I love this Henry David Thoreau quote because it reminds me of the strength and beauty of suppressed wildness. This past year of doing our weekly “Church of Nature” where we go and explore an inner-city patch of woods every Sunday has changed my appreciation of and relationship with wild places and surprisingly also myself.The migrating buffalo, which seeks new pastures in another latitude, is not extravagant like the cow which kicks over the pail, leaps the cowyard fence and runs after her calf in milking time.
Not long ago I longed to return to the majestic old growth forests of the Appalachian mountains or see the millions of stars that light the night sky in the middle of the Mojave desert. When I walked in the woods along the river that I grew up a block away from I felt rage and despair at the litter, pollution and needless removal of mature trees. A few hundred years ago the humans that lived on the White River got to live and play in the most beautiful virgin forests and wetlands. They got to eat healthy and delicious food that they watched grow, they were forced to exercise daily to survive and they had communities where their social and emotional needs were met. I felt so angry that I was robbed of this experience of living how humans were meant to live. Now instead of being depressed by my backyard wilds I am itching daily to get back to those tiny patches of weak, baby, struggling forests that are managing to survive on the outskirts of farmlands, along our abused, dirty river and in abandoned lots sandwiched between decrepit, dumpy neighborhoods. These little plant and animal communities make my heart flutter and ache when I even just think of them. What good news to see blackberry brambles pushing away discarded tires! How wonderful to see baby maples and sycamores taking root in patches of weeds that were too unruly to mow over! Like Henry David Thoreau’s cow, these woods are kicking over the pail and running to feed their young and nothing could be more beautiful. Nothing is more inspiring and life giving than to see these woods maturing and becoming more healthy.
I love these struggling wildlands more than conserved or virgin areas because they remind me of my own attempt to thrive and heal from civilized life. Every time I get a bit tired or stressed I fight urges to harm myself with shitty food, intoxicants, actual physical pain or by just numbing out with screens or staying in bed. My heart is desperate to live in closer proximity with more people. I battle with feelings of worthlessness and existential wondering. My pathos could so easily be healed by living in a beautiful place with a large and intimate community of people, exercising daily and eating healthy, simple food that I gather or grow myself. It’s real hard to be sane and healthy when you’re being forced into a schedule and a grid, being given easy access to things that harm you, and being isolated from your ecosystem, your family and your neighbors. I am that cow in the quote. I’m hopelessly domesticated and enslaved and every day I am kicking that stupid pail over and jumping the fence, trying to run and feed my young in different small ways. Like the inner city woods that I have fallen in love with I am struggling to take root in concrete and litter and like those brave plants and fungi I hope to not only survive but also bring that polluted air, soil and water into my body and clean it and turn it into something beautiful and of lasting value for myself, those around me and those that come after me.
The wilds of Anderson have helped me to love myself and though I have a long way to go, I feel more whole and healthy than I ever have. I’m really grateful to these straggly, trashy, weak woods for the ways they have helped me find my own lame, tiny efforts to live naturally as beautiful, strong and extravagant.
-Sybilla
resident of Burdock House
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