MIND-BODY-SPIRIT A Wild Hope: Imagination as Liberation and Healing BY CAROL BURBANK Whenever we touch nature we get clean. People who have got dirty through too much civilization take a walk in the woods, or a bath in the sea. They shake off the fetters and allow nature to touch them. It can be done with - in or without. Walking in the woods, lying on the grass, taking a bath in the sea, are from the outside; entering the unconscious, entering yourself through dreams, is touching nature from the inside and this is the same thing, things are put right again. ~ Carl Jung Lately I’ve been exploring the connectio ns between creativity and ecol- ogy, from writing to reimagining my own relationship with the land, its history, and its future. Our planet and all the species on it are in an evolving crisis, instigated and maintained mostly by human interfer- ence. It’s hard to know what to do, what is enough to do. Often, even when the path is clear, it’s not clear how to take the first step. I hesitate. I lose momentum. I doubt myself. There are so many unconscious ways that I’ve let technology, cultural assumptions, and fear disconnect me from the natural world. I’ve decided my best first step is to transform my habits, starting with my imagination. Starting with story. Remember that old story about the loving/communal wolf and the fearful/angry wolf? If how we live truly depends on which wolf we feed, then that story can shift more than our relationships with other people! What if the ways we feed our imaginations can transform our relationship with the planet? I believe that’s where we need to start, feeding our curiosity and connection with the wild world without which we cannot survive. Can we embrace our inner wilderness so we can claim ourselves as the complex, interdependent human animals we are at our core? Can we free ourselves to follow Jeannette Winterson’s advice and live communion with the wild within us and without? She writes, “There’s a lot of talk about the tame world versus the wild world. It is not only wild nature that we need as human beings; it is the untamed open space of our imaginations.” Creativity, the process that connects soul to body, mind to spirit, will get us there. It’s my wild hope creativity can save us, as well as the planet, if we have the courage to expand our imaginations. Start with your senses! What do you see? Right this moment, a pileated woodpecker is taking advantage of the thaw to feast on restless bugs in a hollow stump outside my win- dow. Everything is stirring: the squirrels leap in playful vectors, up the slick beech trunks and across the gaps between trees, jostling the stubborn leaves from the branches and rolling in the damp, mulchy, winter brown. One settles on the woodpecker’s stump, curled tight and upright, chomping urgently, the white stretch of its belly reduced to a stripe of light. If I hadn’t seen her leap, I wouldn’t know she was there. When I open the back door, everyone scatters, and the woods ripple with a cold wind, catching the slightly salty smell of snow on the way, the faint sun-heated musk of leaves. Even in my mostly suburban life, my senses take me into communion with the land I shepherd. Time to go deeper. Look next to daily life, the habits we hold, the company we keep even alone in our houses. Today, I reheat the pizza I ordered last night. Who else is repre - sented here? What trees did we stack and shuffle to make the neat double origami of the box? Which cow chuffed in the barn as the fog drifted into the doorway squeaking open for the farmer, offering milk for the invisible, acidic bacteria that twist and ripen in the thickening liquid, a world in a vat. I could follow the mushrooms, the black olives, the onions back to their mycelial tracks, their sharp-leafed trees, their gritty rows of green stalks. And the farther in we go, the closer we get to the wild moments that made that human curation, beyond hunting or gathering or industrial
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76—PATHWAYS—Spring 24
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