Earth’s intrigue beckons me as it does for many people. I follow it far and near: Northern Lights, grassy steppe, thick jungle, crunchy New England leaves – place in, place out, Earth astounds. Earth is always doing something brilliant. I revel and marvel at how magically everything comes together, and apart, and together, and how sacred it is that I am a feature of Earth too. Everybody is.
We may not understand how we possibly fit into the great universal design, yet we are here, and when standing before the power of Earth, being here is enough. But as the melting, glowing, flowing seasons repeat themselves faster each time, a grating question that sinks my heart to my gut infiltrates all my delight in Earth: why am I here alone?
From the day I turned thirteen, I wanted to fall in love. I also wanted to explore and understand the world inside out. Maybe I have come as close as possible. Where I once looked out at waterfalls, I soon came to walk behind them in dusty summer and scale up them in icy winter. I immersed myself in every possible way. It was all intoxicating. It was all wrong. I was supposed to be holding somebody’s hand and looking into somebody’s eyes. I wanted to grab onto them and stumble and laugh with them as we strayed into the unknown, the sacredness of the Earth only matched by the sacredness of our connection. I was meant to share with them the depths of my melancholy and the heights of my hope as reflected in the rushing waters and inky skies, as Earth unearthed these deep feelings from inside me.
Instead, I kept my feelings inside me. I had done it all alone. I had waited, achingly, desperately, for over half of my life, for somebody to appear and join me and render my adventures of delight in Earth complete. Place in, place out, it simply hadn’t happened. Now each attempt at retreat to nature from my routine and lonely life and job on the outskirts of a great city, whether I went to a new country or to the marshes behind a local playground, tortured me with grief for what I never had, with deep sorrow over the glorious life and time and learning and growing I had done wrong, getting older each time. Why was I still alone?
And then one day, I was walking up the road to my local pharmacy, and as usual, decided to take the shortcut by scrambling through a few feet of rocks and trees, crossing from the main road to the pharmacy parking lot – when I noticed the sun was setting; a large, fiery and sinking sphere emanating pink daggers across the sky. It appeared to stop the wheel of time for a moment. I decided to stop too. I stood on uneven dirt, rocks, and tree roots, punctuated by two or three empty cans and some glass. A small creek had formed from a recent rainfall and was trickling down the rocks to the parking lot. A fat rabbit gnawed at a misshapen stump. I stood in the middle of it all for a moment and thought more about the question “why.” I have asked it numerous times in my life, usually in response to something hard or ugly that I couldn’t go back and change. Why did it happen this way? Why am I living this? Why did God, the cosmos, the great universal spirit, decide to afflict me with this?
Looking at the rabbit lost in its gnawing, I thought, maybe I don’t need to know why.
Why does the sun hit the grass exactly where it must to create a dewy, sparkling shine? Why do the roots coil and join and break where they must for the animals to perch and gnaw? Why does the sun know how to tinge the clouds soft pink and in turn how do they know when and how to release a gentle or angry rainfall and when it will turn to numbing snow? Why does a creek form in the shape such that all the creatures that need to dip into it will be able to?
Why does the summer heat soften its grip at exactly the right time? Why can a bird hear the sneaking feet of a fox? Why does the tree canopy provide enough shade and shelter, but not too much? Why do we all need different things to survive and why are the elements of our survival unmistakable to us, and to the Earth that so perfectly designed and planted them before us?
Why does the ocean on one side of the world mirror the scent and volume and ferocity of the ocean on the other side of the world, such that people with nothing else in common still feel same the call to the sea?
Why have I been rewarded, cursed, spared, blessed, burdened, alive for all that has come my way?
As a child, I sought an explanation to the infinite miracles of the natural world surrounding me. But as an adult, I have become content to not know why. My curiosity is replaced with something else: awe. It is enough to accept and relish what is before me. It is enough to slow time and bask in it. It is more than enough; it is a gift. To be presented with something beautiful and confusing, I simply give myself to it and allow the experience to engulf me until I am new and better in some way.
The natural world offers a full range of experiences. Beyond the experiences we search out, it offers those we inevitably encounter in day-to-day life. Not of all these can unfold as we envision. Not all of these can satisfy the question why. And maybe they don’t have to; it is enough for me to simply accept and relish and be present for each experience so I learn what I can learn and become who I am becoming.
When I stop asking why, I am met with something more satisfying than any answer I might seek. I am met with an unknowable earth suspended in a limitless universe that makes no mistakes. I am met with stillness, my own breath, the here and now, peace. The peace I feel every time I discover a new place, or an old place in a new way.
I am met with a delightfully fat rabbit gnawing on a misshapen stump.
