Mountain

I'm still considering what we deem "nature" & "natural."  Big, big question, which many folks have grappled with.  I have seen a more forceful impetus towards fighting against development in areas like the Pacific Northwest or the Amazon, where the impact of devastating ecosystems is seen so dramatically & quickly.  Having grown up in very developed Philadelphia 'burbs, & living the majority of my life on the urban & suburban eastern seaboard, there does seem to be a relative callousness about this natural world.  A lot of folks who live their whole lives in urban &/or suburban lives never know a deep connection to undeveloped land, plants, & animals.

But, some do.

Even within suburbia as a kid I found my "thinking place."  It was more private, kind of buried between a few backyards, & that's where I went.  I remember a forsythia bush on a neighbor's yard that somehow we were able to inhabit.  Within the folds of branches it became our own hidden house.  Looking at the forsythia in my yard now I have no idea how it seemed so hollow in the middle, but I know it's the same plant given the foliage.  I remember being surrounded in vibrant yellow.

We had a HUGE old maple at the end of the cul de sac.  All the kids called it "the purple tree" given the leaves' & bark's color.  The foliage here certainly did create a large orb.  When you ducked below the leaves & entered into the inner circumference it felt like a home.  There were huge long branches that were low and smooth-- perfect to sit on and read, or create imaginary homes & schools.

When we got a little older we were allowed to walk to the library, which bordered on a park.  I remember one summer my friend & I created a huge fictional world in the woods behind the library.  We threaded branches together to create a little home.  We spent hours out there.  I miss that sense of contentment so much when now I'm so sensitive to mosquito bites & poison ivy.  I honestly think that I was just so calm & happy that those annoyances didn't have the same impact on me.  I feel like I react more neurotically & am trying to apply more equanimity so I'm not lured away from the outdoors.

Much of my project of "knowing" nature, fighting for unimpacted spaces, is not in learning anything new but trying to get back.  & maybe trying to get back to attitudes & sentiments that predate my tenure on this planet.  This type of uncovering is exactly the project of yoga.  The idea is you're never necessarily introducing new strength or ideas but rather uncovering what's existing, but buried.

I've been feeling this sense of emergence in tadasana, mountain pose.  For someone who didn't grow up in mountains, & maybe only skied in the winter, & hiked in them in the summer, I generally recognized mountains as static figures.

I'm currently reading Chris Hedges' & Joe Sacco's Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt.  The collaborating authors travel to several "sacrifice zones" in the United States-- places where unchecked & unregulated abusive industry has gutted & destroyed regions.  They begin in Lakota Indian Reservation, Pine Hills, South Dakota; then research in Camden, New Jersey; then onto Coal mined West Virginia; & finally onto Florida farmlands worked by undocumented immigrants.  This book is invaluable, & I plan to reflect on it further in future posts.  The section on West Virginia returns to me every time I practice mountain pose. The chapter opens up with an introduction to Larry Gibson, a long-time activist against coal mining and mountain-top removal.  He said, "A mountain is a live vessel, man; it's life itself.  You walk through the woods here and you're gonna hear the critters moving, scampering around, that's what a mountain is.  Try to imagine what it would be like for a mountain when it's getting blowed up, fifteen times a day, blowed up, every day, what that mountain must feel like as far as pain, as life."

Now, when I move into tadasana, mountain pose, I try to get a better sense of a mountain.  A mountain that is constantly growing, reforming, reshaping, just as I am.  A mountain that fills in some instances with hot lava energy.  A mountain stabilized and fortified by coal seams.  A mountain solid of granite or marble.  A mountain with fissures, homes for animal life.  A mountain covered with rich earth, an ecosystem of plants, animals, insects.  A mountain that breaks wind, is shaped by water, that grows, stretches, reaches, & crumbles.

I want to feel that.  I want to know as best I can how to inhabit myself and the planet.  I want to spend more time on mountains and learn the place of each of them.  One of Kevin's professor's, Ralph, lives in western Virginia, near the border with West Virginia.  He rarely travels, but knows that place intimately & deeply.  His meditation is hiking through the mountains, watching the shift of seasons and life cycles.

Ultimately, me knowing my own body & experience, having hopefully a bit more sympathy or sensitivity for the natural world around me needs to be motivation to carry on campaigns like that of Larry Gibson.  I appreciate the experiential depth of yoga but also the danger of self-indulgence.

That symmetry between body & land is never accidental.  It is a huge privilege to have time & space to know myself better & know where I am in the world.  In thanks to the world for holding me, I challenge rampant development and industrialization.  While I value and respect individual consumer choices as acts of environmentalism, ultimately advocating for land & animals involves challenging industry.  I'm thankful that so many are strong enough to make that challenge.