Between the Earth and Me

A Relationship

Last summer, me and my garden

Poetry

Here’s Wendell Berry’s “I Go Among Trees,” and here’s Giselle Wyers choral composition of the poem.

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Journeying

On a recent morning after dropping off my daughter at school, I decided to take an early hike at a nearby nature preserve. The preserve is close to my house and the early time meant I wouldn’t meet other hikers. The land borders Iowa and the Missouri river. Glaciers dropped the silt and sand they carried here as a final offering before their retreat. Today, we call their gift the Loess Hills after the particular kind of soil the glaciers had accumulated before they left. Many people imagine that Iowa and Nebraska are full of rolling fields, and while many parts of both states look like this, the Loess hills do not. They are steep, folded into ravines and ridges, making them somewhat challenging to hike. As I ascended one of these ridges, I came to a tree growing along a curve in the trail and reached out a hand to touch it. I have begun to think of this tree as “my tree.” When I first began hiking these trails, I found myself stopping at this particular bend to catch my breath and lean against the tree. Eventually, I began to look for the tree on my hikes, to make a point of stopping to pat it, lean on it, press my forehead against its bark and talk to it. I found its solidity comforting. On this day, I put a hand on in it for a few moments, then I gave it a farewell pat and walked up the trail.

Not long after my hike, I attended a conference on eco-spirituality, the conjunction between the living world and human spirit. One of the speakers asked us to answer individually and then in groups the following question, “Recall a time when you experienced connecting deeply to the nonhuman world. How would you describe the connection to this plant, animal, landscape or feature of the Earth?” My answer came relatively quickly because I had just spent a day in my garden. I told my conference tablemates that I felt deeply attached to my garden, but that I had some hesitation around this connection. “I’m frightened of talking to it, of really being with it and deepening my relationship with it because I’m scared of what it will tell me.” As I talked, I realized that my problem was bigger than my garden, that it was a problem with the whole earth. “It’s suffering so much. I’m afraid to grow closer to it because then I would have to be with all of that suffering; I would have to feel it.” My companions listened and then shared their own experiences of connection: an encounter with a tough and beautiful plant that’s first to grow in the cooled and hardened lava flow after a volcano and who’s flower resembles fire; an “obsession” with water and the local watershed; a Pacific coast sunset that led to an awareness of the whole cosmos.

On the last day of the conference, one of the women who had sat beside me at our table pulled me aside. She wanted to share a story with me. During her undergraduate time at a small college in South Dakota, one of her professors, a Lakota man, had told her class that if their lives ever felt overwhelming, they ought to go outside and lie down on the grass. “The earth will take all that you carry,” he said. “She can take it.” My new friend encouraged me to do the same, telling me, “she can handle a lot; she has so much capacity. Just rest in her. Then maybe listen.” I thanked her and gave her a big hug. Her words encouraged me to set aside, just for a little while, my habitual need to manage, control, and separate, to begin not with, “what am I going to have to endure,” but instead with “what might I receive that will help.”

And then I remembered my tree. During the pandemic winter, I had walked in the snowy woods regularly. I would crouch at the base of the tree in my insulated coveralls, stare up through the branches at the dull grey sky, and talk. One of the reasons I love a trail in the woods is that I can have an audible conversation with myself, god, the universe, without worrying about the reactions of other humans. That winter, with my back braced against the tree, I shared my despair, my anger, my bewilderment with whoever was there to listen. When I stood up, stretched my cramped legs, and lifted my backpack onto my shoulders, I felt lighter, ready to continue my journey. Looking back, I know that I shared my suffering with the earth and that she listened and held my hurt.

One of my favorite QiGong teachers talks about giving to the earth what you carry, “like compost.” I love this expression because it suggests that our pain might serve the earth in a way that is generative, like the mix of leaves and leftovers that eventually, grows beautiful flowers and vegetables. I experienced this at the base of my try on my pandemic hikes. And it’s what I hope to continue to experience with my garden and with the rest of the natural world that I have felt such conflict around for so long. Like my conference friend said, perhaps if I can listen, the earth will speak.

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Gardening and Making/Mending

“Snowball” Viburnum blooming next to the Airbnb front porch

This week, I watched one of the many rabbits that call our yard home eat a spent dandelion stalk like a piece of spaghetti. I admonished him to keep going because there are so many dandelions right now and because it will keep his teeth away from my bushes, which I’ve recently unveiled from their protective chicken wire. After I returned from the conference, I decided to reposition our bird feeders so that we could actually see the birds. I had placed the two big feeders at the back of the yards (ours and the Airbnb’s) because they looked beautiful among the flower beds in both locations. However, we had to squint to see the birds. So my daughter helped me move one feeder to a closer bed in the Airbnb yard and another one between the two houses. We also repositioned a window feeder from a side door, where the only time to see the birds happened when you were either going down or coming up the basement stairs, to a kitchen window. Now, we watch as House Sparrows mob the feeders, then get driven away by Grackles, then an opinionated Blue Jay. Eventually, we’ll see finches and maybe an Oriole if we get lucky. I am not a birder, but I do love to see these fellow creatures fluttering and squabbling at my window; we do the same on the other side of the glass.

Immediately upon arriving at my partner’s apartment in Iowa this weekend, I noticed this beautifully packaged tea. My partner had written one of his students a letter of recommendation, and she gifted him three face masks from Japan and this lovely tea that her grandmother grew in Taiwan. “Her grandmother grew it!" I exclaimed when he told me. “Can I have it?” He gave it to me. He doesn’t drink tea and knows I’m addicted to it. The leaves are black and curled in on themselves, and the tea they brew is dark and earthy. I love it. And I love that its origin is traceable, from me and my cup, to my partner and his student, to his student’s grandmother and her tea plants in Taiwan.