Tiny Ecology Project #1
In Jon Young’s Ted Talk “Repairing emotional isolation by reawakening deep nature connection” he talks about how humans can reconnect with the natural environment, and in turn learn to protect nature.
He shares a touching story of when in a mentorship journey with an indigenous person and that he was tasked with acquiring a feather from a wild bird, and when the opportunity came; he was unable to pluck the feather as after watching the birds for days he felt connected to them and did not want to harm the bird, even though providing the feather promised him great personal gain (Young, 2020).
Stories are a powerful tool to reimagine and reassociate how you view the world. Saying “just because you can take something from nature doesn’t mean you should” doesn’t provide an emotional rationale, or relatable narrative . However, contextualizing this thought through the story of trying to pluck a bird’s feather makes me feel more emotionally connected to the idea as I can imagine myself acting similarly in that situation, and ultimately gives the idea more sovereignty in my mind and the ability to translate the idea to other examples of resource extraction.
Similarly, Kimmerer relays the importance of gratitude towards the Earth and that we cannot continue to take from nature without giving back.
“For much of humans’ time on the planet, before the great delusion, we lived in cultures that understood the covenant of reciprocity—that for the Earth to stay in balance, for the gifts to continue to flow, we must give back in equal measure for what we are given.” (Kimmerer, 2014)
Sitting on my third floor apartment balcony, in a downtown urban space on a crisp fall morning I took in my surroundings and pondered how I could have a grounding experience to connect to nature. I then quickly realized that this is not the thing you can facilitate out of thin air, and how absurd and counterproductive that thought was to what I was trying to achieve in the sit spot. Nothing “happened” in my half hour outside, I tried to not make a mental list of chores and tasks to start on as I looked at a bike with a flat tire, flowers to deadhead and a patio table I was going to sand and paint in May. Construction and traffic seemed to drown out any other sounds I might be privy to experience. Not a bird or insect in sight. But as the sun crept out I started to tune into my potted vegetables and flowers that were slightly swaying in the breeze. Mid october in Edmonton gets cold and all the plants are at the end of their welcome. I’m surprised they have made it this far, with a long heat wave, followed by poor air quality and smoke, not to mention a very erratic watering schedule from myself.
I’m thinking about this sense of delusion, and how if we are in a state of perpetual dissociation and disconnection. Young (2020), in his Ted Talk says ““our awareness can grow bigger than our disturbance,” this hit me as a climate solution with so much possibility. How with a change of framing, we might be able to shift our view on the natural world, and find it easier to connect with the living environment more than the built environment. It makes me wonder that with more willingness to learn, or indigenous guidance, could it become easier to facilitate a meaningful connection with the things we use and maybe consider the bigger picture of how our actions affect the natural world before we do them?
Repairing emotional isolation by reawakening deep nature connection | Jon Young | TEDxGrandPark. (2020, April 23). YouTube. Retrieved October 18, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMWSvUp0CYk&t=476s
Kimmerer, R. W. (2014). Returning the gift. Returning the Gift, 7(2), 18–24. https://www.humansandnature.org/returning-the-gift-article-177.php
Thanks for this Ali! What an insightful observation to take Jon Young’s assertion that we can make our awareness bigger than our disturbance and apply it to the climate crisis more broadly. On the land this is what we try to practice when we move so that we can experience more of baseline, which is when all the beings in the forest continue about their business without paying us any mind because we are gentle, slow, and not disruptive. A completely different approach than one of limitless growth and extraction!
Having good human teachers, such as Indigenous folks who choose to share the knowledge they may have, or anyone with the skills and experience, can be helpful for sure, but consistency in opening up to a sit spot in itself can yield major growth and connection as there are teachers everywhere in all sorts of forms!
Ali, the story you retold at the beginning of your post (plucking the feather from the bird) resonated with me. It made me think of the simple Aesop’s fables I used to read as a kid (ex: the tortoise and the hare), and how often the lessons or morals of those stories are referred to in causal conversation (“slow and steady wins the race”). Sometimes simple stories mean so much more than the same amount of words without a story does (does that make sense?) There is a certain type of magic found in stories.