Be-Longing

Dark had enveloped us on the late fall day. My clothes were heavy from the rain, my feet dragged across the Earth. I could hear the laughter of Micaela and JF as they gathered leaves to insulate our shelter. They sounded hysterical, delirious from a hard day of work and sugar. Tessa was nearby, solemnly working through the pain of her broken collarbone. I gathered sticks in silence and threw them on the roof of the lean-to. We had to keep working to protect ourselves from the elements; rain or dropping temps would make for an uncomfortable night. “Fuck this,” a part of me said. I felt depleted from a cold coming into the weekend and Iacked resilience. Would Nature hold me or crush me? I thought about all our non-human relations and how easily they existed in Nature. Our ancestors did too, not just surviving, but living harmoniously. I felt like a slave to my comfort, craving a shower and synthetic mattress. I heard a wolf howl in the distance; our instructors were calling us for dinner. 

 

We joined the rest of the Ways of the Wild crew at the central fire, grateful for the shelter, warmth and lamb that we harvested during our last weekend immersion. It was definitely a unique birthday for myself and another participant, Breanna. We were celebrated warmly with words of appreciation, song and brownie cake. I held my pants steaming in front of the fire as people shared about their day building shelter. Out of the three groups, we were the only ones who didn’t feel prepared for the night; our roof remained incomplete. I felt withdrawn and apathetic, wondering if I had been contributing enough. 

 

Somehow in our sharing circles we surfaced the contemplation of belonging. It seemed that the sense of not belonging was a perennial problem, a recurring challenge that most people experience. The lack of connection in our artificial lives has us wondering where our home is. The village has been replaced by virtual “communities” and the wilderness is designated for animals. Our instructor Kyle gave a familiar anecdote of white-knuckling through the night trying to make it to the house rather than pulling the car over and getting cozy in the woods. But what about my tent and sleeping bag and thermarest and lantern and toilet paper and bug spray and… wifi!?! Hypothetically, if we felt safe in Nature, in hospitable weather with some reasonably adequate clothing, we could cozy up on a bed of moss, leaves or sticks and dream with the Web of Life. This contemplation of belonging, a recurring crux in my life, stirred as we went out to meet the night. The other two groups captured some of the central fire to bring back to their shelter. Our group geared up for a late push to complete our roof. 

 

What provides a sense of belonging? The essentials of life are shelter, fire, water, food, and I would include connection in the equation of wellbeing. We can’t feel whole without a sense of belonging and we can’t feel belonging without a sense of connection. Connection is three legged: Connection to Self, Others and Nature. 

 

The inside job of Connection to Self is the most autonomous. The quest to “Know thyself” might be the greatest pursuit, a quest with no end. Not being defined by others or our environment, but truly knowing who we are, where our edges, flaws and aptitudes exist, in full acceptance of self. It’s the pursuit of our purest expression. 

 

We can’t actually know ourselves without relativity, we exist in relationship. Knowing who and what we are includes knowing who and what we are not. We need connection to others to see ourselves through their eyes, while still firmly holding our personal power of self-definition (or perhaps remaining undefineable). Quite often the pursuit of belonging results in a stifling of self-expression rather than the liberation of it; social desirability (belonging) trumps radical authenticity. The very ordeal of interpersonal relationships can yield the most exquisite bliss and the most heart decimating hardships. When the status quo of interpersonal relations (wearing masks to be accepted) is overcome through shared trials and felt experiences, blurring the lines of the separate-self (ego) and feeling deeply connected to others,  the harmonic result can be truly magnificent. 

 

Nature might be our most consistent avenue for connection; it awaits us with open arms, ready to hear our woes and catch our tears. It gives us everything we have, our body and all our possessions, we are an extension of Nature. To sit in the forest or by a river, free of the noise and distraction of modernity, instantly balances our state of being. Truth exists in Nature. It puts us in connection with something bigger than ourselves and there’s no limit to how far we can drop in. Yet somehow modernity has disassociated us from Nature, a separation that permits its commodification. Still it awaits us, with the loving patience and forgiveness of a parent, or a benevolent God. Nature isn’t wrathful but it is stern, and without the appropriate respect and stewardship, it will crush us.

 

To be adept in one of these legs of connection might be enough to create a sense of belonging. If we truly know who we are, we don’t need to try to fit in. Acceptance and rejection both take on an essence of neutrality and we flow to where we’re meant to be. We belong. 

Integration with others, like in a Village, means that we have social and cultural fabric to catch us no matter what our experience or expression may be. We belong. 

From a physical perspective, to feel held by the land wherever we are as we bow to our 4 Great Chiefs, Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and orient ourselves to them in a way (respect, knowledge, skill) that won’t decimate us… We belong. 

From a metaphysical perspective, there is no boundary to the Natural World, we’re a part of an infinite cycle of destruction and creation. Our mere existence is in service to the whole as Great Spirit moves through us.

We belong. 

 

Things get weird in the dark. Everything feels different, the landscape, the relationships, the sense of place. Where are we? It’s other-worldly, a veiled mythopoetic space. I was grateful for our ritual of greeting the land at the beginning of the day, offering tobacco and gratitude, a simple gesture of reciprocity to deepen our relationship. Micaela’s experience was that the forest seemed to be presenting her with gifts, seeing useful material that went unnoticed during the day. It took a lot of material, some living, some dead to support our life in Nature. We moved with awareness, noticing our impact, the relationship between destruction and creation. It was our intention to harvest in a regenerative way that would promote life, selectively thinning spaces so that the mature trees and underbrush would flourish. A halfmoon broke through the clouds above the mountains, a beaming Grandmother providing a little bit of light as we moved through ebbs and flows of inspiration. 

 

We had other allies that night, members of another team came over to offer help. I had the competitive instinct to deny it; “We got this.” Humble reason prevailed and we gratefully accepted the support. We can never do it alone. That might be why the drive for belonging is so strong, it’s a survival instinct, it takes a Village. In being a part of a collective, there’s a responsibility of reciprocity, giving as much as we receive, and also a required commitment. A tension exists between love and freedom: to be free is to be unburdened by commitment, to wander with the wind, like a lone-wolf on a hero's journey without ever returning to the Village with the elixir; to be in service to love requires devotion to some organizing principle, like our beloved, children or the shared vision of a community. Or perhaps devotion to a dharmic path, making the necessary sacrifices to do what is ours to do, engendering the experience of meaning and belonging to Life. Love and freedom, authenticity and belonging, all muddled with joy and grief, these are the complexities of the human experience. Life seems more straightforward in Nature, even in the dark. 

 

We got the roof to a satisfactory state, though there was much more to do, and cozied in for the night. The four of us huddled together in our den, a foreign experience that held an ancient familiarity. I had the luxury of a middle spot in the sandwich and was warm in my sleeping bag. Others went without their modern comfort until the cold bit into them, a reminder of our fragility. We all find our limits in the wild, pushing those edges incrementally. Some day, in faith or madness, I aspire to stand there naked, in full belonging and trust of the Wild Tameless, the same way I was brought into this world.  

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