Book Review: We Are One

I have spent much time in the wild in my lifetime. Many times growing up it was the only place I found peace or solace. I have walked in wild forests during camping much to the dismay of my illogical minded parents, when I was young. I've also gone on hikes through unkempt farmland. I have one simple sentence to sum up this vivid feeling "We Are One." Between the ways my soul felt and the way the stream, land and animal speaks each in its own voice.

My ever increasing fondness for nature started at a very young age, when as a toddler I would take off from my parents or run out of the house the moment their back was turned and sneak off into what I felt was more of my home. I can remember being but two or three and taking off on the beach or a park, into the bushes rather than the swings or where other kids were playing.

We belonged to a campers association back then called Happy Trails. Since my step mother was paralyzed we got a nearly free membership. I remember taking off from time to time, to the utter horror. Thus in this way I got into all kinds of trouble when I was just five years old. My only worry was the time I got into poison oak, apparently I am deathly allergic. My body swelled up and cut off my air supply. They rushed me to the hospital to receive injections that would save my life.

I believe that's where the magic of plants first touched me. At that point I became obsessed with the names and details of wild plants as well as the anti-poison counterparts to poison wild plants. As if knowing their magic I could become a priestess of sorts to all things wild.

Then as I grew older I could be found in the wildest parts of the family garden eating insects and anything I could stuff in my mouth. Rather than ask for soda or candy I would gorge myself on parsley or even grass. Rose petals and ants were among my daily parental scares.

Tree climbing came as a force of habit rather than choice. I knew the names of insect and animals before I could speak sentences. I remember when we moved to Gilroy, we had two acres of hillsides. On top of one of the hills was the foundation of a house long since out of remembrance, my sister took me to this place a few times, as she would often hike up that hill. It overlooked the San Joaquin Valley under a haze of bright sunset and veil of majesty.

I could commune at that home with monarch caterpillars and hummingbird parents. The crabapple tree was my canopy when I cried for she listened without a scolding voice. And the pepper willow was a good place to hide when my childish endeavors were met with reproof not mild.

Later on my memories were from the house we owned in Fresno and what little wild was there. I remember with vivid life the old walnut orchard I sometimes ran to when I was once again needing peace from my busy and ever increasingly consumerized family.

That walnut orchard was later cut down to make way for houses and became a large sandlot with scorching heat I hated. Later I came to realize that this symbolized my hatred of subsidized housing and urbanization of my wild frontier.

I also remember with fondness our family fishing trips to the ponds that fed irrigation ditches and our yearly trips to my dads' bosses' campgrounds. It was a nearly wild place called "Fish Camp" up on highway 49 in California. A few cabins were recently put up there when we started camping there. Evidently to accommodate the less wild crowds who wished to experience this passage of time we left behind.

I remember such trips to the ponds, to Fish Camp, and to Pine Flat Dam. I would often take off to explore trees and other un-human-touched crevices. Or if we were swimming I would see how deep or far I could go just to experience this natural peace nature extends to those who listen to her.

It was my dads' bosses' wife who introduced me to veganism at 14. Which seems to be another turning point in my life, since my parents were nearly meat eaters, and the thought of meat eating being essentially the destruction of animal life, it had never occurred to me that being a vegan or vegetarian could be a simpler way to live. I took home lichens on one of those trips and found another magic in growing them at home. As well as developing a taste for pine nuts and wild greens in the same time period.

Later on we moved to Marysville where I substituted what little wild I could get at the parks for the deep cravings my soul starved for. Finally we settled in Live Oak out side the city limits. But the wild here was limited. I resorted to backyard climbs into trees, especially an old olive tree whom I was especially fond of.
I also began doing exploring into the abandoned orchards that surrounded us, and then on those increasingly rare trips to fishing or swimming holes and rarer still camping trips. On such rare occasions I would sneak off to explore snakes and frogs and fish. Or to examine a spider as large as a half dollar work on its web. The spider would eye me with contempt at first as if I was there to destroy its hard work, but after a few hours we would almost be on speaking terms had we not such a language barrier.

Snakes and lizards soon learned that in early mornings I was a warm and safe highpoint upon which they could sunbath, or, on bored days, explore without reproof. Birds soon fluttered about my presence with willing cooperation and freeness that we could discuss the weather and harvest in chirps and whistle, and get the latest gossip on natures' news. It seemed to me then that this was how our ancestors lived, and learned to survive, the Eskimos and Native Americans, before white man came with his ideas of mankind's superiority. Back when they knew the language of wolves, and could listen to their barks and howls as we today listen to radio news.

After several moves in late adult hood I finally moved to a place that bordered a wildlife refuge and although I was there but a few months I enjoyed every second I had to spare. I spent my spare time out in that wild sometimes alone and sometimes with my Dog Andrea. We would eat wild things or just breath in the stillness of what little wild we could breathe in. Other times I would drive and drive till I felt I was partway past all the people and things that were stressful and unnatural.

One day on a berry picking hike I remember startling a snake among blackberry briars. Although it was well protected among the thicket it still raced to safety of a hidden hole some where. I watched it move away in such stealthy metallic sound and realized that it was a rattle snake as big around as my arm and four or five feet long. I followed its path along the edge of the berries until it disappeared into a deep hole. All at once I had this sense that I wasn't the only being that could fear for its life.

The idea that such a deadly being was as afraid of me as I was of it made me realize how precious life was among this bustle of society. It was as if we were on an individual level and knew that life depended on this unspoken arrangement. An arrangement of "I won't harm you if you don't harm me" the golden rule that human society disregards in its quest for individualism. We forget sometimes that without each human being there we wouldn't be individuals. We also forget that others have needs just as we do and destroying these needs destroys just a little bit of ourselves at the same time.

Now living here in Chico and going to college I feel lonesome for my real home. Sometimes I think back to the time I scared my parents when I would swim out one, two or three miles into the ocean when their backs were turned and the water was just above 50 degrees. Just so I could explore under those mighty waves and watch flounder's dash and starfish sunbath on the sandy floor.

Sometime I close my eyes and take myself back to the times I free floated on those waves until they carried me back in, or I would dash into them with all the glee I could imagine dolphins mustered when they played on those large waves. Sometimes every now and then I get sea sick just as most people get homesick, and miss that wholeness I imagine people express when they see a cathedral or hear hymns sung.

All I know is that as soon as I can afford a vehicle of sorts I will be able to return to my forest friends. Then will be spending my free time once again in what people call wild. Quiet stillness will then rejuvenate my spirit and creativity of it will once again soar. But never once in my whole life have I ever regretted this oneness or commune of sorts.

As my busy life takes a turn into being educated in a consumerist society I will always feel that compared to nature it's an artificial life at best. It's like eating hamburgers in a can compared to a salad of wild greens and fresh berries rinsed in a cold clear stream.