Connection, Intention, and Attention
Recently, I was leading a group of students through the woods to one of my favorite field-classroom spots. The narrow deer trail that we followed winds through a dense understory of gray dogwood and privet so thick that it feels like a tunnel. At a curve in the trail the brush opened up and we all paused to marvel at a magnificent ancient being of the forest. The giant red oak is more than two hundred years old with a girth that takes five students to wrap their arms around it. Each huge, low, spreading branch is larger than most of the trees within the entire eighty acres of the preserve. Decades ago, one of these branches broke off and now lays next to the tree, providing a four-foot-tall structure serving as habitat for countless forest creatures.
The story of our lives is written on our bodies—a scar here, a slight limp there, a bit of stiffness in our wrist, a twinge of pain in our shoulder. And the story of this tree’s life is written on its body. A healed scar in the trunk shows a lightning strike. Buckled bark near the base shows an interior weakness where the wood fibers are starting to crush under the enormous weight of wood above them. A bend in a branch shows where trauma killed the growing tip, and a different small branch took the limb in a different direction.
A difference between us and the tree, however, is that the tree has had centuries immovably rooted to its place. The story of its life is the story of the land and the beings around it. For this grand old tree, the story written on its body tells the story of a young tree centuries ago growing, not in the shade of the forest as it is now but in the sunny environment of an open pasture. The huge spreading branches paint a picture of a much younger, vigorous tree, growing in full sun spreading its arms and providing shade for sheep or cows.
Standing under my old friend, I verbally painted this picture for the students, inviting them to watch the “movie” of the land around them over the past century and up to the present day. I told the students how a few years ago at the base of this tree my tracking students and I had found the first bobcat tracks ever discovered in this reserve. I told them how, using the information from the tracks, we had set up a trail camera and gotten photos of the bobcat climbing over this very branch that was on the ground behind me.
As I told the story of the connections between bobcats, people, and this tree, I was facing the students. Turning to my left while pointing out the exact route the bobcat had used two years earlier to climb over the large fallen branch, I found myself pointing at fresh bobcat scat! With the COVID-19 lockdown and subsequent disruption to life, I had not visited this tree for two years. Yet, there, on cue, was fresh sign of our bobcat.
Visiting the same spot over and over through the years and being part of the animals’ rhythms as they go about their lives. Returning to a particular spot and seeing the calling card of an old friend. Listening to the trees tell us stories of their younger days. This is connection—connection born out of an intention to pay attention. Connection cultivated with gratitude.
It makes me smile that the next time the bobcat comes through he will wonder at the new smells of twenty humans and wonder what they were doing here. My students and I are part of the tree’s life, as we bring awareness to management decisions for the preserve. Through our decisions and actions, we are now part of the events of today that shape what happens tomorrow, next week, next year, and even in the next century.
Try: Set an intention to create your connection. Choose a specific place out in nature and go there. Take a deep breath and really listen to the land with all your being. What is happening right now? What must have happened yesterday for these things to be happening today? What must have happened last year for these things to have happened yesterday? What must have happened one hundred years ago for these things to have happened last year? Pretend you are a consulting detective like Sherlock Holmes and see what clues have been left behind.
Questions open our awareness, leading to insights and back to deeper questions. Get to know this place by visiting it periodically over the next months and years. How does your intention to pay attention deepen your connection?