Walking alone in the Hoh Rainforest, thinking and reflecting brought me to the following burst of thought. I put it here essentially unedited - all you need to know is it came from walking the Hoh River Trail, near sundown in October. It came of solitude and unrestrained ramblings of the mind, and I feel it’s time for less editing, more blunt speech.
I find myself increasingly fed up with the presumptions I absorbed due to the culture I was raised in . I can't figure out why they persist, because not only are they incorrect, they don't serve us. They cut us off from the very approaches that could heal our relationships on earth.
I'm not saying throw out Western science - but throw out the idea that there is one right way to understand, that rational empiricism is the undisputed path to the truth. And I'm not just saying there are ‘many paths’, but rather, there are truths that require a variety of listenings.
We have been taught to detach, detach, detach - and what does that give us? How does it benefit the living systems of the earth if we extract ourselves and claim an (artificial) separateness?
If anything, increased understanding of molecular biology and organic chemistry should give us more confirmation of our own integration into these immeasurably complex systems.
I feel a part of it - I am integral to the whole thing, and any attempt to hold me accountable to an opposing viewpoint based on my color, culture, or upbringing is simply another form of divide and conquer.
I won't be divided from this. I won't tolerate it anymore. My family is in the rivers and forests - my veins flow with the same logic and magic, my breath is all breath.