Tiny Ecology Entry #1
“What am I doing here?”
That was the question running through my mind as I sat under the plum tree in my yard for the first time. I chose this particular spot as the place from which I would practice increasing my awareness and connection to nature. It is just outside my front door, which will increase the likelihood of frequent visits.
So there I was. Sitting. In my spot. Observing with all my senses. Wondering about how on earth I was going to stay mindfully aware for a whole 30 minutes. Wondering what on earth I would write about.
As someone who loves nature, being outside, watching birds, gardens, trees, bees, butterflies, and the like, I was surprised at my resistance to this project and to using the sit-spot as a mechanism for practicing climate communication. What stories of interest could I possibly tell from my front yard that relate to climate change?
I looked around my immediate surroundings at first, looking at things and cataloging what I saw with my eyes, looking in my usual way for the obvious things with no detail: tree, bird, sunlight, and shadows, a lizard darting out of the rock wall. I listened to the dominant sounds from traffic, the hum from the highway down the hill, and cars driving by my house.
I recalled the TEDx talk by John Young and thought about connection to nature. About really getting quiet and paying close attention to everything. I drew upon my inner “bird-watcher”. Observant. Quiet. Still. Wide-eyed. Ears perked. Connecting my senses beyond the noise.
I zoomed in.
I looked more closely at the plum tree, noticing the lichen and moss-covered trunk. I thought of Kimmerer’s (2014) notion of nature having “personhood” and wondered how old this tree-being was, and what it has experienced throughout its life in this yard. Has a child climbed up its branches? How many birds and insects have nested or rested here? I noticed the sun filtering through the deep purple-maroon coloured leaves as they rustled softly in the breeze and the silvery flash of a spiderweb through the sunlight. I heard the sound of a hummingbird squeaking from the top of the tree, making his/her presence known. I listened to the chatting of the chestnut-backed chickadees and the “tick tick tick” of the dark-eyed juncos as they rustled around in the leaves beneath the nearby rhododendron searching the soil for snacks. I felt the moss under my feet that has taken hold over the concrete slab my chair rests on. I surveyed the yard just beyond where I was sitting and saw some mushrooms sprouting up in the grass, reminded of the hidden world of mycelial networks, and the subterranean community of critters living in the soil, doing their important work.
I looked up and softened my gaze and opened my senses beyond my immediate surroundings. A pair of gulls flew overhead toward the lake. Turkey vultures circled up higher, off in the distance, maybe riding the thermals or looking for carrion. A jet cutting through the sky so high up I couldn’t hear it but could see its contrail and the silvery shimmer of its body as it moved through the bright blue backdrop. The not-so-distant sounds of lawnmowers and backyard construction projects. I became acutely aware of this tension between the human world and the natural world. The fast-paced, hard-surfaced, noisy human landscape within the slow, rich, interconnected world of birds, insects, fungi, trees, and dragonflies.
Questions started percolating up.
I thought of the concept of reciprocity as introduced by Kimmerer (2014). How can I support this place and the beings that live here? How can I give back to this tiny ecology, this little corner of soil and vegetation providing habitat to so many beings? Knowing the effects of climate change that we can expect here – increasing heat and drought in summer, more intense wind storms, and more intense precipitation events in fall and winter – how can I help build resiliency in this place?
Ah. So this is what I’m doing here.
I’m here to practice applied mindfulness, to learn from these ancestral lands and all their inhabitants. I’m here to communicate from a hyper-local place and reduce the abstractions of the global scale language of climate change. I’m here to restore and do what I can to support resiliency here in this little corner of the earth and see what happens next. I’m here to reawaken my connection with the natural world right outside my doorstep.
“Big awareness equals big connection” (Young, 2020).
Kimmerer, R. W. (2014). “Returning the Gift.” Center for Humans and Nature. https://www.humansandnature.org/returning-the-gift-article-177.php
Young, J. (2020). Repairing emotional isolation by reawakening deep nature connection. TEDx Talks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMWSvUp0CYk&t=476s
Thanks for the honesty here Leah. I’m not sure if you’ve had a chance to review the podcast episode with Ayana Young and Gopal Dayaneni, but it’s an episode I return to frequently. He speaks of the need to understand our sphere of influence, and the problem of the climate crisis, as a local one.
It is at the level of the local that we can effect change; as you observe, it’s at the level of the local that we can also consider how to offer gratitude and support resiliency. It’s quite incredible what we can start to understand and perceive when we do the (un)work of slowing down, which is so necessary for connection. Given that the climate crisis is fundamentally a crisis of disconnection, practicing connection is just one step towards healing and embodying the changes we are seeking to create.
Thanks for your post Leah! You have a beautiful way of writing and pulling me into the questions you are asking/exploring.
Your note about resistance at the beginning made me think how this can perhaps be a tool for empathy. Recognizing that you are someone so invested in this work and can still feel resistance (believe me, I get it!), perhaps makes it easier to understand how people ‘outside’ the climate conversation world may also experience resistance (especially at first glance). But that doesn’t mean they can’t ‘come around’, if given the opportunity to move through the discomfort by being listened to someone. That’s what your post made me think of – so thank you!
Thank you so much for your comment, Amy. I agree that the resistance is an interesting response that warrants further exploration. The root of it will likely be different for different people, depending on where they sit on the climate action/inaction spectrum. Something that I’m so aware of in my work and communications with family is in connecting with an “orientation” they are comfortable in.