Today was our final day of Salmon Stewarding, and our last official program for the Seattle Volunteer Naturalists for this year.
Carkeek was gray, misty and quiet today. Here and there, some carcasses are still rotting along the streambanks. Very few people were out in the park, except for some neighborhood dog-walkers and a few families with very small children earlier in the morning before lunch. Jeff and I spent a good hour or so in the wetlands in the rain, where even the crows were hushed. A male mallard perched on a branch that was half-sunk in water, his head hunched down as he tried to nap in the midst of the rain. In the creek, just above the weir right before the train tracks, a crow was pulling apart the flesh of a salmon carcass, gulping down the strips. All was very peaceful and relaxed, and even the smell of the fish was subdued, lost in the wafting scents of western red-cedar along the stream.
I am so glad we decided to volunteer. It's been a challenge to keep up with all of our required programs this year on top of the training, especially with the uncertainty of our schedules this first year in Seattle, but it was well worth it to have a commitment that forced us to show up and put the time in. I'm looking forward to the spring, when hopefully we'll have a chance to do some volunteer work with the salmon fry in the imprint pond before they're released, and signing up for stations as SVNs as well.
I have been working on incorporating more local naturalist knowledge into my spiritual practice, and I'd like to expand on that area. My column for Aontacht Magazine this coming issue is on building a relationship with keystone species in your local bioregion, and though I definitely have a working relationship with the salmon now and, arguably, the western red-cedar, I'd like to explore these (and a few others) beyond the ecological/natural history aspect and delve more into the "spiritual" side through meditation and ritual work.
I'm realizing that a great deal of my spiritual practice tends to center on direct, embodied encounters with nature -- and so the work with the salmon, for instance, has been really fulfilling for me. Sitting in my room with my eyes closed trying to imagine these sacred encounters is not something I've ever been very good at, even before I became a Pagan. Which is maybe why there's something to be said for rituals that bring you out into the natural world and expose you to the elements (quite literally). All of my most moving memories of Pagan spiritual practice have involved direct encounters of this kind -- especially those performed in bad weather, when I showed up despite rain or snow to kneel in the dirt and place my hands against the earth and light a candle in the darkness. I think maybe that's why my relationship with Artemis has been so strong these last few months. I can feel her presence when I'm out in the woods, with very little effort on my part to visualize and imagine and pray to evoke her presence on my own. I saw that Carl had shared a quote on Twitter today, something along the lines of, "Contemplative prayer is not something you achieve, it is a gift that you receive, given to you in silence, and you need only learn how to accept it." I think for me, this was why I struggled in my relationship with Brigid for a while, because my work with her was always so effortful, something I was working and striving at. It's just not my habit to pray to gods in order to remind myself they're around -- I'm much better at remembering to simply accept the gift of their presence when they make themselves known in my life.
Still, there's something to be said for effortful work, and that's the thing about ritual in bad weather and the commitment to show up to the work. Personally, I tend to think this has very little to do with competence, as Phaedra and others seem to emphasize. I'm not sure I could be much more competent at lighting candles or repeating simple prayers, and the more complicated the ritual (the more demanding of skill and practice an act is because of its many difficult parts), the more I find it to be a distraction rather than an aid in helping me make that connection. Instead, for me, showing up and doing the work has much more to do with commitment -- devotion or loyalty in a sense -- and creating through that commitment the opportunity for grace. That sounds very Christian, maybe, but by grace I just mean blessed synchronicity, the way sacred presence slips into a moment and draws your attention to a larger circle of life that you're a part of. I find it hard to imagine that this has much to do at all with how well I light candles or repeat memorized prayers, and almost everything to do with whether or not I just show up. For me, at least, it seems like putting too great an emphasis on competence becomes an excuse -- once I am meditating competently, it's easy to excuse a missed day or justify why there are so many other things in my life that require attention and practice, so many other skills I need to work at cultivating. Not to downplay the challenge of leading and performing moving and meaningful group rituals, but when it comes to my personal practice, I'd have to be pretty drunk or otherwise incapacitated not to be able to do it competently. It's just not that kind of practice.
But days like today remind me that it's not about how well I do something, but how open I am to what I can experience and learn. It was deeply satisfying and soul-nourishing to be in the woods and the wetlands today, spending time in the silence listening to the sound of rain falling through the mist. I've spent almost a year now studying the ecology of the Pacific Northwest and learning how to effectively engage others and teach them about natural history. But I've also learned that there's a reason we teach out in nature, out among the trees -- because no amount of knowledge or skill on my part will ever be able to recreate the experience of being present to the natural world. No books or lectures of slideshows can evoke that power. So as a naturalist guide and interpreter, my job is to be an excuse for people to slow down and listen and open themselves up to the presence that is already there anyway. Today, Jeff and I stopped and watched the ducks... perfectly ordinary, common ducks that you might see anywhere in the country. What made the experience meaningful and special for us was now our knowledge or skill as naturalists, but our willingness to slow down and listen. We are naturalists because we value this presence of the sacred in nature... not the other way around.
