To Be a Naturalist

March 6th, 2016

In proper company, I call myself a naturalist.  With others, I am a woodsman, and still others, a lumberjack.  I tell many I am studying trees, although it seems my focus is more on NATURE than anything else, and even that seems too specific.

I am first, always, a student.  I am a student of the trees, and the alpenglow, of Thoreau, Emerson, and my father, of Muir and the Roosevelts, of Fifty Crows.  What I learn from the weeping beech differs not in value but in method from learning from Walden, and even then, only slightly.  I am but a sapling oak in the forest, bending in the wind.

“The mountain winds, like the dew and rain, sunshine and snow, are measured and bestowed with love on the forests to develop their strength and beauty.  However restricted the scope of other forest influences, that of the winds is universal.  The snow bends and trims the upper forests every winter, the lightening strikes a single tree here and there, while avalanches mow down thousands at a swoop as a gardener trims a bed of flowers.  But the winds go to every tree, fingering each leaf and branch and furrowed bole; not one is forgotten; the mountain pine towering with outstretched arms on the rugged buttresses of the icy peaks, the lowliest and most retiring tenant of the dells, they seek and find them all, caressing them tenderly, bending them in lusty exercise, stimulating their growth, plucking off a leaf or limb as required, or removing an entire tree or grove, now whispering and cooing through the branches like a sleepy child, now roaring like the ocean; the winds blessing the forests, the forests the winds, with ineffable beauty and harmony as the sure result.”

            - John Muir, “A Windstorm in the Forest”, 55.

            Perhaps, as a student, I should use this metaphor to better grasp my interaction with NATURE.  At times, it makes sense to describe us humans as the trees in the wind, and NATURE as the wind, for indeed, we all feel the wind, and are shaped by NATURE.  But John Muir was also in the forest, amongst the trees, eyes aimed upwards at the swaying canopy, and he feels the wind as wind.  In this image, Muir’s participating in NATURE is his whole body in the woods.  He, like the trees, is supposed to be there, and by being there, is a part of NATURE.  Although he stands on a different set of roots, and his limbs do not stretch as far as his neighbors, he is as natural as the trees.  The wind in his ears and his beard, the sound of the creaking trunks, the smell of the forest (for there is a specific forest smell), and his mind, recording and responding to the dance of the wind and the trees, which has been happening long before the first human was there to see/hear/feel it.  There is no separation between his mind and his ears.  And to the wind, there is no separation between Muir and the woods.

            Yet when I read Muir, I am relying on his mind and my mind to connect.  Although I too have been in the woods during a windstorm, I am not John Muir.  My mind tries to remind me what it feels like to be there, and I can hear the shadow of the wind.  And although I sit in a coffee shop while I read it, I am still participating in NATURE, for I feel it.  I know this, and that is more than enough for me.  NATURE is found in the interaction between John Muir’s mind and my own, through words.  I, and Muir, use words to try and tie down NATURE, to make it somewhat of a manageable concept, although we all know this is similar to tying down a main sail in a gale with a shoelace.  But, even still, although I am thousands of miles from the Sierra, and one hundred and forty-two years away from the storm Muir is writing about, I am there with Muir, and thankful for the shoelace.

~

            A naturalist, I believe, must work to enhance all of their tools, both their ears and their eyes, their nose, their fingers, and their mind.  Much of this, of course, is done in the woods.  Sitting upon the boulder, hanging amongst the branches, atop the peak, NATURE is found everywhere in nature.  But a naturalist must also enhance their mind, so that when the time comes to share our personal NATURE, as I do here, there is much more at play.

“It is difficult to know where to stop when dealing with a subject of this kind, and I have been tempted to stray into byways of knowledge.  Some reference to composts and to sea power have forced themselves in, but I have excluded hay fever and some other dimly related subjects.  I am more inclined to apologize for the omissions than for the digressions, since I feel very strongly that rigid specialization is disastrous, and the pursuit of red herrings, within reason, should be the proper sport of every student.  I believe that a man will be a better forester if he has for example, read the Illiad, composed an essay upon the Improbable, and has made and hung a field gate.”

            - R. Gurney, Our Trees & Woodlands, xiii.

            A good “forester” is a participant in NATURE, as well as a student of all natures, human and otherwise.  A student of trees, as a student of NATURE, is shown by the trees again and again that there is more than himself, and more than trees to NATURE. Stretch the mind outwards, the finger-like branches yearning towards the horizon in all directions.  Participate in the space, in NATURE.

To be a participant in NATURE, one must participate in nature (and there is a difference).  You must allow yourself to be pulled and pushed by the wind in the trees, and the wind of the trees.

“I have barely entered the forest when I see the alders across the pond.  The invitation to stop fills my attention; I am riveted by their graceful beauty and still reflection.  Alders, I see you from this open spot by the tall Douglas fir.  You are very quiet this morning.”

            - Stephanie Kaza, The Attentive Heart, 24.

~

To enter Fifty Crows, there is a light switch that must be turned on.  It lives in two places: on the trunk of a young tree, and in the head of my young self.  The switch, as many switches do, turns on a light.  The woods itself is already lit with the Sunday morning glow, but the switch is always hit on the way down.

The switch, although built by my father, was created for my brother and me.  It changed our mindset, from the boisterous contest of the bike path, we (usually) switch to the mindful and attentive walkers in the wood.  The switch was there to remind us that while nature is all around us, NATURE needs to be opened up to, let in, and participated in.  To know NATURE, we have to be in NATURE, to be NATURE.  We have to walk along the logs crossing Plum Creek, knowing that they were not put there for us, but being grateful all the same.  We have to listen to the birds.  We have to feel the wind.

“We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men, but it never occurred to me until this storm day, while swinging in the wind, that trees are travelers in the ordinary sense.  They make many journeys, not extensive ones it is true; but our own little journeys, away and back again, are only little more than tree wavings – many of them not so much.

            When the storm began to abate, I dismounted and sauntered down through the calming woods.  The storm tones died away, and, turning toward the east, I beheld the countless hosts of the forests hushed and tranquil, towering above one another on the slopes of the hills like a devout audience.  The setting sun filled them with amber light and seemed to say, while they listened, “My peace I give unto you.”

            As I gazed on the impressive scene, all of the so-called ruin of the storm was forgotten, and never before did the noble words appear so fresh, so joyous, so immortal.”

            - John Muir, “A Windstorm in the Forest,” 63.