Author: wapatangawilds

 

I am in a wild, a wild is in me,

I sit in a woodland, a woodland sits in me,

Oaks light up in the sun, branches bare, winter coming on,

White bark of a sycamore, pretty blue sky,

The trees are so resident, living life in one spot,

A feel of early morning, three hours past sunrise,

A last leaf falls, a spider crawls, across my pants leg,

Feels good to sit after running, on a prairie soft, the roll of gentle hills,

Running through a prairie, a prairie running through me,

The trees welcome me back, where they remain, living and giving life,

I get a fire going, it burns beside me and in me, pleasing smoke rises,

I am in a wild, a wild is in me.

 

Glenn Thomas Fell at Allegawaho Park, December 11, 2015

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lean Back

Lean back on a dead log into the trunk of a cottonwood

Look up, through bare branches into a deep blue sky

Lean back on a sloping slab of smooth limestone

Look up into bluestem and blue sky, don’t ask why

Lean back, into a wild, into yourself

Ease your mind, chill your body, warm your heart

Find a wonder, listen, breathe in silence

Be you, all alone, look up, look in, feel the earth spin

enjoy the ride, lean back

Glenn Thomas Fell, December 7, 2015

 

 

Brisk morning northwest breeze, sun rising in a clear blue southeast sky,

I run straight up a hill, straight into the sun,

Acorns under my feet, acorns overhead,

Light touches the branch tips on tree tops and prairie grasses on hill tops,

I listen to the trees and the sky,

They are always kind and gentle,

Then I run under red cedars and past wild plum thickets,

Up another hill by a pond where geese sit upon it

I see a last leaf falling, my breathing is deep,

And I realize I feel alive

 

 

Last Leaf

The last leaf, the very last leaf,

Falls in a kind of twisting almost float,

As I sit on my sitting log, and ponder life out of the boat,

 The last leaf, built of last summer’s sun,

It’s a shade of wonder to think,

that of all the leaves that fell this Fall, this is the last one,

And as this last leaf, in total silence, gracefully falls,

The silence gets very, very loud, and the voice of the leaf clearly calls,

 Don’t come to this place, to sit in this space,

With or for a purpose, with some driven inner need,

Even though you have an oozing emotional bleed,

Just come here, to be, like me,

A last leaf falling from a tree

 

Glenn Thomas Fell

December 2008

 

 

 

Seven Geese Rise

Seven geese rise, I lift my eyes,

As they fly into a dark blue sky,

Then I run,

Into a rising sun, down a deer path through trees,

To a bluff with a wonder of a breeze,

And I sit,

Where the creek makes a curve,

Not to think, just observe,

And to listen, as ripples in the sunlight glisten.

Still I Sit

 

Still I sit,

While all around me moves,

Moon rising full in the sky, leafless treetops swaying in the cold December wind,

Bare branches speaking of leaves fallen to the ground,

Not long ago green and full of life, now brown and blown away, life and death passing,

Near me, with seed already dropped, empty-headed grasses quiver, as I begin to shiver,

Yet as daylight fades,

Still, I sit.

 

 

 

Luther Standing Bear (1868-1939) “The Lakota was a true naturalist – a lover of nature. He loved the earth and all things of the earth, the attachment growing with age. The old people came literally to love the soil and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power. The soil was soothing, strengthening, cleansing and healing.

That is why the old Indian STILL SITS upon the earth instead of propping himself up and away from its life-giving forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly; he can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer to kinship to other lives about him…

The old Lakota was wise. He know that man’s heart away from nature becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too. So he kept his youth close to its softening influence.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

East side of the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, near Strong City, KS

ONE BIOTA

“The black prairie was built by the prairie plants, a hundred distinctive species of grasses, herbs, and shrubs, by the prairie fungi, insects, and bacteria; by the prairie mammals and birds, all interlocked in one humming community of co-operations and competitions, one biota. This biota through ten thousand years of living and dying, burning and growing, preying and fleeing, freezing and thawing, built that dark and bloody ground we call prairie.”   Aldo Leopold , Round River

Yes, Leopold got it right. There is only one biota. He coined this phrase in reference to the formation of what we call prairie. But I think we can extrapolate the phrase to global significance. Think about it. All life is connected. All life is dependent on things like carbon, water, sunlight, nutrients, rocks, soil, temperature, oxygen , etc. One life form performs functions in the ecosystem needed by other living organisms in the system. I have learned from my Indian friends that everything, even the rocks, are alive, for the rocks are made up of atoms which are always in motion. Consider the simple connections like plants capturing the energy of sunlight in photosynthesis and then making that energy available to animals and humans for life support, while at the same time these same plants are releasing the oxygen needed by these same animals and humans. And the animals in turn release the carbon dioxide needed by the plants. That is a very intimate life connection – so do you see what I mean when I say there is really only one biota?  What about the bacteria and fungi in the soil that decompose complicated molecular compounds and release nutrients to plants for life support or those very important bacteria that cooperate with leguminous plant roots to take the very important nutrient we call nitrogen right out of the air we all breathe? Very few organisms on earth could survive very long at all if the sun did not appear each day to supply the energy we all need – all of us, one biota, depend on the sun- except for some microbes that can metabolize certain molecular compounds and do not need the sun, but they still need the air and the elements released into that air by plants and animals and yes, rocks. They need the elements in the rocks, as we all do, to sustain life, yes rocks are needed to sustain life as we know it. Again it is all one biota.

So I beg you please leave the box you live in and get outside onto a prairie or into a woodland or into a mountain meadow or a wetland or onto the ocean and look around and feel the life there – observe the plants, see the insects and birds, imagine the bacteria and fungi, look for signs of animals, breathe in deeply the air, absorb the warmth of the sun on your skin – melt a little inside your heart – and then listen, be very very quiet, stop thinking… set aside any thoughts about decisions needing to be made or work needing to get done… and listen, listen, listen…as you listen continue to observe all the detail around you… see the life… feel the life pulsing in the organisms around you…don’t be afraid to touch it, even lay down in it and talk to it… and then maybe you will begin to experience the meaning of Leopold’s phrase…” one biota”.

And then hopefully you will more likely concern yourself with the practices of conservation and preservation. Not only to protect the natural beauty of the life around you, but to be a person of ultimate integrity, a person who values the preservation of your fellow beings in this thing I refer to as one biota over economic gain or personal ego. So often humans have been driven by these latter two selfish motivations and such pursuits have led not only to environmental degradation of unimaginable proportions, such as the extinction of not only species but entire ecosystems, but also to destructive wars and genocides around the planet, and of course extreme poverty and its associated diseases and hunger.

And then too maybe all people of all races and cultures can begin to see that even among humans there is only one biota. We all on this planet are all engaged in this thing called life as one biota, we are all connected, our commonalities are by far stronger than our differences… and if we truly desire to be humans of dignity and integrity we will join together with people of all the world to build lives of value and worth and freedom and quality and peace and joy.

I hope it will be helpful to this process to remind ourselves constantly that on this planet there is only ONE BIOTA.

Thoughts of Glenn Thomas Fell, Emporia, Kansas

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I sit by a backyard campfire.  I look around me.  In front of me is a pile of sunflower stalks I cut from the prairie garden and piled there to be slowly burned over the winter. Just last month these stalks were full of life, yellow blooms with nectar feeding bees and butterflies. Yet now they lie dead and brown having completed their role for the season. The birds and squirrels have already eaten much of the seed they produced but some seed now lies on the ground waiting to germinate in the Spring and continue the cycle of life.  I am prompted to reflect on my own life up to now, what role I have played, the choices made, to look back at my own path of life.

I made a stop in a wooded wild this morning and contemplated among Fall’s dying leaves. I came to this: This place is intimately, intricately, intertwined with life and death. As am I. How glad I am I made this stop.

Sunday afternoon I sat in the backyard listing in my mind the wild plants in our yard (some that were here and many I have seeded) of which the seed or fruit is used by birds for food. I was pleasantly surprised by the inventory: Lambsquarter, Giant Ragweed, Prairie Coneflower, Gray-headed Coneflower, Boneset, Goldenrod, Aster, Sunflower (6 species), Rosinweed,  Blue Sage, Compassplant, Black-eyed Susan, Pokeweed, Poison Ivy, Red Cedar, Mulberry, Hackberry, Nightshade, Partridge Pea, Wild Strawberry, Chickweed, Pigweed, Dayflower, Dandelion, Pokeweed, Purple Coneflower, Milkweed, Wild Ryegrass, Indiangrass, Big and Little Bluestem, Switchgrass, Purpletop and Sidoats. First line in the forward to Aldo Leopold’s book A Sand County Almanac comes to mind: “There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.”  I cannot.

Fall deepens. Turn back the clocks tonight. The temperature this morning was 27. One week ago it was a record high of 88, today it will only get to 48. I am sitting by a backyard campfire. The tomato plants near me, which were fresh and green yesterday, are dead, the leaves drooping toward the ground. The ski poles which have served as tomato stakes all summer can now be removed with hopes of using them for what they were made for next month. All summer I have looked forward to a Fall day that would allow me to sit here by a fire, even at mid-day. It is noon right now. I feel the bright sun on my back, yet the air is cool. It is about 40. It is a pleasantry to sit by the fire and write. Sitting by a fire is an ancient and still common human activity, well, common in low income communities. And low income communities are still common. Yet, I suppose my kind of fire sitting is of a wealthy sort. I have the luxury of burning wood without using it to cook or heat. It is an entertainment for me. I have a ready supply of wood to burn from broken branches in my yard, without having to walk far distances to acquire it. I sit by the fire for leisurely pleasure, not for productive necessity as would be the case, for example, in a rural African village. For me, it is a luxury, there it is a need. I like to tell myself it is healthy for me mentally, emotionally, spiritually to sit here. But that is me trying to find a productive reason to do it. Really, I sit here just because I like to. So I am glad I get to. It is something I do not have to do, it is something I get to do. It is like being alive. I do not have to be alive, but I am glad I get to be. I am lucky I get to live in a place where I get to sit by a fire in my backyard.

One thing I do not want to do here by the fire is think. That is my aim whenever I am in a wild, to not think. By that I mean dwell on matters involving making decisions or problems to solve. I try to just observe and listen. Reflection is okay and unavoidable really. That is where the writing comes from. Not thinking is a discipline to be learned. One learns to shut off thinking upon entering a wild. It takes practice, but with practice, before long, it becomes automatic and welcome. It is in those times, I am most aware and in touch with the feeling of being alive. Perhaps, that is why I like it, that is why I do it, why it never gets old, is never boring, because it is always so full of the life in me and in all the wild around me.

Walked in the woods today. Saw a surprise butterfly, even after 27 degrees night before last. I saw fruits of a Wahoo tree and Ground Cherry, stood under a very big Cottonwood tree, listened to the crunch of colorful dead leaves under my feet as I walked, and got to sit and write on the bench that made itself by falling out of a tree and landing alongside the path. These words came:

Timeless Calling.

I sit in a wild
life all around me and sound.

I tumble into a timeless calling
like a leaf falling
end over end
past where my time would bend
like the tree that bends over the path,
as I fall into a kind of timeless math.

This wild it seems is a place void of the pace
that dictates my every day,
in here, in this wild,
it has somehow slipped away
and I continue falling into a timeless calling
feeling that what is here, in this wild,
in the leaf, in the ground, in the air, in the birds, in the tree,
is more than I can see, is more than me,
yet, is within me.