In this interview with Jason M Baxter, Paul Kingsnorth describes a formative experience with nature that happened when he was ten, and it reminded me of one of my own early experiences with Nature.
My dad is a taxidermist and has been since before I was born, so I was raised in a home that provided opportunities to see parts of Nature up close. Not only that, dad regularly marveled aloud at the beauty of these animals and the incredible genius of the One who made them, though he never claimed to know Who was behind the making. To hear my dad talk about his craft is to hear an artist talk about his process of creation, or a poet about writing poetry. He works with a constant sense of wonder for the natural world and it gives him a respect for nature that is obvious and contagious. My dad wanted me to see the world around me. He wanted to give me a sense of my place in it. And so, when I was 12, he said that he would take me along deer hunting.
I was signed up for a hunter's safety course, and when the tests were passed and the certificate issued, we headed out. November mornings in Wisconsin are sharply cold, and when we climbed out of the truck at 3 a.m., the icy air took my breath away. The stars were brilliant. Snow covered the ground, but it was from a few days earlier so it was packed and icy, and when we walked, our boots crunched through the thick crust. I tried to walk quietly, knowing from a lifetime of fishing with my dad that sounds carry farther than we think they do, but no matter how slowly or gently I placed my foot, it still sounded like a gunshot everytime I took a step. Dad and I didn't say a word as we entered the woods. All the tiredness I felt on the drive disappeared as we walked. The woods in winter in the hours before dawn was entirely new to me. My senses were fully awake and aware. When we arrived at the treestand, Dad whispered some last minute instructions as he handed me my camera and my thermos of hot chocolate, then he helped me climb up, made sure I was all set, waved, and headed to his own stand.
I was all alone in the dark woods for several hours. No phone. No lantern. No book. No distractions. I had a flashlight to help me find a place to pee if I needed to, but dad had told me not go up and down the steps too much because it was difficult to do when you're bundled up. Plus, I'd scare the wildlife away.
So I sat there and drank my cocoa as I watched the woods wake up. It's a bit like watching someone you love slowly rise out of sleep. I could see the sky through the branches above me as it began to change from black to deep blue to blue gray to grey, and slowly the light trickled down through the branches to the forest floor. As the light increased, squirrels began to forage and dig. Birds were suddenly singing and squawking and hopping around. I heard some bushes rustle beneath me but never saw what made the sound. At some point a doe came walking between the trees in the grey dawn, silent and cautious and more beautiful that anything I had ever seen. I think I cried but I remember more clearly the extreme delight - it was almost electric. I was seeing something no one else was seeing, that would never happen again just as it was happening now.
The time in the stand that morning was spent just looking and watching, and eventually looking and watching became seeing. I saw the woods and all the life within it, and I saw it as apart from myself. I felt like a visitor, or a guest, with all the appreciation of someone who finally arrives in a country he has long desired to visit. I didn't speak the language of this world, but I loved it anyway, maybe even because of its otherness. I was within but somehow outside this world, and it made me feel small. This sense of smallness was not a sense of meaninglessness or unimportance. At the time, I couldn't have named it, but looking back, I think it was awe. And hearing Wendell Berry’s quote in this interview, I think it was also creatureliness, and awareness of my finitude, my limitations. That is not an unpleasant thing.
The Coming
by R.S. Thomas
And God held in his hand
A small globe. Look he said.
The son looked. Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows: a bright
Serpent, A river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.
On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky. many People
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs. The son watched
Them. Let me go there, he said.
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