Featured Story April 2007
Derrick Jensen and Jesse Wolf Hardin
Derrick Jensen and Jesse Wolf Hardin are more than environmentalists; more than writers who fill pages with idyllic words of a more hopeful and beautiful future. They are men rooted in a deeper understanding of the complexity of today's world, in all its bountiful glory and power-driven ugliness. Through their writings, speeches, and actions, they force us to abandon complacency, to face head on the problems that threaten the livelihood of our communities, our schools, our children and most importantly, our beautiful Earth. Jensen is the author of numerous books that
challenge the very structure of our often destructive and conformist culture; Hardin is the protector, lover and teacher of the enchanted Anim· Center and Sanctuary. Together these men remind us of the importance of unremitting activism, of courage and conviction, of devotion and adoration, but most of all, right intention. Join us as they explore some of our day's most pressing questions from the Anim· Center in Reserve, New Mexico.Derrick Jensen: You've written: "To become native again is not to emulate Native American or other past or existing cultures, but instead to recall and relearn our own connection to, and responsibilities to the regions where we presently reside." What does that mean?
Jesse Wolf Hardin: We're native to the degree that we enter into reciprocal relationship with the living land we're each an integral part of. To the degree that we are not only in love with—but loyal to—the place that supports, nourishes, sustains, informs and inspires us. And it is to give back: our full sentient presence and artful acknowledgement, our protection, and affection. Repaying the gifts of food, home and wisdom with personal activism and heartfelt prayer, with restoration and celebration. With our fullest living of life, while we're alive ... and with our bodies when we die.
Being indigenous doesn't necessarily require we be members of some established culture, or even have a history in a place. What is essential is that we be open to the directives of the ecosystem. That we become conscious of its needs and troubles, character and flavor, integrity and health; conscious of the essence and spirit of place.
DJ: Let's back up. It seems before we can talk about inhabiting a place, we need to talk about home. What is home?
JH: To "lose our place" is to lose our way home. Home is the heart, in deep relationship with the land. It is the place that calls us most insistently, instructs us loudest and best. The place we inevitably miss when we leave, the partner to our pain, and reason for our joy. Home is not only where you want to live, but how you want to live, and the place you want to be when death finally claims you.
Let me put it this way: the source of all psychological, social and environmental disease is our illusion of separateness. The first step in mending that artificial schism—that deep, damn wound—is to bring ourselves back to a place of engagement with our authentic beings, in the vital present moment. The opening to the experience of the universe is through intimacy with a living planet, Gaia. The doorway to the experience of Gaia is through our sentient animal bodies, and our feeling hearts. And the journey—the work, the realization—can only happen in immediate present time. Reindigination begins with reinhabitation of our awakened bodies and roiling emotions, in the "now." Much of the natural world, and our own wild spirits, are dying as a direct result of our alienation and abstraction, from what I call our "great distancing."
DJ: [Regarding] the notion of reinhabiting one's body, what are you saying?
JH: Your door to the entire world is located where your feeling body touches the giving ground. Your bare feet, your rear end, the few square inches of absolute contact is a point of connectivity between yourself and millions of years of organic process. And the way to fully experience that connection is by disengaging our mental tape loops, our voice tracks, the constant commentary that keeps us perpetually anticipating the future or criticizing our self about the past rather than tasting the muffin we're eating right now. Then we can experience the world around us, as well as within us, like the awakened, hungering, feeling, responding, caring creatures we really are.
We can't feel our connection to the sentient body, or participate in the processes of the natural world anywhere but "here" and "now." And we can't really be either if we're forever residing in our brains, engrossed in the movies of our minds.
Most of us have read that science fiction classic where the professor departs his basement shop astride his "time machine," leaving nothing behind but a ring in the dust on the floor. In the same way civilized humanity is often out of touch, absent, unreachable by a world of unfolding presence. Our bodies remain in place like that impression in the dust, while our minds orbit backwards and forwards through the years, inhabiting every period of time but now, and every place but here. Too often we dwell on our desires and worries, rather than dwelling in: in the present, in place. Meanwhile things like industrial development and environmental destruction are largely accomplished out of time, by future-looking planners and bureaucrats who are oblivious to the purrs and pleas, the rewards and challenges of the beckoning present. What we need is a conscious, collective high-dive into the always decisive moment—re-immersing ourselves in the sensations and responsibilities of the real world ... now!
DJ: How does one begin to do that?
JH: Reach out to what is real—a leaf, a chair, a friend—emissaries of the present glad to reconnect us to the now. If something exists for the senses, it exists in present time. There's so much distraction and obstruction we have to remain fiercely focused and totally insistent. Almost everything in society calls you away from yourself. The clamor and bright lights, standing in lines or working in offices, going to movies or making small talk. For the un-placated few, our society can seem like a very lonely place. The average Joe doesn't seem to want to smell as deeply or love as much, or to risk deeply caring, because it might mean he has to act on those things he sees and feels. Becoming yourself makes you momentarily the loneliest person on earth, but as you walk through that door you realize you're a part of everything; that in the end, it's impossible to be alone. That's the kind of assurance and wisdom nature affords: intimate knowledge of this moment, this tree, this place, this home.
DJ: It seems to take a long time. I've been living on the same land for about three years. . .
JH: And you're just starting to get introduced.
DJ: Yes.
JH: This courting and bonding requires not only commitment but presence and attention, day after day. If we're only home seasonally, or if we're gone five days out of the week, it's not the same. Deepening relationship requires we get to see the sun come up in a slightly different place each and every day through each of the four seasons. I have friends who live in cities, who work all day indoors, and some of them don't even know which way the sun sets. Until we're oriented, until we know where we are, until we know what direction is East, how can we know what direction to take our lives? And it takes time to recognize the ecological cycles, as many of them are long. There are seven-year cycles for different insects, and there are different flowers that come up only every four to eight years. Patterns of rain and drought. New species moving in or disappearing. Miss a single week in this enchanted canyon, and you could miss the bulk of the wild mulberry season. No single sunset will ever be repeated again, quite the way it shined today.
DJ: Let's talk about this place.
JH: The Sweet Medicine Sanctuary is a restored riparian wilderness, an eighty acre inholding surrounded by millions of acres of Aldo Leopold's Gila forest, in mountains that were one of the last refuges for free Apaches, including Victorio and Geronimo. This particular bend in the river is a place of power, and served the Mogollon pithouse dwellers as a site for ritual and worship for tens of thousands of years. Since the willows and cottonwood trees filled back in, we've seen the return of herons and ducks, owls and eagles, deer and elk, lion and bear.
When I first saw this land I fell helplessly in love with it. I sold the engine out of the school bus I lived in, in order to get the earnest money, with no idea if I could get up the rest of the down I'd offered. Apparently on some of their historic raids Vikings would find themselves outnumbered, and the chieftains would set fire to the sails knowing the men would fight harder once they saw there was no retreat. By selling the engine I'd burned my ships, and there was no going back on my oath to purchase and protect this special place.
DJ: How did you know this was the place you needed to be?
JH: Finding our home, like finding our destiny, is a matter of getting in touch with our intuition and instinct, and then learning to trust and follow it. You can't pick a home by comparing the facts and maps in some atlas. Home, like adventure, is something that becomes possible whenever we suspend our plans and criteria and feel our way to where we most belong. It's not only the place our souls need, but also the place that most needs us. It isn't where you lay your head, it's where you pledge your heart.
The events leading me to find, buy and preserve the Sanctuary have been nothing short of miraculous, convincing me without a doubt that I was meant to be here serving this place and teachings. And anyway, we can sense where we belong in the compass of our bones. Whenever we leave we feel like we're going the wrong way. And when we turn back, we know in every cell of our being that we're headed in the direction of home.
DJ: You've written that we can't own land; that land owns us. What is your contract with this canyon?
JH: How can we own that which contains, predates, and outlasts us? I didn't contract for this place so much as with it. We enter into a relationship sealed in blood and tears, sweat and semen, an equitable giving and taking that's clearly spelled out, and duly sworn to. The land is pledged to give wholly of its authentic self, to offer home and shelter, beautiful groves and stunning mountains, the food and water we need, inspiration and instruction. We promise gifts in return, like our attendance and presence, attention and focus. We promise to try to feel her needs, and meet them. To support her in her fullest flowering; to defend her integrity and honor from all threats, including those that come from ourselves. To appreciate, and celebrate.
It is, as much as anything else, a marriage contract, bound by love rather than law. I've stood before these orange and purple cliffs many times and repeated my vows: That I'll do everything I can to restore her and make her all she can be, to never bend her to my will, to always serve her, touch her, stroke her hair of grass. To revel in the sensation of my bare feet on her naked earthen body.
DJ: One of the things I love about your work is that activists generally do restoration, some new age types sing praises, but you do both. It's very evident how much work you've done here.
JH: You're a gentleman for saying so. Restoration and resistance can be arts, just like music and poetry—if we infuse them with passion and prayer, rhythm and style, meaning and grace.
The most adamant and beautiful work seems to emanate from the reptilian cortex, from caring souls and expectant flesh, from Earth and spirit. The rational mind really only serves this work to the degree that it functions as an honest translator: as communicants, litigants, poem creators and prayer reciters. And especially, as praise givers.
DJ: It's like Meister Eckhart said, if the only prayer you say in your life is "thank you," that would be sufficient.
JH: Words too easily become a substitute for emotion and experience. When it comes to language, it fills only these few redeeming roles: Giving thanks. Giving warnings. Creating odes to the beloved. Directing people's attention back to what's real and wordless. If I'm constantly writing, it's only because I'm trying to pontificate people into howling, to return them to vital immediate experience. If we were all conscious and present, all fully landed, we could revert to what you've called "a language of bodies ... of wave on stone ... a language older than words."
It's an old metaphor, but we're all planting seeds. And this takes us back to the question of whether we can hope for results. A person planting seeds can't stand around and wait to see what grows in every situation. Sometimes seeds come up the first year. Others might take ten or fifteen generations, and come up when there is just enough sunshine, just enough moisture, just enough compost for the seed to sprout and bloom.
But these are just words. The essential thing is to re-become who we really are, opposing the destruction and lies, embracing the natural world, working and playing as if life itself depended on it. Once we do that, there will be no more quandaries, no more need to "process," no confusion about wrong or right, or wondering if we're on our path of heart. We'll feel, we'll care, we'll respond. We'll express this wholeness in acts of beauty. We'll give everything ... and that will be enough.
Jesse Wolf Hardin is a renowned artist, musician, author of seven books and numerous articles, guide and teacher at the Anim· Center and Sanctuary. For more about the Sanctuary, to sign up for workshops, retreats, or to place a donation, please go to www.animacenter.org. Derrick Jensen is author of Endgame, The Culture of Make Believe, A Language Older Than Words, Listening to the Land: Conversations about Nature, Culture, and Eros, amongst others. For copies, appearances and other information, please go to www.derrickjensen.org.