Module 2 : Indigenous Wisdom
Robin Wall Kimmerer (a member of the Potawatomi Nation) writes in her book The Democracy of Species.
"I come her to listen, to nestle in the curve of the roots in a soft hollow of pine needles, to lean my bones against the column of white pine, to turn off the voice in my head until I can hear the voices outside it: the shhh of wind in needles, water trickling over rock, nuthatch tapping, chipmunks digging, beechnut falling, mosquito in my ear, and something more-- something that is not me, for which we have no language, the wordless being of others in which we are never alone. After the drumbeat of my mother's heart, this was my first language. I could spend a whole day listening. And a whole night. And in the morning, without my hearing it, there might be a mushroom that was not there the night before, creamy white, pushed up from the pine needle duff, out of darkness to light, still glistening with the fluid of its passage. Puhpowee. Listening in wild places, we are audience to conversations in a language not our own."
Create space to go outside and to listen. Spend at least 30 minutes (an hour if possible), just sitting or walking quietly without purpose to center your sense on taking in the sounds of the world around you. What have you heard that you've never heard before? Have you listened to the sounds of the wild and heard it as language? What is the created world telling you?