Teach Me Something New

By Lawrence Doe

“TEACH ME SOMETHING NEW,”

I asked of the forest I was sitting in. The sun was just com­ing up, and I had been sitting there, in the dark, for an hour, for sev­eral days, and for about 15 years, looking into this forest view. I had watched the young trees grow and the old trees fall down. I had seen deer, fishers, pine martins, squir­rels, grouse, ravens, eagles, owls, woodpeckers, birds of all kinds. I had heard wolves howling and, one time, feeding 50 paces through the undergrowth and out of sight. This particular morning, I was a little bored, and suddenly I heard myself speak out loud—“teach me some­thing new”. I surprised myself! This is what the forest revealed to me.

First, I noticed the highest tips of twigs were illuminated in the rising sun. It was brilliantly spar­kling, like jewels. Was there frost? It reminded me where growth oc­curs in the tree—tips of twigs and a thin coating of living tissue that surrounds the whole tree from twig to branch to trunk to roots to root tips. A tree’s height comes from twig growth, its girth from the new cell layer each year, and its grip on the earth from the tiniest root hairs. The tree depends on those leafy twigs reaching for sunlight and the root hairs finding their way deep into the dark soil and rock frac­tures for water and nutrients. It is the risk of the most vulnerable and small parts of the tree that gives it its stature and strength.

The morning sunlight crept down the twigs to larger branch­es, to the trunk, until the ground that held the tree roots was in full morning sun. What struck me is the interplay between what we call “up” and “down”. From a static, single focus perspective, we think of something either up or down, not both. It is an “either/or” percep­tion and thought. But the whole, dynamic picture of the forest in front of me demonstrated the sun moving “up” while the light on the trees moves “down”. In space, the sun has no up/down orientation. The trees are growing in both di­rections simultaneously—up into the sky and down into the earth. The “either/or” of binary thinking or framework in our language and culture is challenged by the natural order. This suggests the possibili­ty for human beings to engage the world in ways not limited by our physical response to gravity or our invented linguistic structures of perception.

Obviously, the sun’s illumi­nation stopped at the surface of the earth. Living trees need both the light of the sun and the dark in the earth. The forest floor is where the seen and the unseen meet. Lewis Sawaquat, Odawa (Ottowa) elder, taught me, in his Native cosmology, that the Thunderbird is in control of what is seen, while the Underwa­ter Panther is in control of what is beneath the surface—the unseen. These two elemental forces are sometimes at odds with each other in an attempt at dominance. The Father Sky and the Mother Earth are their domains. Lewis went on to teach that Human Beings were made to walk upright, our spines being energetic pathways, repre­sented by lightning, so we connect the Earth and the Sky. Our spiritual task, from his perspective, is to cre­ate balance and harmony between the Sky and Earth, the Male and Female, the Seen and the Unseen. Balance is necessary for life on Earth as we know it. This Divine plan is easily seen in the forest. Balancing opposites must serve a purpose greater than conflict, as there are so many opposites in cre­ation. I realized that if one moved with the sun, one could remain “in the light” or “in the shadows”. I don’t imply any moral or ethical judgment or preference. There was none of that as the tree shadows swept over the surface of the forest floor like a benediction. The bless­ing was and is for the cooperation between the earth’s darkness and the sun’s light that prepares the for­est duff for next year’s seedlings.

Using Thunderbird and Un­derwater Panther as metaphors, we can see the struggles in our modern world. From the perspective of the dominator, all seems normal. From the perspective of the dominated, imbalance is felt. Modernity has replaced the old ways of knowing (anecdotal, intuitive, heart) with analytical data (replicable, numer­ical, mind). Some religious tradi­tions demonize and try to eradicate traditional, indigenous spirituality. Modern people are mostly unwill­ing to go into the dark, the unseen, the earth, and the non-rational. Modern industrial societies replace the natural landscape and systems with conquest and domination. Western colonial impetus is based on bringing “light into the dark­ness” and “rational civilization to an irrational world” as far back as Western history is written. Our cur­rent definitions of personal success would have us avoid the unknown, risks, and mistakes. We define our future well-being in terms of pre­dictability, security, and comfort. The forest has no such expectations or promise, and yet it has thrived in light and dark since life came to this planet.

Late in the day, the forest floor was the first to enter twilight. The line of receding day and ad­vancing night moved steadily up the tree trunks—sun going down, shadows moving up. It is in per­fect balance. The sun approaching the horizon at exactly the same rate as the twilight line rising. Quint­essential timing. The daylight re­cedes at exactly the same rate that night advances. The movement is flawless, an elegant example of the intimate relationship between the seen and the unseen. Of Light and Dark. There is no conflict, no space between, no fear or hesitan­cy. This rhythm is in the forest and the world as it was created.