Intimate Intelligence

I’m back in Chicago, and it was a drastic change from being in the mountains of WA with two fairly calm adults, occasionally seeing Portland, to a household of crazy children all talking over each other and people running around like mad and seeing downtown which is basically a huge concrete blob. And now I’m waiting for afternoon to roll around so I can meet mah friend Silly Cougar AKA Rissa at the airport. (Okay, no one calls her Silly Cougar but me, and only on certain occasions, but I like saying “Lazy Wolf and Silly Cougar.”)

Yesterday morning when I woke up, like I often do without being too much bothered by it, to the high school child getting up at the crack of dawn to go to school, I couldn’t get back to sleep. So I got up and took Ty (below: isn’t he cute?) on a walk/run and was about to go into the forest but realized there were deer standing right there and decided I didn’t trust Ty to react calmly to them.

So I waltzed on back, got my camera, tied my shoes to my belt loop, and returned to the sliver of wilderness alone without the spastic border collie. It’s good my relatives live near the “woods” – even if it is like… basically just a pathway flanked by some trees. It’s enough to feel immersed for a little while.

I have no skills. Really, I’m new to the whole idea of rewilding in any sense of the word. I mean I’ve always had the idea in the back of my head, but it didn’t occur to me to pursue it with any seriousness until Rissa showed me a few websites with people actually doing cool shit. I’ve only taken one class on edible plants ever in my life and never on anything else. So this was sort of an experimental day.

I saw a few critters and a LOT of prints. It was awesome. I didn’t see the deer again, which made me sad, but I’ll never forget the time I went there with my cousin Aislinn and we ran into a young buck with a baby. I nearly died I was quaking with girly squirms over how cute it was. And it seemed odd to me to see a buck with a fawn… I don’t know enough about deer to know if that’s super unusual but it was cool.

Anyway, it’s the first time in a while I have even a little bit “immersed” myself in the trees. It’s amazing how even with no skill set, just taking the time to walk barefoot and pay attention changes your thought process within twenty minutes. Walking back to the house through the streets was bizarre, to say the least (not to mention the looks I got for being barefoot and covered in mud).

I started noticing small animals, tracks, how the ground felt different by different kinds of trees, how the earth was wetter or dryer or harder or softer, how flies just about took over some areas and you couldn’t see them in others, where different plants grew, which way the wind was blowing… and for a while I felt like I belonged there. A lot more than I felt like I belonged in the neighborhood. Your eyes start to look at things differently and you stop categorizing things so immediately and just listen. And that’s where I learn what human intelligence is at its best – intimate.

I also found some sadness, though. Where I went really is a sliver of wild left in the middle of a huge city. It’s hard to see in the picture below, but I found what looks a lot like gasoline in the mud, which means it’s in the water. I had to turn around there because the only way to go was through mud shining like a oily rainbow and I just have a feeling being barefoot in that isn’t the wisest of choices.

It made me really, really sad. More sad than usual, too, because of the state of mind I was in. And angry.

And I ran into these … canada geese? I think? They made lots of noise. LOTS of noise. After they quieted down (I dunno what they were honking about, I know nothing about geese, but I’m glad to say they just sort of acknowledged me and then accepted my presence.) I sat and sang to them (or, well, mostly to myself) and they just sort of looked at me.

And this is me being a dork:

Anyway, long disjointed story short, this was the most therapeutic thing I have done in ages. I got an (admittedly small) small taste of my brain switching over into a place that is completely contradictory to the way we live, and a lot healthier. It was a good reminder of who I am