Glistening in tiny raindrops that resemble silver balls of dew, Arachne sits queen of her web, which has appeared overnight across my doorway. Usually i wouldn’t turn an outdoor light on before dawn, as i am comfortable in the darkness and keen to take in as much of the night sky as possible before Aurora shimmers silver across the horizon from the east. But i’m not at home. I’m staying in a rustic retreat centre in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, south east Queensland, leading an intensive for ecopsychotherapy students. There’s no sunshine, though. The rain of our Australian La Nina continues. Hopefully there’ll be no more flooding, although Mullumbimby residents are meeting again, in preparation for ‘Severe Weather’.
The light goes on and i step out, carefully, mindful that each step is a moment in time, not rushing to see if there is any chance of glimpsing the sunrise through the clouds. And there she is; i see her just in time, so that the door doesn’t take out her web, she doesn’t feel panicked as her airy world is shaken apart, and doesn’t end up crawling across my face.
Because i was moving slowly, i don’t have to clear silky strands from my face and help her back into her broken web. Instead, i take the time to stop in awe of her beauty. I know i should go and help my co-facilitator set up the hall for our morning yoga session, but i can’t drag myself away from this stunningly beautiful vision. Tiny crystalline balls of water glisten in the electric light, across her body and web, which is a spiralling cage of death to smaller insects, but a geometric pattern of wonder to me. My door has broken one long strand, which connects the web to the ground, so when i finally walk away, she is working on repairs.
There is no dawn glimmering today, so i can’t perform my Sunrise Ceremony, and the heavy cloud cover means no Venus, Jupiter, Mars or Saturn (or Aphrodite, Zeus, Ares and Kronos) either. I’ve been tracking this predawn planetary alignment for weeks, as i perform my morning prayers at home. It is good to be visited by the gods and goddesses, occasionally.
Back inside for yoga just after dawn, then out on Country after breakfast. What do we find when we reconnect with nature? Participants speak lovingly of rediscovering childlike delight in little things, of the watercourses they visit when they are stressed and how much calmer they feel after some time there, or of a rock in a special place that recreates a feeling of stability and confidence that has been eroded by modern reality. We speak of encounters with butterflies and ducks, of when we sense a grander scheme of things, when facing the ocean or the sky, or how we get our breath back with a walk in the bush.
We start with reality. Where are we at today? We probably shouldn’t have to work to find solace in nature, but we do. So, we create that space, sharpen our ears, make time and allow ourselves to sink back into connection. Many find deeper rest here, some feel more enlivened. All note the way their sense of separation from nature is dissolved, how they return to a feeling of being in relationship with the land, other animals, the elements. The rain has its magical rhythm, even for those who have been traumatised by the recent floods. Tears flow, wounds are reopened and healed over again, genuine smiles come easy … the earth sings and we tune in.
We sit in the Temenos, the sacred and safe space where all sharing is valid, where our vulnerable, soft, sometimes broken animal selves can peep out and find comfort in others. We practise walking therapy, deep listening to each other as well as nature, not talking over or waiting to respond, but being there, offering authenticity and the ‘unconditional positive regard’ recommended by person-centred counselling godfather Carl Rogers.
We choose Sit Spots, where we can become more aware of changes in the natural landscape from day to day, moment to moment. We open up the doors of perception and come back to our senses in the moment. We draw the mind back from its monkey-like grasping and from the machine that captures us all, all too often. Guided meditations draw our awareness down into the earth’s hum, into our unique being and our universal flow at the same time, into animal totems old and new. We learn from nature, like we always did. It provides endless metaphors of healing, empowerment and flow; the grass bounces back after being trodden down, a river flows around the rocks that seemed like barriers at first, a gentle breeze brings us back to our bodies in the here and now.
We let nature tell our life story for once, and sing around the campfire, like people have always done. It is all so easy, smooth and natural, we wonder how we ever lost this feeling in the first place.
*NB: boundless thanks to the participants and my co-facilitator Charlotte Brown. All photos by the author. If you feel moved by these words, please consider Subscribing, Sharing or Liking this post.
I feel a little tug on my heart, as i find this creek running into the sea in Tathra today. It is the first time it has made it this far since i started staying here regularly a few years ago. Today is exactly one year since the devastating bushfires in this seaside community, so there was a lot of resilience and reconnection to celebrate, as well as a lot to remember in mourning. Recently it was also the 10 year anniversary of the Kinglake bushfires, which at the time shocked the world with their unassailable ferocity and loss of life, both human and non-human. My brother lost his property that day, but he narrowly escaped with his life, along with his wife and 1-year old son. Life is creation and destruction, birth and death, shut down and break through all the time.
But today, seeing this little creek making its way out to sea made my heart glad. So often it’s the subtle touches of nature connection that can make a difference to the way we feel; and, more importantly, to the way we act. Continuing to work with this foundation of ecopsychology (or ecospirituality) enables us to tune in to our part in the more-than-human life that we are part of. We’ve changed the world and damaged its fabric in this new era of the Anthropocene and, as a race, we haven’t yet proven able to pull out of the slippery slope of materialistic capitalism and take better care of our planetary home.
So why celebrate such a small matter today? Because the stream made it, the flow created breakthrough, and some days our hearts hurt and we need to be reminded that this is the ancient way of life. We take what we think we need and sometimes this is too much and we do damage. Then, we need to let the waters flow, to give away and to give back. Sure, it is natural for us to want to draw fresh water from a sparkling stream; to be refreshed by its soothing qualities and to give thanks for its gifts. But this is not what the military/industrial complex is doing. It offers engineering infrastructure to suck the rivers dry, to create mega-dams and turn the taps onto crops of cotton and rice and whatever else are doused in the chemicals designed and pushed by Big Pharma, to be sold and controlled according to the machinations of predatory capitalism. We all know this, but it is proving to be a ‘wicked problem’, to dislodge the machine and allow the earth to regrow from beneath such withering machinations and their shadow.
I grew up in Port Adelaide, which meant that my school holidays were spent on local beaches, in the desert fringes of the Flinders Ranges, down the Fleurieu Peninsula and along the Might Murray River. I always felt deep kinship with the salty sands and gentle dunes along my friendly beachfronts, and was never quite so much at home along the river, with its spooky dead trees in places, and its steady one-way flow. But then i visited the Coorong for the first time, and my heart sang for the river and the sea at the same time.
The Coorong in South Australia, where the Murray River meets the sea – sometimes.
Here, when i was a kid, a mighty river flowed into the sea, with much of its overflow captured in salty lakes and lagoons surrounded by my favourite landscape feature of all, the sand dune. There were mysteriously quiet coves, dead flat crystalline beds of salt, endless blue skies and crashing oceanic waves on the other side of a fragile dune system. It was many years before i would learn why the Murray stopped flowing into the sea, how the river mouth was closed up and the inland lake system dying. The story of criminal irrigators stealing vast quantities of fresh water upstream, in other states of Australia, is now coming further into the light, as the tragedy of millions of dead native fish hits the headlines and the public become outraged at the stupidity and recklessness of the ‘system’ again. It’s no coincidence that the remote communities mostly affected are largely Aboriginal, while it is wealthy industrial farmers (not the caring smaller scale ones) that profit. Again.
Local fish death tragedy, Wallagoot Lake, caused by low water levels, drought and heat.
The fish death phenomenon is largely out of the 24/7 spectacle of news media already, although it has just hit home (albeit on a smaller scale, thank goodness) in our local area. Since then, we have enjoyed a dense bank of rain such as we haven’t seen around here in ages. It’s been sweet to fall asleep to the sound of raindrops on the roof – and maybe even to wake up to it too. And so, this little creek flows into the sea. Something seems right about this; something we have missed. Like so many of the symptoms of the runaway climate destruction we are now witnessing, it’s as if part of our souls have been splintered away, as the earth groans under the weight of modern industrial capital and its inevitable commodification and degradation of every ‘resource’ it can get its greedy hands on.
In ancient Mesopotamia, the place where the two waters – fresh and salty – mingled was renowned as a place of fertility. Many Aboriginal Australians know the same truth; that such places are rich and should be protected. Rivers are meant to run and we should take their fresh water for use and not for greed. If they don’t make it to the sea for too long a period, death follows. It’s just another ancient law we ignore at our peril. Long live the spirit of flow and letting go and allowing for breakthrough, both in our fragile environment and in our souls – which end up being the same place, when we open our minds and bodies to our place in nature.
