Pop 89: Revery
By Madonna Hamel
“To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee/One clover, and a bee. And revery./The revery alone will do, /If bees are few.”
You may recognize this poem by Emily Dickinson. I have long been tickled by it. And yet, the more I think about it, the more I realize that revery arises because of bees and prairies and clover. And a Northern Harrier hawk flying low over you to say: stay away from my nest, you human pest! Also: blooming cacti and a muskrat spotting swimming just beneath the surface of Frenchman River. A meadowlark alone will make a prairie. That is to say: the critters and plants come first, then revery, mystery, transcendence and giddy sweet bliss.
My pal Avril left yesterday for Toronto where she works on film sets. I will miss her prodding me out to wander the hills and the grasslands at every sundown. We have a routine - no talking until we get home. Unless, of course, it’s to point out a critter one of us might not have spotted. But no need to state the obvious out loud every two minutes: “Wow! It’s so beautiful. The light is so golden! I love the sound of the Night Hawk!” Just walk in silence and immerse oneself in that immediate experience of nature that has thrown humans into a fever-pitch of mystic merging with creatures ever since two-legged first prowled the Earth.
On Sunday, Avril went off on a guided lizard count while I decided to hunt for spectacular cactus blooms. Edging along the banks of the Frenchman River, I came across a bouquet of pink, peach and yellow blossoms atop a healthy clutch of spiked prickly pairs tipping precariously toward the water. The sight of them made me squeal with glee. Below me an underwater creature mysteriously maneuvered its way down river, popping up every once in awhile, unpredictably. That moment filled me with a sense of reverence and awe that felt ancient, essential and uniquely connected to nature. That is to say: no toy, no video game, no fast car nor new dress, not even a new boyfriend or a grand prize announcement has ever filled my being with such a profound, if subtle, sense of wonder, transcending the mundane worries of a workaday world.
I told Avril this, then followed it with a regret that so many kids don’t ever get to experience that thrill. “Maybe they don’t even care to,” suggested Avril. “Not all kids are into critters like we are.” Is nature just a preference? Like a hobby? I can trust Avril to keep me somewhat grounded in my speculations and not get too “woo-woo” about my belief that nature is necessary for the soul. But without it, we forget that we are nature too, not apart from it. And, come to think of it, isn’t it a love of nature that keeps her grounded?
I think, like Robin Wall Kimmerer, expert in mosses, and ant expert E.O. Wilson, that we all have a deep longing for connection with nature. It’s an innate “love for living things.” And it’s true, the sensation that comes over me when I walk on 70 Mile Butte is so ineffable, yet intense, that I would equate it with the function of memory. Kimmerer says: “It’s as if people remember in some kind of early, ancestral place within them. They’re remembering what it might be like to live somewhere you felt companionship with the living world, not estrangement.”
Today’s kids tend to spend more time immersed in video games and Tie Tok than in the magic of places like Grasslands National Park, and it means they pay attention to other things, prioritize according to different impulses. “It worries me,” says Kimmerer, “that kids can identify a hundred different corporate logos but not even ten plants.” A dad from Toronto who was camping in Grasslands, relayed to me his similar concern and his reason for bringing them to this Dark Sky Preserve: “My kids thought there were, like, four stars in the sky.”
One of my favourite writers and theologians is Marcus Borg. In a talk on mysticism, he points out that most of the mystical encounters with the divine in Christian tradition occurred outdoors - on the shores of seas, in fields, under starry skies. And the Buddha found enlightenment under a tree, not in the mall. Mary only shows up in groves and fields (and usually to children and the poor, by the way). Recent changes in human history like machine noises, and light pollution, have made encounters with mystery less likely, suggests Borg. I am happy to report that I wake to the racket of birds at 3:30 in the morning. That the sky at night still staggers me backward when I look up and lose myself.
But you don’t have to be a poet or theologian to appreciate the mystic and the mystery of nature. The author and physicist Alan Lightman, in his new book The Transcendent Brain, describes himself as a materialist, “a scientist with a scientist’s brain.” “Everything is made of atoms and molecules and nothing more,” he writes. And yet he does have transcendent experiences that are inexplicable. Try as he might to explain them.
He opens his book with a story about two ospreys nesting across from his porch in Maine. When the day came for them to take flight, they headed straight for his porch. “My immediate impulse was to run for cover,” he wrote, “since the birds could have ripped my face off. But something held me to my ground.” They flew close, then veered upwards at the last second. And in that split-second, the two species made eye contact. “I was shaking and in tears. I don’t know what happened in that half-second.” Maybe that’s the beauty of mystery. We can’t know. There’s no formula. We aren’t meant to know but to revere. To welcome revery.
Madonna can be reached at madonnahamel@hotmail.com.