Animá Lifeways & Herbal School

Intro: Anima School is developing a number of focused niche websites with changing, dynamic content.  The following article is your advance look at one of the kinds of pieces that will be featured in the newsletter for the ReWilding & Libertarian site (name to be decided on!).  It features down home language and practical instructions, combined with deep ecological insights and a deeper point about our potentially conscious place in the Gifting Cycle.  In three parts, the Part 1 tells the in some ways humorous story of my relationship with rodents, as their champion and advocate more than occasional nemesis.  Part 2 is a fact-packed description of Pack Rats and their rat lifestyle, while Part 3 take a serious look at rats as not only survival food but as part of a healthy and humble primal diet.  Easily disturbed vegetarians may want to enjoy the first two parts, and then drop down to the very last paragraph and its emphasis on connecting to the give and take of life through not only what nature has to offer but on our responsibility to offer something in turn to it.  Your comments, appreciation or dismay or appreciated as always. -Wolf

EATING PACK RATS & PRAISING RODENTS:
Survival Mindset, Reconnection, & Responsible Participation in the Food Chain

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

Part 1: The Good, The Bad & The Fuzzy

“You dirty rat,” the actor James Cagney is supposed to have snarled in one or more of his 1930’s movies, presumably right before slapping or shooting some guy failing to exhibit the minimum standards of honor and style expected of an upright criminal.  Go ahead and let the schmuck have it if he deserves it, Jimmy-boy, but kindly get off the rats’ backs.

Before we begin to consider rodent nature, any problems coinhabiting with the species, or their inarguable culinary value, let us first have done with the vulgar myth that rodents are unclean.  Libelous!  This, like so many other generally accepted “facts” of nature, is simply and utterly untrue.  Yes, house mice lack the public relations sense to go outside to defecate, which makes for an unsanitary addition to any silverware drawer.  Rats do sometimes host fleas that themselves carry diseases like Hanta virus and Bubonic plague, which on rare occasions is transmitted to what prove to be highly unfortunate people.  But let’s begin this conversation by giving the lil’ buggers their due: most if not all species of the fuzz bottomed, bucktoothed creatures – from miniscule predatory wolf mice to big-city Norwegian alley rats – can at the very minimum be counted on to be well washed.

One could even call it a grooming “fetish” that they exhibit.  Anyone who has ever raised a white or saddle-backed laboratory rat knows not only how incredibly affectionate they can be, but also how they are likely to be busy cleaning themselves any moment of the day or night that they’re not sleeping, eating, fighting or engaging in wild eyed carnal excess.  Every inch of fur gets regularly, obsessively licked and fluffed.  They can often be seen washing between their toes, and how many of us human types ever think to do that?  Mice are even more fanatic than rats, stopping whatever task they’ve been tending to in order to immediately clean off the slightest bit of sticky food that ever musses their well kept coat.  There was in fact a thankfully brief period in my early childhood when friends and family wondered if I might grow up to be an animal abuser… and all because of how much I enjoyed daubing a little bit of peanut butter on the bridge of my pet mouse Ebeneezer’s nose, laughing until the tears flowed as the poor little beasty performed multiple backward somersaults in its frantic attempts to lick it off.

My understanding of and continuing warm feelings for such nose wiggling rascals makes ending their lives for any reason difficult, let me tell you.  I get a jolt any time I hear a mouse trap go off in the night, picturing yet another personable Ebeneezer suffering a slamming wire bale, for having committed no greater crime than to seek a bit of spilled rice with which to fill its belly.  Be that as it may, I’m still not inclined to allow anything that much smaller than I am run roughshod over us.  As nuevo-aboriginal as I’ve become, I’m still civilized enough to find defecating in the kitchen – even odorless black mouse droppings – unacceptable and potentially punishable behavior.  And our very survival depended then as it does now on the able protection of our foodstuffs.  Just trying to do a better job of sealing up our old cabin wasn’t helping much, since it seems as if mice can squeeze through the eye of a needle.  Nor does it apparently matter if we left any tempting unswept crumbs behind or not, making me wonder if they came in for the company instead.  For the warmth.  The ambiance and fine music.  Or given how many utensils and decorations are still rearranged each night, perhaps they enter in part to stir things up like trouble-loving, fur-tailed Dennis the Menaces or palm sized rodent versions of the Navajo’s trickster coyote!

I first tried to make things easier on both myself and the mice by purchasing a high dollar “live trap” that promised painless “catch and release.”  The instructions said that you just wind it up and then every curious mouse who enters would be “gently spanked” into the cage.  Supposedly the squeaks from the first would then attract others until one had a cage full of them, ready to be released where they could either find a new home or at least be killed by snakes, owls and rival mouse gangsters instead of by soft-hearted me.  Sorry to say, we never got to test their claims about the squeaks drawing in more mice, since the only one that ever ventured into the darn thing was slapped so hard it didn’t have any squeak left in it.

Then there is the primary subjects of this story, the beer bellied Wood Rats or Pack Rats of the rural West, who while considerably cuter than their cappuccino-sipping urban cousins, can be even more of a proverbial pain in the rear.  Looking a lot like like hamsters, only with tall round ears and adorably huge black eyes, it becomes hard to reconcile their appearance with their problematic impacts.  One of the more infuriating of these impacts is the way they infiltrate outdoor sheds and storage areas, quickly filling them up with nesting materials as well as (in the Southwest at least) the painfully prickly cholla cactus joints that they drag home to feed on.  Whatever stored personal belongings of ours that they don’t chew and damage are still in danger of being urinated on, with rats in the arid regions conserving water by expelling an especially thick fluid.  This can harden into an amber varnish lasting in some cases 50,000 years or more, encasing middens of feces along with captured plants and even Native American artifacts.  An unexpected benefit of this process is the ancient pollen and plant matter stash, as well as a trove of well preserved archaeological evidence, providing the best known record of climate changes over the millennia, and increasing understanding of the effects such changes have on vegetation and livability.

Sheds can potentially be made rat proof, of course, even if not often totally mouse proof.  Far more felonious would seem to be rats’ habit of crawling into the impossible to seal engine compartments of parked vehicles, making nests that are only evident on the highway as they begin smoldering from the engine’s heat.  It is while nested under the hood that they famously chew the insulation off of expensive spark plug wires and other essential electrical components, either seeking to ingest some undetermined mineral or simply acting mischievously as a predictable result of some sort of clinically verifiable Bored Rat Syndrome.

My initial response once again was to set live traps, this time a peanut butter baited, falling door “Have-a Heart” type which did indeed harmlessly do its work of incarceration.  Having once spent time in a Juvenile detention center, I tend to feel considerable empathy for any caged being, one result being my checking the trap first thing when I got up each morning.  Almost without fail there would be a Pack Rat customer awaiting me there, neither cowering in the corner nor charging my fingers when I stuck them through the wire, but looking remarkably comfortable with its fate instead.  Each time my daughter would make sweet noises at it before carrying it a couple hundred yards away for a friendly release.  Always the inmate would appear unperturbed, unreasonably content, with the same engaging look and expressive breathing same rat time after time… a little too much the same, I finally began to realize.  Only after spray painting its rump was it finally confirmed, that we were indeed daily hosts to the same repeat diner, having returned for its accustomed night time snack.  And only after considerable experimentation did we realize just how developed the homing instincts of rats really are, requiring that they be taken a mile or more away.

It was after our resident Pack Rats had damaged our vehicles several times, and after they’d glued together the pages of our bird identification books with pee, that I finally opted to use deadly force.  Research turned up California recommendations that included Exclusion (good luck!), Toxicants such as Zinc Phosphide and Anticoagulants that cause internal hemorrhaging (no way!), Live Traps (see experience above!) and Deadly Traps.  With so few acceptable methods, I opted for both a series of primitive wire snares, and some vintage wood snapping models purchased at our local Jake’s Grocery Store.

What’s odd, was that while the snares worked fine, we didn’t hardly catch any rats in these snap traps designed for them.  And we ended up bringing to an end the lives of a number of mice even though the rat trap package claimed that they’d be too light weight to set off the stiff triggers.  A visiting friend of ours wondered aloud if it could actually be the work of the very pack rats we were hunting, however cute and inoffensive they might appear to be… tossing one protesting mouse after another into its metal jaws like Mayans pitching vested virgins into the mouth of a smoking volcano to placate a heathen rodent god.  But even if true, it would have to be pointed out they’d done so wearing their finest coats of fur, with every loose hair carefully removed, their faces spit polished and inexplicably smiling, with both the tossers and the tossed acting out their parts in the drama immaculately groomed.

Were such a fantasy the case, however, it would have more likely been the kitchen’s murderous human guardians that the rats sought were so determined to appease, wearing our blue jeans coated with canyon dirt, needing to be reminded to wash our hands before sitting down to a freshly snared rodent supper.

Part 2: Pack Rat Facts

What we call the Pack Rat is none other than the widely spread Wood Rat, any of a number of species of the family Cricetidae, order Rodentia, genus Neotoma.  We popularly refer to them as Pack Rats due to their penchant for collecting odd bits of material for their nests, especially anything shiny or brightly colored.  Others call them Trade Rats, for the way they often leave something behind when they steal something, such as removing an earring and leaving in its place an aluminum gum wrapper.  Such trades have nothing to do with comparative value, but are the result of a kind of rat Attention Deficit Disorder, in which one precious object is dropped and forgotten in favor of a new trophy.  22 species have been identified in Central and North America, from southernmost jungles and desert lowlands up into the Juniper/Piñon forests of Western mountains such as where our sanctuary and school nests, from the Pacific to the Atlantic Oceans and northwards to the most icy extremes of Canada, from below sea level to over 8,000 feet in elevation.

Pack Rats are a soft buff, gray or reddish brown, usually with white undersides and feet, with hairy or “bushy” tails.  The ones we live with average 9 inches in length including a generally 3.5” tail.  Adults weigh 3/4 of a pound or more.  They build nest up to 4 feet across at the base of cliffs or trees, using a combination branches, twigs and peeled juniper bark.   The cactus parts that are in some regions distributed around their nests, serve the added benefit of helping dissuade explorative rat predators like coyotes and foxes.  When they’re most vulnerable is when they are out foraging, at which point they can become a quick meal for any snake or canine, hawk or owl that comes upon them.  Essentially nocturnal, they leave their fortress nests after dark in order to feast on and collect the necessary amount of spiny cactus fronds and yucca pods, berries and bark, nuts and acorns, greenery and seeds.  They get their necessary amount of water directly from eating the cactus pads, being one of the few creatures able to navigate among a latticework of spines without damage to itself.

Relentless nocturnal voyagers, Pack Rats forage more or less constantly from sun down until sun up, moving back and forth through a limited range, covering the are in a veritable grid along well used, scent marked lines.  Because of this, predators who depend on them for sustenance are able to predict and intercept their meals, and pit vipers need only wait long enough alongside one of the well used rat routes.  It’s only a matter of time before the local stud comes scurrying by, on its own hunt for food and a warm furry body to hotly embrace.

The consequence of such insuppressible passions is an impressive reproductive rate, decreasing with population pressures but increasing in times of high juvenile mortality rates – up to 5 batches per year, with as many as 5 young per litter who will themselves be sexually productive within 60 days.  While some may remain mated for a breeding season, they are for the most part opportunistic, rodent libertines whose passionate drive ensures species survival regardless of the numbers that are hunted and killed… an evolutionarily healthy trait given how many are regularly munched by a large assortment of fur bearing and feather flapping carnivores.

Part 3: Rodents On The Menu: How to Catch & Cook Pack Rats

Wild animals are not the only predators of rodents.  Every species of Rodentia have been hunted and consumed by humans for as long as our kind have existed, and continue to be relished as a delicacy in over 100 countries today.  Farmed Guinea Pigs in South America.  Tasty 40 pound beavers from New Mexico to Alaska.  8 pound water rats in Southeast Asia.  Tree Squirrels in the Southeast.  It is perhaps Squirrels that we should be thinking of when we consider the possible place of their rat cousins on our plates, not as alley vermin but as clean and harvestable protein sources so darling they are hard to kill, as flavorful entrees potentially on par with seasoned Georgia Squirrel Stew.

As much prestige as the successful hunter of large game like deer and elk would have gained in primitive tribes, the majority of the animal protein in indigenous diets came from small game.  This was true in part because they are more plentiful, and part because they are simply easier to catch.  This was certainly the fact for the Mogollon pit-house dwellers, the first peoples to settle in the Gila bioregion where Anima School and Sanctuary sits.  Based on the bone remnants found near the underground living quarters, their primary meat sources were Wild Turkeys that they captured and partially domesticated, and Cottontail Rabbits, Ground Squirrels and (yes!) Pack Rats that the women and children may have had the job of snaring.

Snaring remains, along with the box trap, one of the most effective ways of harvesting.  Unlike the box trap, the snare ensnarls, hurts and often kills before the hunter ever comes up the animal.  This is a reason for faithfully checking what are called the snare “sets” every morning early, so that no creature has to suffer in anguish long, and so that no meat is left long enough to spoil.  Once constructed of twisted plant fibers, today’s trappers more often use either fishing line or piano wire that is heavy enough to hold whatever the desired prey, while thin enough to be passed off as natural plant matter by the approaching game.  A small loop is tied at one end, and then the length of line, wire or cordage is run through the loop, forming a larger loop that – depending on how high it’s positioned – the animal is intended to either step into or be caught by the neck by.  The snare is placed in a strategic spot on a known trail, attached to a stake, root or limb at the other end so that the quarry is held fast.  In the case of PackRats, the cordage or filament is set at a spot where their trail is narrowed by foliage on both sides, preferably where overhanging brush forms a restrictive tunnel.  No bait is needed for consistent catches with a well considered trail set.

Box traps are another effective method, sometimes involving a heavy wood box resting on a Figure-4 stick trigger, but more often these days featuring the afore mentioned metal screen traps with doors on one or both sides poised to fall when a bait tray inside is depressed.  Any vegetable matter with an odor will usually bring them in, from fruit slices to a drop of anise oil on a piece of bread.  Most common, however, is the application of what is peanut butter apparently as irresistible to rodents as it usually is to children.

Unless being released live miles from the site, the trapped animal must be quickly dispatched, preferably by a fast twist of the neck or a sharp blow to the head, the intent being to promptly put them out of pain.  Anyone concerned about carrier fleas should use long gloves.  Then for the sake of the best tasting meat, the rat needs to be immediately skinned, gutted and washed, the object being not only to remove bitter fluids but to allow the flesh to quickly cool down.  The strong “gamey” taste of any wild meat is most often the result of adrenaline caused by it being tormented, or else not being quickly enough dressed and cleaned.  To dress the rat, a slit is made just beneath the skin from the chest to the groin, the paunch carefully emptied so as not to spill the contents, and the skin worked off the body the way you might remove a coat.  It can then be cut up into pieces or stretched whole onto a spit for open fire grilling.  Native Americans sometimes pounded the entire animal, bones, organs and all into a mush they’d sometimes combine with nuts and berries, getting more needed fat, vitamins and minerals that way, but for those transitioning into a primal diet or lifestyle the gutted method may be preferred.  Tasting a lot like rabbit and providing several ounces of meat, the only problem with Pack Rat is how tough it can be.  The remaining key to a delicious rodent meal is to either braze the meat for a very short period of time on very high heat, sealing in the juices, or else slow cooked in seasoned water and made into a gravy.  Pressure canning is another way of tenderizing, while simultaneously preserving the food for future consumption.

For some, adding Pack Rats to their diet would be a matter of overcoming a culturally impressed revulsion, either against eating rodents or against killing any animal.  For others, the stretch is to take the life of what appears to them unsettling sweet and cute.  In each case, what is needed is a shift in perception in which we learn to see ourselves as essentially inseparable from what we consume, and each plant and creature inseparable from the land that contains and feeds it.  In this way of looking at the world, there is no one who escapes causing harm, nor anyone not meant to bring benefit to others.  We are all culpable equal to how aware we are, but also deserving of and able to best enjoy the blessings and rewards.

The most healthy diet for humans is one that closely parallels what we evolved eating for however many years of our development, a vast stretch of time with almost none of the high carbohydrate intake associated with the processed grains and corn syrup additives of the so called civilized diet, common in only the last 50 to 100 years, feasting on a large percentage of fresh plants with a smaller amount of fresh wild meat.  Taking that animal protein from low on the food chain is generally a wise move ecologically, is most sustainable for a large groups of people due to the animals’ numbers, and involves the least effort for the greatest chance of success.  By foraging small game or even insects for each day’s meals, preserving meat from spoilage becomes a non-issue, and greatly lessens concerns about getting sick from related bacterial infections.

Whether farmers with their own lush gardens and grass fed cattle or urban dwellers seeking a sense of self sufficiency and empowerment, the at least occasional trapping or hunting of small animals gives us an honest sense of being a responsible link in the food chain, of being more able to survive in the event of a collapse of the current economic system and government control and aid, and of being a capable part of the natural world we all in one way or another draw our nutrition from, and owe our lives to.  To have taken the life of another being, even or especially one that we honor and love, feels a necessary wake up call and moment of responsibility and communion for anyone who ever eats meat from a package.  And it feels like opportunity for unapologetic union for everyone, with the natural cycles of the eater and eaten, heeding in the blood and flesh a call to not only wildness but wholeness, and not only what we are given but to what we in turn have to give.

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No Going Back: Viking Ships & Half-Hearted Swings

by Jesse Wolf Hardin (www.animacenter.org)

Wildness is ultra-expressive kids, unbowed women and unpaved nature, the irrepressible dandelion and the pet-scaring coyotes skulking within the city walls.  It is also a state where our needs take precedence over custom and schedule, where we are self defined rather than defined by other’s expectations… where we respond to our instincts and hearts, act to realize our hopes, live our wildest dreams.

While I didn’t think of it as such at the time, traipsing to New Mexico with hardly even the price of gas was surely a wild thing for me to do, a rejection of not only the normal, safe way of doing things but of the mindset that there is anything in the world an impassioned body cannot accomplish with the right balance of impassioned effort or inexplicable miracle or magic.  It was this that I drove my school bus camper home onto the land that became the Animá Sanctuary, across the fabled seven river crossings from a road and into what had once been a Mogollon Indian ceremonial center.  It was wildly unreasonable but true to heart for me to cover the earnest money required for my very earnest offer, by selling both my motorcycle and the engine out of our bus — the absolutely only other transportation that we had.

Years later I read about how ancient Viking warriors had disembarked on a raid of and English or other enclave, only to find themselves confronted by a much larger contingent of defenders.  The chiefs would on occasion set fire to their own ships’ sails rather than order a retreat, thereby ensuring that their men would give their all, guaranteeing there would be no “half-hearted swings.”  By then I had covered the bus with wooden cabin sides and trimmed it with a river-gazing porch, dressing if not totally concealing the metal form that had been both vehicle and home.  On the front I attached, for the general benefit of sentiment, history, my own gratification, and the curiosity of any guest to actually notice – a metal plaque embossed with an image of the Viking’s iconic shield-strapped vessel.  It is a reminder of the importance of taking risks in order to fully live the adventure of our life and purpose, whether that means selling everything to buy land, or renting a studio to teach dance, or writing blogs publicly telling the truth and struggle of your growth for the first time.  Daring to wildly stretch, grow, love and manifest, savor and celebrate

By the way, originally the word “viking” was a verb not a noun, and certainly not yet the generic term for a group of diverse and far flung Nordic tribes.  It was a verb, a word denoting action… meaning not to raid or plunder, but simply (and boldly) to venture.

To read a full detailed history of the founding and development of the Animá Center & Sanctuary, please go to the Archives list on the left side of this page and click on the Animá History heading under Teachings & Practice.  Thank you.

(Share this with others, as you like)

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Today we’re posting Part 6 of Wolf’s seminal ReWilding essay, the conclusion of what we hope has been a revealing and inspiring read.  The material will be broken up and expanded for both the upcoming book, and the now developing ReWilding Correspondence Course with its related questions and assignments.  Those of you who have enjoyed this series – and some who have yet to read it – may find the following sample of Course questions interesting… a Reader Survey that can be a very useful tool for self exploration.  We encourage you to post your considered responses to the questions here, by going to the actual page and clicking on the Comments button.  If you find you are served by this process, you may want to consider applying for in a ReWilding, Medicine Woman, Path of Heart or Shaman Path course: student-application-form.doc  We wish you a wild and wonderful week!    -Kiva

ReWilding Self-Exploration: A Reader Survey

by Jesse Wolf Hardin (www.animacenter.org)
1.    What connotations did the word “wild” hold for you before reading this piece, and what does it mean to you now?
2.    In what ways does the wildness in you and around you frighten or threaten you, and in what ways does it feed, nourish, fuel, excite, embolden or deepen?
3.    In what ways do you allow the wildness of nature to inform and invigorate you?
4.    What characteristics or qualities of wild nature (such as alertness, self knowledge and self respect, authenticity, refusal to be caged or controlled, vigor, sensuality, eroticism, creativity,  balance etc.) do you sense and value in yourself?  In what ways are you able to express, utilize, maximize these qualities and traits in your daily life and interactions?
5.    When have you felt most wildly present, and what were the effects on you as well as on what you were doing?
6.    When has logic failed you most?  Describe how “being reasonable” has at times compromised your truth, spirit, needs and purpose.
7.    Describe any situations in which you may have perceived, evaluated and responded out of your wilder mind (such as wordless intuition, the throwing off of preconception or dogma, self authority, unbidden visions or unexpected creativity), and what the results, benefits and other consequences might have been.
8.    Describe your wildest vision of yourself, your ideal way to be, and what you might do if you were without obligation or restraint.
9.    Talk about how comfortable you are or are not in your own body.  Describe what makes you feel more at home there, as well as what causes you to feel embodied and happy with yourself.
10.    Describe how any bodily needs have affected you, whether discomforting or pleasing.  What is your relationship to your wild, unrepressed bodily self?
11.    Describe your sensual engagement with the world, with both what you find rewarding and what you find unpleasant.  To what do your senses awaken you?  What are the challenges that come with intensely sensing?
12.    What causes your senses to open up?  What seems to trigger your shutting them off?
13.    Describe what you do, or are you willing to commit to doing soon, in order to reward your senses (such as asking a lover wash your hair, savoring flavors or scents, indulging in the feel of silk on the skin, the sun coming through the window, the touch of a stimulating wind…)?
14.    Describe the ways in which your relationships are wild, free, conscious, discerning, responsive and fully expressed… and the ways in which they are not.  Explain the results of both.
15.    In what ways do you personally encourage a wilder society and economy (affinity groups, teaching, entertainment that motivates more than entertains, libertarian or bioregional politics, social or ecological activism, crafts, barter, community gardens, mending instead of buying and so forth)?
16.    What is the difference between obligation and response-ability?
17.    To what do you owe allegiance, and in what order of priority (government, spirit, earth, your self, beliefs etc.)?
18.    What conditions, situations or unhealthy patterns of your own have most contributed to stripping away your belief in your own authority, and what kinds of experiences have shown you the importance and value of answering to yourself first and foremost?
19.    Describe how insulating comfort, placation, avoidance, denial and distraction, habit and preconception have held you back from taking a further wild leap – taking risks to make changes in your world, awakening and tuning into your senses, meeting your untended natural needs, embracing the adventure of growth and the challenges of meaningful purpose?
20.    List at least 10 things that you are willing to commit to doing in the immediate future to rewild, reawaken, reconfigure, repair, restore, fully realize and pleasurably reward your self and your daily life (anything from pledging to not talk while eating so you can more intensely taste your food, to expressing your sexuality, taking lingering candle lit baths, reconsidering your job or your relationship, following what you thought was an impossible dream, refusing to be told what do do when your heart and instincts know better, getting out into nature a certain number of times per week or initiating a plan to find and then move to a place that frees your spirit and fuels your vision and purpose).

(Wild Strawberry photo (c) 2008 by Jesse Wolf Hardin)

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“Rewilding,” a term coined by Animá Center’s Jesse Wolf Hardin in 1976,  first saw print in in 1986 in the following serialized essay.  As a result, Wolf was assigned to write the Rewilding entry on page 1383, Vol. 2 of The Encyclopedia of Religion & Nature (Thoemmes Continuum, 2005).  Given the current economic and social conditions, this way of being and living is more crucial and urgent than ever.  I encourage you to forward this 6 part series to others, by clicking on the “Share This Post” button below.  Blessings.      -Kiva Rose

 The Rewilding Part 6:   Wild Leap

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

“Even so, the spirit voices are singing,
their thoughts are dancing in the dirty air.
Their feet touch the cement, the asphalt
delighting, still they weave dreams upon our
shadowed skulls, if we could listen.
If we could hear.
Let’s go then, Let’s find them. Let’s
listen for the water, the careful gleaming drops
that glisten on the leaves, the flowers. let’s dance
the dance of feathers, the dance of birds..”

-Paula Gunn Allen

One Fall I spent long hours at the base of the volcanic cliffs near our canyon home.  Rising some 300 feet from the river’s edge, they look like the stilled froth of a once liquid mountain, of igneous flows that so long ago gulped and pulsed in glowing molten delight.  They’re home to a clan of cliff swallows, amazing birds that create plaster nests out of spit and dirt, gluing them sixty feet or more up the sheer face of the rock.  I was bemused by the antics of the baby swallows inside them, chirping away for all they are worth while the mothers soared in aerial displays or charmed them with bits of food from their mouths.  Some of the nests were built flush to the rock, while others hung down like clay baskets in the wind.

The young swallows, wildly flapping their spindly wings, would rush around their nests in preparation for that fateful first flight.  Of course, running in circles can hardly be construed as training in the fine art of flying.  What they were actually doing was developing “a case of attitude,” getting up the necessary “chutzpah” to do the seemingly impossible.  So high up from the ground, the test was “pass or fail,” with no room for incomplete gestures or subsequent regrets.  Time and again I was startled by their mad dashes to the edge.  One by one they would get up the nerve and take off into the unforgiving skies, bobbing around clumsily before catching feel of their wings and soaring away.

Every one, that is, except for the tiniest one of all.

In my life I’ve consistently championed the small kids on the playground and the runts of the litter.  And I’ve been known to take risks in behalf of the littlest of the little guys: the beaten and extirpated members of other species.  So naturally my sympathies went out to this last of the feathered siblings, as I cheered-on with all my heart its numerous attempts at takeoff.  Again and again it would run out to the lip of its nest, but always caving in at the final second as if crippled by some unconquerable sense of self-doubt.  I knew that it couldn’t remain in the warm confines of its abode forever.  Sooner or later the mother swallow would cease to bring food to its hesitant offspring, and the familiar and once safe nest would ultimately serve as the agent of its demise.

Time after time it would bravely scurry forward, only to fall back again.  On its fateful final try it ran all the way up on the edge, before wildly flapping its wings in an eerie attempt to regain its balance.  Only this time, the little bird had come too far to turn back, and my heart seemed to stop as the bird’s momentum carried it over the side.  I watched helplessly for what seemed like an eternity, the bird dropping in slowly expanding circles before finally landing with a pronounced and pitiful “thud” on the flesh-toned rocks at my feet.

A few days later, I left my precious home for yet another series of talks and workshops, doing my best to be worthy of the source and reservoir of my life’s inspiration.  I remained troubled, however.  What lesson could there possibly be in this failure of the “little guy,” the seemingly meaningless death of that precious baby swallow?  What message could there be that might sustain me on my trip away, or help inspire the crowds of people who would be gathered to hear what I had to say?

The answer came at last, flowing clear and purposeful like the sweet-medicine river itself:  Sometimes the only difference between falling – and flying — is hesitation!

I share this tale now because like that nest of cliff swallows, both our society and we personally may be at a crux, a pivotal juncture upon which ours and the greater human future depends.  Certainly those myriad social forms based on denial of the abyss or most resistant to change, are the most likely to fall.  And one by one, we may come to recognize the ways in which we are ourselves increasingly teetering on a precarious edge, where moving boldly forward into the unknown is terrifying, but where denial or hesitation could cost us our lives.  On the other hand, awaiting our fateful leap is a wilder way-of-being as meaningful and deep as the canyon, as expansive as the beckoning sky.

In the Animá tradition, we teach that every moment is a decisive moment, not just those key times in our lives considered major crossroads like choosing a career path, or determining whether or not to stay in an unsupportive marriage.  When we are fully embodied, sentient and conscious, every minute is purposeful, and nearly every act deliberate.  This includes where we choose to be or who we choose to be around, and how we will act in every situation.  Even resting in a hammock is a purposeful act, undertaken for rest and nourishment, for the pleasurable sensation of swaying in the breeze or the nap that will give us strength for the day’s remaining tasks… rather than our unwillingly collapsing onto a couch when we can go no further,  and feeling vaguely guilty for lying down.

That said, there are some decisive moments with far more significance or far greater harmful or beneficial consequences.  Certainly, that would include how we respond in times of pronounced danger, when another driver suddenly swerves into your lane, a boyfriend starts to get abusive, or a fire is spreading through the house.  So too, the healthy decision to leave that boyfriend, to change a university major or face the costs of quitting school in order to pursue a life as a farmer or a father, a musician or person with a mission.  And to get out of a figurative “bad relationship” with those perceptions and systems known to be ultimately abusive to ourselves or the people and planet that we love.

For increasing numbers of our kind these days, the developing global ecological and economic situation is not only amply threatening to provoke reconsideration of every practical aspect of our existence, from the ways we make money to the size and kinds of vehicles we drive… but also can lead us to the question of what matters most in life.  The size of the closets or age of our clothes can seem so important in times of assured income, but as soon as that income stream slackens, keeping usable rubber on the family’s only car and glasses for the children’s eyes quickly become the priority.  And if that income stops altogether, the only thing that may feel truly relevant anymore is the securing of a steady supply of food for the plate.

The progressive malfunctioning of 21st Century economic and social systems is and will continue to be a cause of pain that we would never wish on anybody… and yet like nearly all things it brings with it lessons, benefits and blessings.  So long as there seemed to be a surplus of gas, raw materials, credit and funds, there was scant likelihood of a majority making any substantive changes in the way or the amount they consumed, to take into account the effects of their personal lifestyle and political acquiescence on those in other regions of the country and world, on the diminishing wild salmon that we love to eat, on the air we breathe and the aquifers that we drink from.  Only when necessary or desired items become unavailable or too expensive to afford, does there seem to be sufficient impetus to maintain, mend and adapt what we already have, or to weigh the convenience of disposable products against durability of goods manufactured to last.  And only when the usual means for comfort, placation, avoidance and distraction begin to fail – when all pretense of a safety net disappears – are most of us sufficiently both alerted and disrupted to abandon ill-serving habits and props, to question that rules and laws that bind us, to explore new directions in thinking or ways of doing… or to assess our real needs and plumb our dreams, then seek for once to fulfill them.

And so it would seem to be for society as a whole, generally driven to change only through necessity, the bloodied as well the bloodless revolutions, the overturning of regulations and unleashing of initiative, the thinking outside of the box and consideration of innovation, the creation of intimate alliances as well as the empowering of the individual, the purging reassessment of long vaulted values and beliefs, the trauma of collapse and possibilities that attend every new beginning.  We and the society we have partnered with, now seem perched precariously on the crumbling lip of that young swallow’s daunting abyss, charged with collectively choosing between flying forward bravely and enthusiastically into the unknown, or else continuing to cling to habitual but ever more brittle and undependable structures instead.

“Again you say, why do you not become civilized? We do not want your civilization!”
-Crazy Horse

It’s important to understand that abusive systems and personal disempowerment are not social aberrations that a benign evolving civilization seeks to rectify, but are in actuality some of the more unpalatable defining characteristics of a civilized paradigm as resistant as concrete to change.  Indeed in the end, adamant liberty and quiet servitude, personal wildness and de-naturing domestication are not a dichotomy to be solved but a decision to be made.

Everyone, at some point in their lives, makes a deliberate if subconscious choice whether or not to desensitize, to live confined by propriety, temerity and schedule, or to subject ourselves to the unreassuring but surprising possibilities of our natural selves.  To fit in rather than be outstanding.  To acquiesce to outside powers in order to avoid the demands of responsibility, or else to act like and insist on the rights of a truly free person.  And all too many of us have traded responsive, sensate and celebratory human wildness for the perceived comforts and distractions of the modernist, global technoindustrial paradigm that is even now defaulting on its inflated promises to us.

Which way we decide on, and whether or not we ever change our minds, depends on our criteria… and criteria is always determined by what we find most valuable.  When all the support systems seem in place and the paychecks are coming in time, we may ask if a thing is “easy, legal, bankable, acceptable or fashionable.”  When times are shaky, we are more likely to ask “Is it edible, practicable, salable or tradable?,” and “Is it safe, predictable, repeatable, comforting, reassuring?”  Under either of these circumstance, a rewilded person or willful child is just as likely to wonder “Does it taste right? Does it sing, laugh, resonate?  Is it free, beautifully and gracefully embodying its own nature?  Is it real, authentic, intensely itself?  Does it feed and fan, or deaden and dilute our spirit? Does it excite our potential, or cramp our personal expression and style?”  And “Can you dance to it?”

Choosing the illusory security of conformity and handing over power to vested authorities can in fact be terribly perilous, making us victims of or subject to events rather than co-creators of our world and our reality.  But committing to wildness, individual expression and personal responsibility can be just as scary.  Discovering one truth about our authentic selves or the conspiratorial workings of political and economic systems, can call into question the credibility and intentions of every other aspect.  Beginning with recognition of our unmet inner needs or the exposure of a banker’s or president’s lie, we may shift our perception enough that all kinds of inconsistencies and injustices can then be seen… and at that point we may find that the entire set of “facts” and assumptions our very lives have been based on are actually crumbling beneath us.

There are more reasons to be concerned than simple disorientation or existential alienation.  The wild man/woman inside you may spook your friends, walk off the job to become an artist or soothsayer or happy-go-lucky vagrant.  He or he may make decisions internally, only in the moment and from the gut, without a thought for future dilemmas or past foibles.  Laugh too loud in a social situation.  Tell it like it is even at the risk of discomforting others, or demonstrate untimely or inappropriate desires.  They are apt to eat with their hands at times, luxuriating in the feel as well as the smell and taste and cha-cha of colors in the bowl, and to innocently expose adult duplicity by telling the truth like a child.  They can be genuine and candid at great cost to career, relationships and social standing.  Such wildness can admittedly result in a misdemeanor ticket for frolicking in the downtown fountain, or cause us to respond to a Summer breeze by running barefoot in the grass.

The rewilded people I know are  inevitably impatient with packaging, and intolerant of closed spaces.  They may get testy if placed in a room without windows, and tend to climb trees at any age.  They love dirt, and yet spend an inordinate amount of time in a bathtub.  They defy stereotypes and demand attention.  They can be the loudest and the quietest, either gregarious or solitude seeking, or both silly and wise.  They have been heard to purr or growl when they make love and bite in bed, to readily rise to defend their loved ones and indulge in every creative medium.  In fact, they are mediums, venturing between the magical realms that exist simultaneously on this plane.  They find it easy to say “no!”, while the rest of the time they may radiate “yes!” to experience, chance and possibility.  I’ve seen them take pleasure in their aging as well as in their persistent childishness, in the passage of the seasons as well as the blooming of every flower.  They’ve learned or are learning to be comfortable with their shape and scent, their most natural weight and bodily processes, and even the most easily aggravated among them seem excited to open their eyes each new day.  They are thoroughly themselves most of the time, resulting in their often becoming either self employed or communal, entertainers or loners, group leaders or expatriates.  They can be fiercely self disciplined, but never respond well to discipline and manipulation from others.  They’re most likely uncertified and unofficial, are both understood less and paid less than other people in their situation, and might be either unreasonably suspect or exceptionally loved.  They may or may not yet describe themselves as wild, yet they have broken the spell of domestication and learned to trust their feelings and instincts, have refused to continue being victims or bystanders and become participants again, have turned to their own values and knowings for authority and chosen to risk pain or censure in order to greater experience life’s adventure, beauty and pleasure.

The rewilded among us may be hard working but they don’t usually have a career.  What they hold is a purpose, with their jobs being either an extension of that purpose or simply a means to fund their larger mission in life.  They are sometimes street people, hunting and gathering in dumpster laden lots, or preaching their atypical sermons to the ranks of nonbelievers marching down the sidewalks to their high-rise offices.  Over-managed kids who managed to run away.  Disgruntled professors who quit their positions to become organic farmers and rock and roll drummers.  Anarchistic primitivists and unrepentant outlaws.  But they are just as likely to be rule-bucking preschool teachers trying to give their students something more than the stock curricula, like a belief in their personal vision and confidence in their power.  Radical scientists escaping harmful preconceptions and overturning entrenched, institutionalized ideas.  Patriots or liberators.  Conservationists and activists, caring counselors and crucial community healers.

For all the difficulties of rewilding in this age of perverse denaturing – of reclaiming freedom and self reliance in an era of control, surviving and thriving through the dissolution of so much that we once counted on – it is nonetheless a choice and transition providing immediate rewards.  For the rewilded, every wonderful or telltale smell is discerned, and not a single shapely cloud passes unnoticed.  Sex becomes more present and wholly expressed, the kiss lingers, the hug can be an end to itself.  Colors appear more alive, meals more flavorful.  Acts become more spontaneous, heartful commitments and relevant relationships more satisfying.  And immediately, the rewilded are better equipped to respond in the moment to shifting conditions.  To make their own right decisions free of supervision, and take pride in themselves without needing anyone else’s recognition, approval or applause.  To grow their innate abilities and maximize their situational effectiveness.  To distinguish official lies and discern hidden realities, protect and defend themselves from expected and unexpected threats, uncover a bounty in times of scarcity, dance even in the absence of music, and yet hear music in everything.

Of course, knowing and even being able to describe the magic of the world is not enough to guarantee that we always engage it.  An ecophilosopher friend of mine talks about being motivated by a sense of loss due to the destruction of the natural world.  But seeing him discoursing here in this powerful canyon where I live, without adequately sensing and interacting with the unique energies of the place, made me believe his sense of loss stems as much from being caught up in his head while the wildness he writes about is calling him outside.  Wisdom is not a matter of how much we know or how well we evoke, but the depth and quality of our conscious interaction.  Just as the richest are not those who own the most things, but those who most learn from, utilize, savor and celebrate what they have.  Not the person with the fullest pantry, but those who most fully taste what they’ve got.  Life presents all its flavors only to the embodied, present and wild… only to those who dare to fully notice, feel, engage, open to and receive the palpable gifts of this world.

So often, what it takes to get us fully in our bodies and conscious beings is a personal life crisis, a combination of failed jobs and marriages, an emotional response such as professionals once called a “nervous breakdown.”  Real engagement and change usually comes with the desperate reappraisal of coveted norms, when an author’s books flop more likely than when they are selling well, or when a revealing of hypocrisy undermines lifelong prescriptive dogma.  So it is with cultural, economic and political paradigms, that seem to go on endlessly until the fundamental underlying principals and promises collapse.  The chance for a new sustainable human society is made possible and more likely due to the widespread bank failures and resulting global recession, heightened insecurity and challenge… the societal equivalent of the traumatic personal breakdown.  We may or may not be entering what the Mayan and Hopi prophecies refer to as a time of “cleansing,” paying the price for our separation and denial as forewarned by the Kogi gate keepers.  But the current disruptive conditions are at the very least an opportunity for our remembering and reclaiming, restoring, re-visioning, reshaping and rewilding of self, society and place unparalleled in modern human history.

The jump we are called to make is frightening, but no more so the ultimately deadening effects of continued recalcitrance and flailing hesitation.  Besides, it is our calling to attempt the impossible!  And it is time to expect a miracle, even as we continue diligently working to influence the direction of change.  If we are to believe in magic, in our fairy tale of a more empowered, natural self and liberatory world, then we must also believe in happy endings.  Ours is the shared wild covenant, together reaping the whirlwind of heightened awakeness and sensation, responsibility and purpose… determining what in our lives and our society to let go of and which to keep, as we each take that wild leap.

——————

(Animá Cliffs photo (c)2008 by Jesse Wolf Hardin)

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