apprentice to the plants
I work hard to understand the gestalt of the world around me.
Before I worked hard to understand the gestalt of people and our worlds,
I apprenticed myself to the natural world:
to appreciate the flower, the peak,
the grand stories the seasons tell,
the alchemical reality of water as it empowers us all,
as it allows life,
as it celebrates itself in the sea,
and in the return to the sea,
I have followed streams to their beginnings,
celebrated every waterfall, every water falling, I could find,
everywhere water let us celebrate it,
in the heart of the oceans,
at the edge of the sea,
where thrive the border world of tidal pools,
who let us glimpse the fecundity where land meets water,
to where it collects enough to shimmer reflection back at us,
to where it pools enough for us to immerse,
where we can jump in and splash our joy,
animals are close enough to us in heritage
to draw me to their stories:
the bears in the Smokies,
the wolves in Yellowstone,
the heron,
the salamander,
the cicada,
it's the kingdom of plants that increasingly draws me:
the trees that know centuries within their selves,
the mycelia that know and coordinate all the community they can,
the ephemeral flowers who rush
to be themselves with perfection of blossom
and who retire when the canopy grows too full,
and then ready themselves for the next time to manifest,
I seek to use many of my next days
to better understand and celebrate the second world of flora,
and also to even more
fully understand and appreciate
the first world of rock, sun, and water,
whose dance with each other underlies all.
by Henry H. Walker
August 18, ‘24
I credit Indigenous wisdom as to the "worlds" I describe above. A Native People, the Anishinaabe, are described in The Light Eaters as considering plants the second brothers and the natural forces referred to above as "the elder brother."
The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth by Zoë Schlanger, p. 36.
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