Field Entry VT-001: Community
While this post was not written in New London, New London will forever be in my heart.
This weekend a nor'easter is to hit the northeast, and I decided to drive up to Vermont to escape its clutches. The weather is fair, sunny with clouds. I decided to take this chance to visit a trail owned by the university.
I used to come here and feel connected to the trees. I would even say that the trees gave me the strength and the wisdom then.
So naturally, I asked a tree: what wisdom do you have for me? How can I heal a land poisoned by bloodshed and industry?
I was led to walk a few paces away from that specific tree and observe. There was a cluster of trees with pine needs strewn all about and a wetland ahead. I approached the edge between overgrown wetland and forest and immediately was verbally assaulted by two young squirrels. Aside from their rapid chirping and tail flicking, I noticed that this corner of the forest was indeed a community. A community of trees, various plants, insects, and agitated squirrels. I wonder if these squirrels were attempting to defend their little community - I can sympathize.
So, a thought I gathered was that the land cannot be healed without community. Community is the regular heartbeat of a whole and healthy land. We are all members of that collective, and it is through our choices to promote interspecies harmony and our care for ourselves and our land that we can set the land back on the path to wholeness.
Aside from having this thought I tried to meditate, but their chittering was incessant and aggressive.
"Well", I thought. "I guess I won't gain any wisdom on how to heal the land". I went back to the tree and asked what the lesson was. It replied: "The lesson is in the squirrels". I immediately looked up the significance of squirrels according to native spirituality. I didn't find much that stood out, but I read somewhere:
"Don't be too busy gathering that you forget how to live."
I realized that this describes the modern American pace. So many of us are working hard to make a living. It's not our fault, it's not even our choice - it's the way things are. We are stuck. If we want to be 'unstuck', we have to work harder. This is an untruth.
Call me crazy, idealistic, or a devil-worshipper, but I know one thing: the more I choose community, the more community chooses me. I don't have to pay a subscription, I don't have to plan out every moment in a planner to ensure I create community - I find it by choosing to pay attention to the things that make it up. I choose to look around and pay attention, from the weeds to the interactions with those who serve the community behind a cash register or a guitar. I choose to ask myself: "How am I connected to this place"? And, it is through that intention that I connect and find community.
So, that towering pine tree...if it could talk (I think it did, through some manner of impression upon my mind), I think it would say:
"Community heals!"