Discuss: Mind in the Forest

I have no problem, looking “downwards”, shall we say,  accepting the incremental “mindedness” of our near and our not-so-near relatives on this planet (or looking “sideways” to our peers the dolphins). We’re all made of the same stuff, in a closely interwoven pattern. It’s when I look up at the inscrutable cosmos that I hesitate to use the word (or corresponding ideas - awareness, etc.). That great whatever it is must march to its own drumbeat - something other than thought occupying its “time”. It contains us; it contains thought, but there’s most likely some other bigger game in town. Of course I have a hard time explaining what I mean by this, but I do find it worth thinking about.

Scott Sanders, you say, “Suppose that mind is not some private power that each of us contains, but rather a field of awareness that contains us…” This is really the only point in your essay that made me a little bit uneasy (you can see by my first comment, #4, that I agree with almost everything you wrote, and maybe I should have just left it at that). But I feel that at this point the ice could become a slippery slope and bring us right back into the lap of the old guy with the white beard (made in our image). I just need to hang onto my ice floe. Sorry if it seems like nitpicking.

erstwhileterrestrial,

I don’t think that the idea of mind as a field necessarily brings us back to the old guy with the white beard. It could bring us, for instance, to certain Zen teachings, where in periods of meditation, “before thinking”, our mind is the same as everything else, not yet tied to specifics, not yet naming everything.

I thought this article was elegantly written.  It was both poetic and profound.  The insight about nothing in nature being fixed was very thought provoking.  One of the only focuses in the world that everything is subject to is change.  Although the degree of change may differ among species, it can not be escaped.

A beautifully written, metaphorically descriptive piece of work. As a young man growing up in the Southern Appalachians, I have spent my fair share of time reflecting while immersed in the tranquility of our forests. It seems to put me in a better place.

While reading this article, I couldn’t help but think of an article titled “Evangelical Envionmentalism” from Worldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion. In this article, the author speaks of the importance of nature as one of God’s creations. As a gift from God, this earth is sometimes treated with disrespect. We should all, whether religious or not, respect this earth and all of what it entails, because the fact of the matter is that there is only one earth and one life to live.

I found this article to be very well written in describing the relationship between humans and the environment. I agree with Jared on the eloquently written metaphorical description of the trees and surrounding nature. The descriptions of the forests can captivate any reader causing him or her to feel as if you are meditating alongside the author. I particularly liked the idea of nature not being fixed and how humans yearn for the fixed. A well structured article by someone I presume is undoubtedly a “tree-hugger”.

Thank you for your essay.  I’ve spent many weeks at HJA during my husband’s research trips.  I know the tree you leaned on and I think I know the spot where you sat by Lookout Creek.  When my daughter was small, we played many hours by the creek and both of us made poems there.

I’d like to share some of my favorite ways to connect with trees. The first will work in your deciduous homeland:  On a windy day, find a smallish deciduous tree, four to 8 inches in diameter, and press your ear to its bark to hear its song. 

The second will probably necessitate a return to the western mountains.  Find a large Ponderosa pine, whose bark has begun to split into plates and furrows similar to those on OG doug fir.  Put your nose into a crevice between the plates and sniff.  I hate to tell you the smell, since you should give it your own name.  [I recall the same scent in the bark of at least one other dry-site pine, sugar pine, so it may be that pines in your region offer some special aromas.]

Third, my brother and I invented a game to play with the puzzle-piece-shaped flakes of Ponderosa pine bark. While one of us closed our eyes, the other would remove a loose flake of bark.  Then the other would try to fit it back into place in the section of bark from which it came.

Classic books on trees written by Steve Arno and illustrated by Ramona Hammersly

Northwest Trees: Identifying and Understanding the Region’s Native Trees (2nd edition, 2007)

Timberline: Mountain and Arctic Forest Frontiers (1984)

How beautiful.  Our forests, in the antipodes, are different, but exquisitely similar.
Thank you.