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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781608682874 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | New World Library |
| Publication date: | 04/01/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 248 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Writing Wild
Forming a Creative Partnership With Nature
By Tina Welling
New World Library
Copyright © 2014 Tina WellingAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60868-287-4
CHAPTER 1
Spirit Walks
I once read an account of a woman who had been struck by lightning, causing her severe nerve damage. Afterward, what mattered in her life changed completely, and she felt grateful for the experience. Except for the nerve damage, this was what happened to me when I began to wake up to the world around me.
It all started with a postcard.
I was on my way to opening the Rosebud, my resort shop in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, but stopped first at the health-food store to pick up coffee and pastry. There it was, right on the counter, a postcard with a picture of earth taken from space. Against a shiny black sky, our planet glowed with swirly blues and purples, framed by two lines of a message: "Wake up! You live here!"
Normally, my first concern might have been the overuse of exclamation points, but this morning the message itself punched me smack in the chest and set off an alarm inside. I had just been outdoors, but I couldn't say what the sky looked like, cloudy or clear, or whether birds sang or if I'd felt a breeze on my cheeks. I had been locked inside my head, thinking. I didn't live with awareness inside my own body, much less on the earth.
After that, a phrase I'd heard all of my life, "Come to your senses," began to take on new meaning. I abruptly awakened to my senses, to dramatic consequence. My husband joked about an alien spirit descending into my body. But it was just me. I descended into my body.
Yet things don't really happen all of a sudden, I know. They just seem to occur that way. It certainly seemed to my husband, John, and even to me that I'd changed suddenly. But I believe now that the changes just took time to accumulate. It's like the arrival of spring; it happens so gradually that we think it sudden — the moment we notice the tatting of green on bare tree limbs.
Looking back, I realize that getting in touch with my creative energy began the process of alerting me to life. I changed bit by bit, over many years, as I dove deeper into my writing and my relationship with the natural world. I liked this heightened awareness, and I wanted to be even more conscious of life around me. That morning in the health-food store, I was tapped on the shoulder by life itself, and I was finally ready to answer the call.
I began to spend more time outdoors, taking my black-and-white shaggy pup, Tess, for leisurely three- and four-mile hikes along Flat Creek. Yet, often, I was still sleepwalking, unaware of my surroundings and deep in my thoughts. I could miss the most wonderful things along the path: sunlight through golden aspen leaves, the sound of creek water clattering the rocks. I would come home exercised, but not enlivened.
I wanted to be wake-walking.
I began to break down how perception moved through consciousness. I wanted to learn how to cooperate with my natural system to get fully awake on my planet. When I figured it out, I categorized the information into a three-step process that correlated to the work of the three parts of the brain: reptile, midbrain, and neocortex. I called my outings Spirit Walks, to remind me to be aware of the spirit of my experience. Throughout this research, layers and layers of understanding unfolded, and once I began to use that knowledge, a whole new world of awareness opened to me. Many unexpected gifts surfaced, and those ideas are discussed in the following chapters.
The three-step process discussed here was inspired by a book I was reading at the time, called The Intuitive Way. In it, author Penney Peirce describes how information travels through our bodies and minds, alerting our conscious awareness. In general, the first level of awareness in our bodies arises from instinct — desire, pain, pleasure. Our senses trigger awareness of these primitive urges the way touching a baby's cheek induces the baby to make sucking motions or the way saliva is released before we know consciously that we smell apple pie.
The information then moves into the conscious awareness of our senses: we know we smell apple pie and begin to look for the aroma's source. Next emotion arises in response to what our senses bring us — perhaps we experience a fleeting desire to be cared for or comforted. Then we create meanings and associations between sensory information and our inner life: hopes, memories, fears, and dreams. We remember Grandma and her apple pie; we wonder whether we'll ever taste one again. Finally, the data moves into the language area of the brain, where we can label and sort it into abstract ideas and definite plans. If we call Grandma and tell her we've been dreaming about her apple pie, maybe she'll give us the recipe.
This mental pathway corresponds with the three-part formula for a Spirit Walk: naming, which serves to alert our conscious awareness to the senses; describing, which engages our senses and body responses on a deeper, more intimate level; and interacting, which invites us to create a relationship with our surroundings.
Our five senses are our doorways into a fuller experience of our bodies, our writing, and our planet. When I consciously take in the fragrance of pine, the acknowledgment attaches my feet to the ground I stand on, the space I share with the pine tree. I reside more fully in my muscles, my bones, and I become aware of how the emotions aroused by my senses act on my organs and their systems. And then I want to tell someone about it.
Pen and paper are the only tools needed for a Spirit Walk. When we write, we pull the whole of ourselves — body, mind, and soul — into engaging with the unconscious and bringing ourselves into full awareness.
Here's how a recent Spirit Walk worked for me:
With a notebook and pen, I headed out to hike on the top of Snow King Mountain on a blue-sky morning in early June, just before the crowds of summer tourists arrive here in Jackson Hole. This decision meant a ride on the chairlift, which in the past I'd used only during ski season. I've always enjoyed the ride then because you can see a hundred miles away into Yellowstone and feel eye to eye with the peaks of the Grand Tetons.
But on this morning, the ride up the mountain frightened me. I was puzzled; the lift had never bothered me before. Now my chest felt constricted; I longed to pull in a deep, satisfying breath but couldn't. My toes ached from gripping the insoles of my hiking boots, and my hands were sweaty on the safety bar. In the winter, the resort removed these safety bars so skiers could slip on and off the chairs quickly, so why was I scared with one today? Shouldn't I feel more secure with it locked in place before me? It helped if I didn't move, not even my eyes. So much for the beautiful view I was looking forward to seeing. I stared straight ahead, tried not to blink, and hung on tightly.
Once I reached the summit of Snow King, I stepped gratefully off the chairlift onto solid ground and took a deep breath. Remembering the postcard that served as a tap on the neurons — "Wake up! You live here!" — I started to name things I saw. Large things came to my attention first: mountain peaks, clouds, boulders. I wrote them down in my notebook. Then I used my other senses and began to notice smaller things: the cry of a redtail hawk, the powdery feel of aspen bark, the fragrance of damp earth. Awareness followed a certain order as the senses descended into my less conscious areas, from sight to sound, touch, taste, and smell.
The point was to make a quick list, so I moved on.
As I walked, I kept my senses attuned to my surroundings and gathered more information. Tearing off a leaf of sagebrush, I crushed it in my palm and inhaled the fresh, herby scent; I chewed another leaf and quickly spit it out. Not the same sage we stuff into a turkey.
Across a narrow ridge, with the Tetons flaring snowy peaks on one side and the Gros Ventre Mountains rolling into eternity on the other, I walked up a rocky outcropping and found a place to sit beneath a twisted pine. Out with the notebook and pen again for the second part of my Spirit Walk: describing, or detailing.
I looked for something that especially attracted me and chose a pinecone. As if I were making an intricate drawing, I used language to describe the feel of the pinecone against my cheek, rippled a thumbnail down its scales near my ear — this could be a new musical instrument — and touched my tongue to its dry woodiness. "It tastes better than the sagebrush leaf," I wrote in my notebook, "but I'd rather have a Snickers bar." Still, we love what we know, and I had offered this pinecone my full attention. We had a relationship.
I rose and hiked deeper into the forest, listening to the silence, which filled with its own details as soon as I named them: insect buzz, wind rustling my hair, pine needles crunching underfoot, my own breath. I walked around a tall, leafless bush and was abruptly arrested by the way its fuzzy catkins, backlit by the sun, glistened silver against the blue sky. I felt the surprise and joy of Christmas morning. I recalled plugging in the Christmas tree my husband and I decorated when first married. We were so poor that we formed chicken wire into a cone around a pole and stuff it with green florist paper. No ornaments, only lights.
With this memory, I slipped into the third part of my Spirit Walk. I had opened myself to place and allowed an exchange, or interaction, between the outer world of nature and my inner world of emotion and intimate experience.
I hiked deeper into the woods and looked for a place where I could write about the catkins glowing like Christmas bulbs. Up ahead, a lodgepole pine had grown with a crook in its trunk. Probably when it was young, this tree had formed around a dead tree that had fallen across it. The deadfall had long ago decayed, but the crook it created made a perfect seat for me. I hoisted myself up and got comfortable as if I were sitting in the tree's lap. I began to swing my legs.
Like a smoothly spliced movie tape, the image of a Ferris wheel surfaced. My father and I sat together at the top of the Ferris wheel as it stopped to load new riders, and he began to swing his legs. I was young, about nine years old, and this scared me. My father laughed and teased me by pumping harder. The seat swayed, and I clenched the safety bar, rigid with alarm. I imagined the seat looping right over the top from my father's movements and me falling out, screaming past all the lights strung on the big wheel. Either my father didn't believe my fear was real, or he believed he could tease me past it. But my fear was real, and I never moved past it. I never went on a Ferris wheel again, with or without my father.
I was writing all this down, my notebook resting on my knees, my shoulder leaning against the rough bark of the lap tree.
Suddenly, I got it. The chairlift. The reason it scared me today during the summer, when it never had during the winter. The memory hit the light of consciousness, and I felt the beginnings of release from my fear. Now that I understood it, I knew I could stir up the courage to climb back on the chairlift for my return trip down the mountain.
At this point, I had been outside only an hour, but my experience had been one of fullness both inwardly and outwardly. I had become aware of a fear that had been hidden from my consciousness for decades, and I also carried a deeper relationship with this mountaintop, its pinecones and new spring growth, its bird cries and sage aromas. I had looked closely at the dirt beneath my feet and learned it consisted of insect parts, pine needles, stone chips, wildflower seeds. It was made up of pieces of its surroundings, just as I was made up of pieces of my surroundings.
My Spirit Walk was complete.
CHAPTER 2Do It Yourself
Once i knew how to fully inhabit my world through using the senses, I wanted never to lose my way again. Though at times I still find myself locked inside my head with thoughts, I know how to reenter my body now and return to wake-walking. I have given new meaning to the acronym BYOB. Instead of the party message "bring your own bottle," to me it means "bring your own body." And every time I do, I find myself waking up to enjoy a fuller experience of living on this swirly blue-and-purple planet of ours.
Naming, Detailing, Interacting
As stated earlier, the three steps of a Spirit Walk follow the pathway by which our brains absorb and release back out our life's experiences. The process also mimics the pattern of life as a whole. We begin our relationship with the world during childhood by naming — singling out parents and food, labeling them, giving our bodies the job of learning to pronounce the sounds that match the people and things. Next we notice details and sort these into descriptions — this blue, fuzzy blanket, not that yellow, smooth one. We distinguish our experiences by what we notice with our senses. Then we interact. We create relationships with those parents and others we have named; we bond with teddy bears and crackers.
A two-year-old girl came into my shop one day, and while her mother looked through ski hats, the little girl headed toward a basket of toy flowers on the floor. "Flower," she whispered to herself, then held one of them up to her nose. She had learned to name this item, to describe it, and to interact with what she had named "flower," through her senses. A flower was supposed to have fragrance. These plush flowers with bendable stems did not have fragrance, and the little girl could not believe her nose. She went through a dozen of them, squatting on the floor, smelling each one, her face intent on the mystery. It was, in its own way, heartbreaking; I wanted so much for her to be confirmed in what she was learning about the world. We as adults are still going through this process of naming, describing, and interacting. It would be most desirable to go through the process consciously, I thought, as this little girl was doing.
Whatever we can bring into the light of consciousness, we can use in our life's work. Whatever stays hidden in the dark of our unconscious is using us.
Before realizing the story behind my fear of swinging seats with safety bars, I was paralyzed, in the grip of this fear, unable to combat it with anything other than the willpower not to wail loudly until someone lowered me to the ground. Willpower is not a useful tool in the long run when it comes to our inner lives. It's just a Band- Aid for the moment. For the long run, we want to bring up the hidden stories, present them to the light, and let them guide us toward living more fully.
In my case, I needed to honor the feelings of this experience, comfort the nine-year-old self that lived through it, and address the choices it presented to my adult self. I learned many things from that Ferris wheel story. From my body, I learned that often I will deal with unpleasant situations by holding on tight and pushing through them. My impetus on the chairlift to not move any part of my body, including my eyes, matches my desire not to rock the boat or even look around for alternatives in a situation in which I am uncomfortable, even miserable. I don't easily change my position or impose my feelings on others. It's not easy for me to stand up for myself. For someone else, a similar experience may reveal the depths of fear he feels near his father, or anxiety over being out of control, or perhaps a fear of heights. Each of us will unearth our own personal stories and reach insights particular to our unconscious selves.
Later, I'll discuss how we can use the stories we unearth during a Spirit Walk for our creative projects as well as our self-awareness. Simple writing exercises can contact wisdom from within ourselves to match any call for healing, once we become conscious of the need. In every case, our healing lies side by side with our wounds. Our answers come from the exact place our questions arise. Where else would they be?
Those of us who are creative writers use our senses, all five, as the palette from which we draw connectedness between ourselves and our readers. Our bodies are the tools of our trade. We tell our personal stories through the communal language of our physical selves and our planet.
Do It Yourself
Here's how to take yourself on a Spirit Walk:
Any season, any weather, dress comfortably, go outside. Head for your backyard, a school playground, a city park, the wilderness. At some point, do more than walk on the earth. Sit down, lie down (even if you need to brush a couple feet of snow off a fallen tree, as I often do), set your butt right on nature itself. In my case, if I sit too long during the colder parts of the Wyoming winter, my behind freezes to the layer of snow I'm sitting on — this is my way of suggesting I'm not open to excuses here. Get outside; it's an important piece of the process. Pull out your notebook and pen, and make a list of what you see, hear, touch, taste, smell. One-word lists work well. Sight is the easiest sense for most of us. We spend a lot of time in our heads and use terms of sight to mean understanding or other ways of knowing: I see, I've lost sight of it, I'm eyeing it. The goal here is to widen our experience beyond the mental perception. The ear, in fact, has three times more connections to the brain than the eye does. So let's move into listing sounds.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Writing Wild by Tina Welling. Copyright © 2014 Tina Welling. Excerpted by permission of New World Library.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction,Chapter One: Spirit Walks,
Chapter Two: Do It Yourself,
Chapter Three: Writing into Truth,
Chapter Four: Engage Curiosity,
Chapter Five: Nature as a Writing Partner,
Chapter Six: Going Deeper,
Chapter Seven: Story of the Body, Body of the Story,
Chapter Eight: The Body Never Lies,
Chapter Nine: It's a Wild Thing,
Chapter Ten: The Nature of Writing,
Chapter Eleven: Creativity and the Four Elements,
Chapter Twelve: Lessons from the Natural World,
Chapter Thirteen: The Energy of Writing,
Chapter Fourteen: Rhythms of Language,
Chapter Fifteen: Imagination to Intuition,
Chapter Sixteen: Follow Your Longing,
Chapter Seventeen: Wild Instincts,
Chapter Eighteen: Writing Wild,
Chapter Nineteen: Care and Feeding of a Writer,
Chapter Twenty: Wild Spirit,
Chapter Twenty-One: Writing Gifts,
Epilogue: The Earthweave,
Acknowledgments,
Recommended Reading,
About the Author,