Page 132 - ECOlogic Book

Several years later, with Sarah’s permission, I told her orchard story and my corn field story
to the congregation of our family’s small church. When my sermon was finished, I was
surprised to see how many people had tears in their eyes. As they came up to me, one by
one, they each told me their own story that they’d kept hidden since childhood. It was then
I realized that what I’d thought I alone had experienced was not unique – that many people
have had similar experiences.

I began to suspect then that this might be a universal phenomenon. That suspicion was
recently confirmed by Howard Clinebell in his book, Ecotherapy, as he refers to such earth-
bonding experiences as imprinting experiences with the earth. For me, the word Initiation
more accurately describes the experience, because I know I moved, or was moved, into a
new existence. I was a new being. And I knew the experience would probably never be
repeated, though I’ve spent a lifetime looking for it.

Abraham Maslow spent a lifetime collecting the peak experiences of people he considered
“enlightened,” believing them to be doorways into the transpersonal dimension. Alan
Watts, in his witty way, spoke of these as “peek” experiences, recognizing the impossibility
of recreating them, and affirming that this is all most of us ever get, - just a “peek” at
another life. One peek at wholeness. One peek at the deep wisdom of earth and our
identity with it, is enough to set our feet on a lifetime journey and give rich texture and
meaning to everything we encounter. And you don’t have to be “enlightened” to have such
an experience. Many ordinary people, people you see in the supermarket, people you
maybe wouldn’t even like, have had experiences such as these.

Not everyone has had such an experience, or can remember it if they did. Perhaps those
who haven’t are already open to earth’s wisdom and had no need at a certain age of such
an opening. But for many of us, such an experience is life-changing.

Here’s how John Muir expressed it:
Here is a calm so deep, grasses cease waving . . .
wonderful how completely everything in wild nature
fits into us, as if truly part and parents of us. The
sun shines not on us, but in us. The rivers flow not
past us, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating
every fiber and all of the substance of our bodies,
making them glide and sing. 159

Poet Susan Griffin describes her awakening:
When I let this bird fly to her own purpose . . . the
light from this bird enters my body, and when I see
the beauty of her flight, I love this bird . . . I fly
with her . . . I live in this bird whom I cannot live
without, as part of the body of the bird will enter my
daughter’s body, because I know I am made from
this earth as my mother’s hands were made from this
earth, as her dreams came from this earth . . . all that
I know speaks to me through this earth and I long to
tell you, you who are earth too, and listen as we speak

159 Quoted by Joseph Cornell, Listening to Nature: How to Deepen Your Awareness of Nature, (Dawn
Publications, Nevada City, CA, 1987, P. 42).

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