Nature Connection



Stalking Wolf was a tracker raised in a wild, free Apache community.  His people never surrendered to the barbarian invaders, and some still continue living in freedom, as undocumented Americans, in remote desert regions.  Later in life, he spent time with his son in New Jersey, where he happened to meet an 8-year old boy named Tom Brown.  He mentored Tom and his buddy Rick for nine years, giving them an excellent education in tracking, survival, and respect for the family of life.  When it was time for him to return west, and end his life’s journey, he told Tom to teach someone else all that he had learned.

In 1971, when Tom was 18, he met a 10-year old boy named Jon Young, and trained him for eight years.  Tom went on to write 17 books, and launch his famous tracking school.  Young went to college, where he was a freak — a highly skilled tracker with a deep understanding of wild ecosystems, and enormous respect for the family of life.  Weirdo!

Young grew up in an era when there were only three channels on TV, so he and his buddies spent a lot of time outdoors, playing unsupervised in the woods, taking risks, and forming close bonds with children of different ages.  This is how well adjusted young animals are supposed to grow up, feeling at home in nature, connected.

He would have made a perfect poster boy for Richard Louv’s book, Last Child in the Woods.  It described the rapidly growing epidemic of Nature Deficit Disorder (NDD) — separation sickness.  Today’s kids have far more distractions, like 500 TV channels, the internet, cell phones, and video games.  They typically have intrusive “helicopter parents” who micromanage them, constantly protecting them from dirt, danger, creativity, and freedom.

Every newborn that squirts out of the womb is a wild animal fine-tuned for thriving on tropical savannahs, fully connected to nature, acutely intelligent, and highly aware.  Even today, some are able to preserve nature connection during their childhood years, but it tends to suffocate in their teen years, due to a nonstop barrage of loony balderdash from the nightmare world of Sustainable Growth™.  A lucky few manage to maintain their connection into adulthood, and strengthen it as they go — maybe one in a thousand, according to Young.

In 1979, Tom Brown published his first masterpiece, The Tracker, a book that blew my mind.  In that year, Young asked his life question, “Who are the most connected to nature and how did they get that way?  Why are some folks deeply connected, and others not?”  In search of answers, he spent years visiting a number of indigenous cultures.  He discovered that the San Bushmen of the Kalahari in Botswana were incredibly well connected.  They refuse to enter houses, because people who live indoors go insane.

Young says that with the San, you always feel safe.  They are super intelligent, super happy, super vital, and great problem solvers.  You never feel competition.  People are in love with every aspect of the ecosystem around them, celebrating with childlike wonder through all stages of their life.  Every person in that community is committed to the flowering of every other person.  They are incredibly aware of their surroundings at all times, because a brief lapse of attention can kill you in lion country.

Today, using the techno-juju of DNA mapping, it’s looking like the San are the common ancestors of all humankind.  For two million years, our ancestors lived like they still do.  We have their genes and instincts, but our culture lost its nature connection centuries ago.  Culture is a whirlwind of beliefs.  Stupid beliefs can have deep roots and powerful momentum, but they are not invincible, especially when they are destabilizing society.  Never forget that there was a time when our culture, and its belief system, did not exist.  It’s a spooky mutant, and it has no long-term future.

Richard Louv compiled years of reputable research on the harms associated with NDD.  Complications of disconnection include drug addiction, autism, homelessness, attention deficit disorder, depression, suicide, obesity, anxiety, and on and on.  Kids who grew up as Young did were strikingly healthier, happier, and smarter.  They were more creative, well adjusted, spiritually grounded, and centered.

In 2011, the popular talk show celebrity Oprah Winfrey read Louv’s book, The Nature Principle, and added it to her influential summer reading list.  Suddenly, news of the NDD epidemic went viral.  Millions of mothers gasped in horror!  My God!  What have we done to our precious little couch potatoes?  Everyone wanted their children to be connected, because the benefits were obviously huge.  In the book, Louv mentioned that Young was an expert on nature connection.

Since 1983, Young has been developing mentoring projects, striving to help youths move beyond the soul-killing void of disconnection.  For a long time, he was seen as a last resort, a place to dump emotional basket cases that the experts could not fix, kids close to blinking out.  He had an impressive record of hitting home runs with high-risk youths, because he gave them what they desperately needed, connection.  There are three facets of connection: connection with others, connection with self, and connection with nature.

Consumer culture excels at disconnecting people from self, others, and nature.  Many adults fail to develop healthy connections with their husbands, wives, children, and friends.  Many don’t know the folks who have been their neighbors for years.  Many are only capable of forming connections with their dogs and cats.

Anyway, in recent years, awareness of the importance of nature connection has increased significantly, but so has the teen suicide rate.  Indeed, the NDD epidemic continues to spread.  Participation in nature conservation groups is declining, while connection to glowing screens has grown explosively.  The ecosystem is not getting the love and respect it so desperately needs.

Young points out that there is no miraculous silver bullet cure for NDD.  A weekend camping trip is not enough.  Youths attend his mentoring projects once or twice a week.  Most attendees develop connection in two years, on average.  He says that their values are significantly changed.  Connection opens up their empathy and their concern for others.  It causes them to seek meaning, and meaningful service to others, and to future generations.  Great!

When you meet a cool weasel, or find a bird nest, you want to share the exciting discovery.  The path to healing requires being with folks who will give you a listening ear, nonjudgmental story catchers.  Story catching is a life-giving connective experience.  It’s about giving full attention to listening, without interrupting, or projecting your thoughts.  Young says that grownups usually talk at each other, semi-listening, mostly waiting for a space in the conversation where they can cut in — intersecting monologues.

As a wordsmith, I can communicate knowledge about environmental history or ecological sustainability, but my connection to nature is hard to convey via words.  The Tracker blew my mind, but I know that many others say the book had little or no value for them.  I was lucky to preserve my nature connection into adulthood.

Young points out that you can’t succeed at bodybuilding by reading books.  You have to engage in actual exercise.  Similarly, nature connection is not acquired from books.  Book learning is education modeling.  Equally ineffective is recreation modeling, engaging in health and fitness activities.  The correct tool for this job is connection modeling, the mode of mentoring to which Young has devoted his life.

Modern societies have inherited a stupendous mess, a bloody pileup of thousands of years of trauma.  Magical thinking is not the answer.  Young optimistically estimates that the healing process will take 200 years.  He says we need to think of ourselves as foundation builders.  Our task is to begin the long and difficult journey home.  Live well!

Videos of Jon Young lectures:

Going Forth With Active Hope: Deep Nature Connection, Mentoring, and Culture Repair

Earth Talk by John Young

The Role of Deep Nature Connection in Culture Repair

Effective Connection Modeling and Regenerating Human Beings

Nature Connection Books:

Young, Jon; Evan McGown, and Ellen Haas, Coyote’s Guide to Connecting to Nature, 2nd ed., Owlink Media, Shelton, Washington, 2010.

Young, Jon, What the Robin Knows: How Birds Reveal the Secrets of the Natural World, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, 2012.

Louv, Richard, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill, 2008.

Louv, Richard, The Nature Principle: Reconnecting With Life in a Virtual Age, 2nd ed., Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill, 2012.

Nature Connection Organizations:

Jon Young founded the 8 Shields Institute, which has been training nature connection mentors for 30 years.  It runs over 300 programs worldwide.  More info is HERE.

Richard Louv founded the Children and Nature Network, an organization that is influencing policy in Washington, via 122 grassroots campaigns.

Grizzly Years

Doug Peacock grew up in rural northern Michigan.  As a boy, he spent a lot of time alone outdoors, exploring the woods, swamps, and streams.  Later, he fell in love with the West, especially the Rockies.  He enjoyed fishing and rock climbing.  His plan was to become a geologist, so he could wander around in the great outdoors and get paid for it.  But one day he realized that his dream career would likely involve working for oil and mining companies, “whose rape of wild country repelled me.”  Sadly, he abandoned the plan, and volunteered for an exciting job with the U.S. government.

Peacock loved the central highlands of Vietnam.  It was a gorgeous region, inhabited by good people.  Then, the war spread there.  He was employed as a medic in the Green Berets, an elite combat unit.  His job was to provide first aid to injured soldiers and villagers, and the fighting kept him very busy.  He witnessed far too much senseless death, destruction, and suffering, far too many dead children.

By and by, he came down with a devastating case of war rage, which he has been struggling with for most of his life.  Back in American society, it was no longer possible to blend into the crowd, and feel at home.  He couldn’t talk to his family.  He spent a lot of time in the woods, trying to pickle his demons with cheap wine.  Finally, he bought a jeep, and headed west, to pursue two powerful medicines: solitude and wildness.

For American soldiers, Vietnam was not as safe and secure as strolling through a shopping mall.  There were tigers, vipers, snipers, booby traps, and Vietcong.  The odds for survival were boosted by good luck, common sense, being with experienced warriors, remaining as silent and invisible as possible, and maintaining a state of heightened awareness.  Survivors slept lightly, easily awakened by snapping twigs and other irregular sounds.  Survivors developed an acute sense of smell, because an odd whiff could warn of danger.  Survivors frequently stopped, looked, and listened.

Similar skills were useful when moving through grizzly bear country, where Peacock spent many post-war years.  Near the beginning of his wilderness quest, he hiked around a corner and discovered that a large brown grizzly was approaching, and it was not at all happy to see him.  The bear’s head was swinging back and forth, jaws gnashing, ears flattened, hair standing up on his hump — the ritual that precedes charging, mauling, and a bloody hot lunch.

Peacock slowly pulled out his large caliber handgun, had second thoughts, and lowered it.  His shooting days were over.  He was ready to die.  Something happened, the energy changed.  “The grizzly slowly turned away from me with grace and dignity and swung into the timber at the end of the meadow.”  It was a life-changing experience.  He became a grizzly tracker.  He acquired a movie camera and began filming them.  He did winter lecture tours, wrote about bears, and told his story in Grizzly Years.

Importantly, the book reminds us of a forgotten reality, living in wild country amidst man-eating predators — the normal everyday reality for our wild ancestors, whose genes we inherited.  Outside my window each morning, the blue jays stop by for a pumpkin seed breakfast.  Before they glide down from branch to porch, they look in every direction for winged predators and pussy cats.  They don’t live in a constant state of fear and paranoia, they simply live with prudent caution, look before leaping, and never do stupid things.

In grizzly country, Peacock stayed away from animal trails, and slept in concealed locations.  He tried to remain invisible and silent.  He tried to approach bears from downwind, so his scent would not alert them.  He spent years studying bear behavior, and the quirks of individual animals.  He was charged many times, but never mauled.  He learned how to behave properly during close encounters.  Never run, climb trees, make loud noises, move suddenly, or look weak and fearful.  Instead, act dignified, and display peaceful intentions without appearing docile.  Calmly talk to the bear, while keeping your head turned to the side.

Peacock’s tales are precious, because they encourage readers to imagine wilderness as their true home, and to contemplate the normal everyday tactics used by our wild ancestors to avoid being eaten.  Grizzly country was one place where humans were not the dominant critter.  The bears could kill you and eat you whenever they wished.  This ongoing possibility freed Peacock from wasting hour after hour in self-indulgence — thinking, analyzing, daydreaming.  It demanded that he always pay acute attention to the here and now.

Americans expect wilderness to be as safe as a mall.  We don’t want to be killed and eaten when visiting a national park, yet parks foolishly build trails and campgrounds in high-risk locations.  If a hiker is mauled, bears are killed.  Now, if a cat kills a blue jay, we don’t kill the cat.  In automobile country, the streets are lined with busy enterprises selling chunks of dead animals.  So, why are government bureaucrats so uptight about what God-fearing American bears choose to have for dinner in the privacy of their own homes?  Why do delicious primates from Chicago expect to be safe in grizzly country?

I’ve never seen a “Save the Grizzlies” bumper sticker.  To maintain a pleasant Disneyland experience, and avoid lawsuits, the Park Service kills aggressive bears, and bears that beg for snacks.  Backcountry outfitters kill them.  Ranchers kill them.  Violators get light punishment from judges in redneck country.  Bear numbers are in decline, and this infuriates Peacock.

In Vietnam, he had a ringside seat at a contest between a full-blown industrial civilization and a society that practiced muscle-powered subsistence farming.  He witnessed the indiscriminant massacre of countless innocent villagers and children.  Back in the U.S., he saw that the same monster was obliterating western ecosystems, from mines in the Rockies, to developers in Tucson.  He had escaped from the Vietnam War, but there was no escape from the American war on America, where “greedy scumsuckers” were raping and desecrating “the last refuge of sanity on the planet.”

Peacock wasn’t the only Vietnam vet with war rage who found sanctuary in the mountains.  Other vets were equally pissed at the scumsuckers.  They had lost many friends while defending the freedom and democracy of God’s most cherished nation.  And so, in those mountains, angry American vets defended the sacred American ecosystem against the atrocities of the “syphilization” they had been trained to serve.  When loggers built bridges that had not been authorized by the angry vets, the bridges were mysteriously demolished.  So were helicopters used for oil exploration.

Peacock did not become a corporate geologist, and spend the rest of his life shopping with the herd.  It was a great gift to live so many years outside the walls.  He was able to observe the insane monster that lurks behind the cartoonish façade of the American Dream, and he was able to explain the horrors that so many folks inside the walls were unable to see, feel, or imagine.  In wild country, Peacock was careful to never be seen, or reveal his plans.  “If I got into serious trouble, I didn’t want to be rescued.  My considerable carcass could feed the bears.”

Lots of additional information can be found at his website.  He’s also the star of numerous YouTube lectures and interviews.

Peacock, Doug, Grizzly Years — In Search of the American Wilderness, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2011.  [Originally 1990]

Original Wisdom

Original Wisdom is an unforgettable book.  Like all humans, author Robert Wolff was born a wild animal, ready to enjoy a pleasant life, romping around in a tropical wilderness.  He grew up in Sumatra, the son of Dutch parents.  His father was a doctor.  The young lad suffered the misfortune of being educated by the dominant culture.  It trained him for an unnatural life of schedules, destinations, and anxiety.  His wildness was paved over, and his consciousness became disconnected from All-That-Is.

Wolff was interested in healing, and hoped to become a doctor, but World War II interrupted his plans.  After the war, he became a social psychologist, and worked on a number of government projects.  Work included numerous visits to rural villages in Malaysia, where life was very laid back.  The people were “soft, gentle, polite.”  Villagers were the opposite of city people, who tended to be “crude, loud, insensitive.”

Oddly, the patients in Malaysian mental hospitals included whites, Indians, and many Chinese — but no Malays, who were half of the population.  Malay villages had a healthy sense of community.  They accepted the presence of people who were odd; there was never a thought of sending them away.  Everyone knew the village thief, and no one reported him to the police, because he belonged where he was.  Malays respected one another.

Wolff was grateful that he had learned to speak several languages, because this ability expanded his awareness.  Languages are unique products of the cultures in which they evolve.  Different cultures perceive reality in different ways, and many ideas cannot be accurately translated from one language to another.  Consequently, it was clear to him that the Western worldview was not the one and only way of interpreting reality.  Most Western people never learn this.  Insanity seems perfectly normal to the inmates of the loony bin.

His career began in the 1950s, the dawn of the most horrific era in human history.  Population grew explosively, as did the ecological blitzkrieg.  Traditional cultures were being exterminated by a plague of bulldozers.  Wolff worked hard to learn and record the knowledge of traditional healers.  He believed that their skills were the time-proven results of thousands of years of trial and error.  A tremendous treasure was on the verge of being lost forever.

He remembered the days before antibiotics, when Western doctors were little better than witch doctors.  He detested modern healthcare, where doctors practiced medicine, not healing.  They were highly skilled at temporarily postponing death via extremely expensive treatments — even if the additional weeks or months of existence were meaningless.  Not long ago, most of those with fading spirits would simply have been allowed to pass to the other side in peace.

In his crusade to preserve ancient knowledge, he met a number of healers who had not been the apprentices of venerable elders.  They acquired their skills via inner knowing.  Intuition told them what herbs to use, and the way to prepare them.  These healers told Wolff to relax; a treasure was not being lost.  The wisdom was always accessible.  When it was needed, someone would find it.  This notion gives Western folks cramps, because they process reality via thinking.

One day, Wolff learned about a tribe of hunter-gatherers who lived in a remote mountain forest — the Sng’oi (or Senoi or Sakai).  Meeting them opened the door to a series of life-changing experiences, a great healing.  They were masters of intuition and inner knowing.  They lived in a spiritual reality, “where things were known outside of thinking.”

Their camps were not close to the road.  Whenever Wolff arrived unannounced for a visit, one of the Sng’oi would be waiting for him in the forest.  The guide would stand up and, without a word, lead him to the village.  This baffled Wolff.  How did they know he was coming?  When asked, they told him that they had no premonition of his arrival.  They had experienced a feeling to go to a place and be there.  When Wolff appeared, they understood why they were there.

They knew each other’s unspoken thoughts, communicating telepathically.  Their shaman could sometimes foresee future events.  In the mornings, the Sng’oi discussed their dreams.  Once, Wolff described a dream.  Its message, they told him, was that he was needed at home.  He returned to his family, and learned that a child had had a medical emergency.

“They had an immense inner dignity, were happy, and content, and did not want anything.”  They loved to laugh and joke.  They were often singing and smiling.  Angry voices were never heard.  Each new day was a blank slate — no plans, no jobs, nothing that had to be done.  They floated, inspired by feelings.  Life in a tropical rainforest was not a tough job.

One evening, while sitting in a group, Wolff went into a trance, and spoke to the others, an experience he did not remember.  A Sng’oi shaman recognized that Wolff had shamanic powers, and offered to open spiritual doors for him.  His name was Ahmeed, and his job description was “to bring new knowledge to the People.”  Wolff accepted his offer.

The learning process involved long, silent walks in the forest, with no food or water.  Wolff was frustrated, because he was thinking like crazy.  It was impossible to still his furiously roaring mind.  He could not hear his inner voice.  At the end of the walks, he was exhausted; his mind fried.

Eventually, his thinker got more and more flaccid, and he learned to pay attention.  Some days, he could float away from his mind, and vividly experience the sounds and smells of the forest.  Everything changed.  The world became intensely alive.  He ceased being an observer, and became a living part of All-That-Is.

After months of practice, he gradually remembered how to be a human being.  “The all-ness was everywhere, and I was part of it.  I cannot explain what went on inside me, but I knew that I had learned something unbelievably wonderful.  I felt more alive than I had ever felt before.  All of me was filled with being.”  He felt great love for the people.  The trees and mosquitoes were his family.

Back in the civilized world, Wolff was no longer the same person.  Inner knowing could be painful, and sometimes had to be turned off.  He could sense the feelings of the people around him, and this could be overwhelming.  “It was frightening to discover how many people think nothing at all, but feel waves of anger, resentment, and bitterness — although they act as if they are deaf and blind to their own feelings.”

As the years passed, Wolff became whole and confident, as his humanness recovered.  Being human was so much healthier than being civilized.  That’s his message.  Even adults can heal.  It’s never too late to try.  “Knowing inside is not something unusual; it is how we are.  All humans can have that connection with All-That-Is.  The connection is within us.”  Cultures without the connection are on a bleak path.

Wolff’s website is here, and many of the stories in his book are here.

Wolff, Robert, Original Wisdom — Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing, Inner Traditions, Rochester, Vermont, 2001.

The Voice of Knowledge

Before they learn how to speak, children are wild, living in their true nature, like all other healthy animals.  They live in a world of feelings.  Life is very cool for the first few years, until the domesticated culture reduces them to domesticated neurotics.  By and by, domesticated adults teach them names, and then language, and then abstract concepts, like good and bad, trendy and dorky.  Young children believe whatever we tell them, even if it’s irrational or toxic.  In this manner, their minds are filled with knowledge, and innocence gets tossed out the window.

Knowledge is made of words, and can only be shared with others via words.  Knowledge is opinions, stories, or gossip, but never truth.  Truth can only be experienced via feelings, never with words.  Anyone who offers you truth is a liar.  Almost all knowledge is lies, and these lies make everyone miserable and crazy, according to Don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Voice of Knowledge.  We reside in an insane society, and it’s no wonder that our knowledge is faulty.  The elders who load our minds with dodgy knowledge are not evil; they simply pass on what they were loaded with — it’s all they know.

The deity of the Judeo-Christian stories was perfect, and humankind was created in his image.  We are the crown of creation.  But not long after we became fruitful, multiplied, and subdued paradise, the deity experienced an embarrassing bout of creator’s remorse.  “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.  And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.”  (Genesis 6:5-6)  Obviously, the final solution was to drown them all.  He was a complicated deity, and more than a little abusive.

This dark tone dominates the knowledge of our society.  You smell bad.  Your clothes are dumb.  You’re stupid and ugly.  You’ll never succeed.  You’re flawed in every way.  You don’t deserve to be loved.  Ruiz doesn’t explore green issues, but it’s easy to see that our toxic knowledge is the driving force behind the spectacular ecocide of our era.  We never doubt that compulsive shopping is the silver bullet cure for whatever ails us.  People will respect us, and life will be grand, if we continuously accumulate trendy status trinkets.  Yet no matter how hard we shop, inner peace is never achieved.  Sigh!

Our world is swarming with beliefs of self-rejection.  If I choose to agree with a belief, it becomes a part of my story.  “My name is Richard, I live in Oregon, I like to learn and write, and I’m a bad person who will never succeed.”  If I choose not to agree, the unwanted belief harmlessly swirls down the drain.  My story is nothing but software, a collection of agreements.  It’s not carved in stone; it’s always changing as the years pass.

The voice of knowledge is the storyteller inside your head.  The thinker never stops jabbering at you, and it never hesitates to disapprove or belittle.  It’s a common mistake to presume that it’s speaking the truth.  Ruiz warns us: “Don’t believe yourself, and don’t believe others.”  In reality, you are far better than what you imagine.  Listen with great care, have an open mind, and deflect incoming lies with the shield of your skepticism.  “The greatest gift you can give yourself is the gift of doubt.”

The heart of Ruiz’s message is that (1) we are ridiculously screwed up, and (2) we can heal ourselves.  Life does not have to be sad and painful.  All humans are artists, and we all have the power to create a really sweet life story, a masterpiece — and we should.  We change the world by changing ourselves.

There are two types of artists: aware and unaware.  The unaware are oblivious to the multitude of lies that contaminate their lives.  Confronting these lies is unpleasant work.  It’s much easier and safer to just believe in them, because everyone else does, too.  They zoom through life on autopilot.  Artists who are unaware bear a striking resemblance to the living dead.

Artists who are aware understand that the path to healing is a process of unlearning, hurling toxic agreements overboard.  Beneath the sludge of lies is the happy wild animal you were as a child.  Young children have no choice, they uncritically absorb the knowledge they are fed.  Older folks do have a choice.  We don’t have to be dead.  We can create a far better story based on nontoxic beliefs, deleting the self-defeating.  Then we can gird ourselves to thrash the super lies: human superiority, materialism, perpetual growth, the glory of civilization, and so on. 

Science-oriented folks may have an impulse to dismiss Ruiz following a quick glance at the cover.  From my point of view, the book is maybe 15 percent sugarcoated woo-woo, but its strengths are the reason why you’re reading about it here.  The scope of the discussion is narrow, focusing on how you can fix your story, extremely useful for some.  But on the far side of the fence, there are other monsters.  (Don’t bother looking for love if you aren’t happily in love with yourself.)

Ruiz presents us with a different model for perceiving reality.  This model reframes the notion of denial.  People who are in denial are not stupid, stubborn, or evil.  They’re just paralyzed by a headful of lies, because they live in a culture foaming with lies, hence they’re perfectly normal.  More importantly, it reframes the integrity of mainstream reality.  “Normal” = crazy.  This is a brilliant and powerful twist.  Luckily, normal is not a life sentence without parole.  He gives you the key to freedom — doubt.  Off with the chains!  Fly away!  Be happy!

Most importantly, Ruiz has found a way to communicate stimulating knowledge in a form that many normal people can hear.  His first book, The Four Agreements, has sold four million copies.  It’s in the top 100 at Amazon.  His books are short, simple, clear, and deep.  For more than a few people, they are mind-altering.  Despite the fact that they will be filed in the New Age box, they are not fluffy, flaky joyrides in magical thinking.  He is not a get-rich-quick quack.  There is power in his words. 

Ruiz, Don Miguel, The Voice of Knowledge, Amber-Allen Publishing, San Rafael, California, 2004.