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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (37116)	9/3/1999 8:18:00 AM
From: Crocodile	Respond to of 71178

Steve, I don't consciously think of rivers or trees as being inhabited by spirit-beings, but in a way, maybe I have and just haven't acknowledged it. I do seem to, somewhat unconsciously, assign personalities to rivers, or parts of rivers. Part of a river may seem easy-going and friendly feeling, while another part seems changeable or even a bit contrary (changeable currents or winds). When paddling on a section of river, I find myself thinking things like "Oh yeah, trying to blow me across to the other side again, eh? Well, I know your old wind trick and you're not getting me with it this time." I suppose I attribute some kind of "spirits" to trees. Or maybe I think of them more in terms of having some kind of sentiency. Most trees feel rather noble, but the Black Locust forest at the back of our farm has a definite malevolent "feel" to it... perhaps because the trunks and branches of the trees have great rending thorns that will shred your clothes or skin if you happen to make the mistake of wandering into them. It's dark beneath their canopy, and not too much grows in there other than an impenetrable mass of raspberry canes which surround it like the walls of a fortress. The trees and the canes work together to keep everyone out except a few fox that have dens in an old embankment that runs through that forest. I never feel very welcome there...it feels hostile compared to the other forested areas on the farm. I may have told you this before on the canoeing thread, but I used to know a very old fellow from my area who tapped maple trees for syrup. When he spoke of his trees, he had an anthropocentric way of regarding them... he would tell me how a large limb had broken off one of the trees in a wind storm, and how that had set "him" (the tree) back badly for a year, but that "his" sap flow was better this year, so he felt "he" was on the mend now. He had a truly fascinating knowledge of countless trees in his maple bush...in intimacy with the land which had developed over much of a century. He had been born in the kitchen of the farmhouse where he lived, and when I knew him, he was almost ninety and had never really left the farm during his entire life. The longer that I am here at my own farm, the more that I come to understand what it is to have the land become part of me...or perhaps I part of it. To know the forest like the back of my hand...to know where certain mushrooms or wildflowers will come back year after year... to know when someone or something unusual has been in the forest because things aren't quite as they should be. I've only been here for 20 years, but I often wonder how much more powerful this knowledge must be when someone has been on the land for their entire lifetime. There may be a certain kind of spirituality that comes with that knowledge...one that most people will never experience. And perhaps "natural spirits" reveal themselves when someone has lived among them long enough to accept them.