that
Speaker 1: animals have forms of consciousness that we never dreamed and
Speaker 1: we are able to observe these days scientifically. What's funny
Speaker 1: and what I just kind of want to always be
Speaker 1: mindful of is once again that connection is that science
Speaker 1: did not discover these things. Science is giving us the
Speaker 1: mechanisms by which we can understand these things and their
Speaker 1: beauty and their depth, things that we could never just
Speaker 1: simply observe with our eyes, you know. Scientific study offers
Speaker 1: us this deep, deep window. But what we have to
Speaker 1: remember is that in terms of again, now we're going
Speaker 1: back to the truth, just a basic wa awareness of
Speaker 1: a conscious universe, of an animistic world in which beings
Speaker 1: beyond humans have consciousness, where we are alive and invigorated
Speaker 1: and creative and affirmed when we're out in nature. These
Speaker 1: are things that indigenous cultures, earth based religions, poets, musicians
Speaker 1: have known, and just everyday people walking the earth have
Speaker 1: known for across time and across cultures forever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great point I was saying. Fifty years
Speaker 3: ago we would have said like that, trees are not
Speaker 3: communicating in ways, and you're right, the western scientific worldview
Speaker 3: would have said trees are not capable of doing that.
Speaker 3: But to your point, many indigenous cultures have been very
Speaker 3: clear about all the different ways in which these things
Speaker 3: are alive and consciousness. And yeah, my favorite consciousness game
Speaker 3: is to try and imagine what it might be like
Speaker 3: to be an octopus, which again, you can't do it.
Speaker 3: You know, It's like, what would it be like to
Speaker 3: have a thousand individually controlled suckers to be able to
Speaker 3: change my skin color instantly because my skin can see color.
Speaker 3: I mean, like you just are like, well, there's intelligence
Speaker 3: there that is so vast and so completely unlike mine,
Speaker 3: right that just to even contemplate it just brings me
Speaker 3: a sense of wonder and happiness.
Speaker 1: I love that because you're tapping into that idea that
Speaker 1: you know, so often humans recognize intelligence just in so
Speaker 1: far as another animal is like us. You know, if
Speaker 1: they think like us, if they make eye contact like us,
Speaker 1: if they can make vocalizations that we can vaguely sort
Speaker 1: of get a handle on, we think, oh, that's a
Speaker 1: smart one. And that keeps us from recognizing all of
Speaker 1: the myria, just infinite intelligences that are surrounding us every
Speaker 1: single time we step out the door. But we don't
Speaker 1: even recognize because we're just caught in what looks like
Speaker 1: intelligence to us as humans.
Speaker 3: Right, what is our type of intelligence? Yeah? I mean
Speaker 3: animals are so intelligent, but it's just you have to
Speaker 3: think of it in a different a much broader and
Speaker 3: wider context. I was at the zoo the other day
Speaker 3: and I was contemplating flamingos. I love to look at it,
Speaker 3: you know, I think we all do. If we've paid
Speaker 3: a little bit of attention to evolution all that, and
Speaker 3: you think like, what, like, how do we get here?
Speaker 3: How do we get a creature that looks like that?
Speaker 3: But you realize, given certain conditions, like this thing evolved
Speaker 3: beautifully and perfectly. It's just incredible.
Speaker 1: You know. I love that line, Eric, It sounds like
Speaker 1: the beginning of a poem. I was at the zoo
Speaker 1: and I was contemplating flamingo.
Speaker 3: Yep. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But you know, all of this is what if We're
Speaker 1: going to use that word hope, which gives me a
Speaker 1: grown up optimism. Is this idea that we are living
Speaker 1: in a time so we have this rare confluence now
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, for the first time of this
Speaker 1: new super modern science that is recognizing this interconnection that
Speaker 1: the mystics always recognize, grounding it in ecological science. And
Speaker 1: so we have our imaginal side, that expansively spiritual side,
Speaker 1: and the deeply scientific side affirm each other. That's powerful,
Speaker 1: that gives us. That's a tool. We can use this
Speaker 1: power you know.
Speaker 3: Yep. Well, we are at the end of our time,
Speaker 3: so thank you so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 3: I really enjoyed the book. I really enjoyed talking with
Speaker 3: you of links in the show notes to where people
Speaker 3: can find you and your work, and again I really
Speaker 3: enjoyed it. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: I loved our conversation and thank you for having me Eric.
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