You cannot know yourself until you know the weather and the country that surround you, the trees and rocks and animals, as well as the people that keep you company. Our identities are formed and constantly reformed in relationship with everything else in our experience. (Kathleen Norris)
I’m always amazed at how the place, the particular landscape where we find ourselves can speak to us, can tell us about ourselves — who we are, why we’re here, where we’re going. There are thousands, maybe millions of things happening in any one landscape in any one moment, and those particular things that we actually see, tell us a lot about ourselves. The way we perceive the personal landscape where we are at this minute is our story.
Right now I’m at the seashore. As I experience this place, I see the beaches littered with storm debris, I smell the mucky aroma of rotting plant life and the occasional dead fish washed on shore, I’m aware of how messy it is, of the raucous calls of the gulls overhead and the occasional brilliant flash of a songbird’s wing. There are thousands of other things I could be attending to in this landscape, but in this moment, this is what I am aware of, this is my story at this moment.
And so I acknowledge those parts of me that are “messy,” “littered” by past storms or traumas in my life, those parts of me that feel dead, that are rotting, smelly. Conversely I also acknowledge that part of me that is the incredible beauty of the flash of the cardinal’s wing.
This is a gift: To let the place where we are speak to us, to let it tell you about yourself — to find ourselves inside things, living in every tree, in the murmuring of the little creek flowing into the bay, the call of the birds, the crash of the waves, the small tracks of the crabs, the holes the clams have dug, the sunlight that filters through the clouds . . . To let ourselves know that we are not in this place by accident or coincidence at this moment in our lives. . . To allow nature to be the crucible of change. This process can resurrect disowned parts of us, can lead to a more whole and integrated life. Our surroundings have a story to tell us that just may save our lives, or at the very least, greatly enrich it.