"At one time I was interested in birdwatching, and I noticed that when I saw a bird for the first time I couldn't really see it, because I had no formal arrangement, no sense of pattern, for it. I couldn't remember it clearly, either. But once I identified the bird, the drawings in bird books and my own sense of order arranged the image and made it clearer to me, and I never forgot it. From then on I could see the bird in two ways-- as the fresh, unpatterned vision and the patterned one. Well, seeing death nearby is very like the first way of seeing."
a quote from a book I did not read which came to me via
Johnathan Rosen's The Life of the Skies
This idea of seeing the bird in two ways has been powerful for me as
I extrapolate it out into my life. For me, it is the idea of seeing
the actual physical bird, it's beautiful feathers, grace of movement,
and its way of life in front of you. It is seeing this while knowing
the bird's life history and how it's tied to the world around it,
understanding the reasons for its behavior, and seeing the underlying
qualities that make it what it is. It means knowing something as
much as we are able to both in heart and mind. In this way we can
understand it as another form of life in the world and thereby
understand something of ourselves and our connection to the
wilderness.
We can expand this idea out into the wider world as well. Seeing
this little snowflower we can know that its brilliant inflorescence
belies not only a larger life under the soil but also the fungus that
it leeches from and the root systems that live in tandem with that
fungus, together holding and keeping healthy the soil. Daydreaming to the patterns in the clouds, we can understand them as the patterns
of ice crystals shaped by winds high above us-- a seeming randomness
out of which comes such diverse beauty. As we look at a hawk and it looks back we can imagine how it sees us with its acute and tetrachromatic vision. We can make sure to keep the
heart asking as many questions as the mind. What icy wind has blown
across this mountain face, what cool rivulets and rushing streams,
what beating sun and slow trembling of earth?
In thinking of how trees grow and the workings of apical buds,
distance between limbs, proximity of trees and so on, we can
know something of the life of individual trees. We may not be able
to tell what cracked this crown or limb, when this gall was formed,
how long since lightning struck this tree but we can see them in a
similar way to how we see the faces of others. A face wrinkled with
lines from laughter and joy, kind eyes with dark circles around them,
smiles with an undercurrent of sadness, old scars and twinkling eyes.
When we know a person's life, these things become visual cues that
connect our knowledge with our emotions, that prompt us to sympathy
and empathy. This is how understanding leads us to kindness,
compassion and love. To understand at least part of what something
is in the world must be the only way towards a deep love for it
whether we're talking about a person or a creature, or the land
itself. I can look at your face and say that it's beautiful as
easily as taking a snap shot at a vista point around a beautiful bay. But,
when I know what your life has been and I have shared some of it with
you, then I am able to see these things in your face-- what the
weather and the world have done to you and for you, where you were
born, the places where you were broken down and the happiness and
peace you knew in your calm weather. With humans and pets we call
this friendship, love, kinship, family and a thousand things besides.
With the wilderness we are more subdued and call it knowing Natural
History, going for a walk, and keeping our eyes well open.
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