ESSAYS,  ARTICLES,  REVIEWS  AND  DISCUSSION  GROUPS

by Cindy Spring with Sandra Lewis

EarthLight Magazine #48, Summer 2002 -- Vol, 13, No. 3

URL: www.earthlight.org/2003/essay48_closetohome_pff.htm 

"I pray to the birds–I pray to the birds
because they remind me of what I love
rather than what I fear."

–Terry Tempest Williams

I spent a recent Saturday in a marsh along the edge of San Francisco Bay watching the birds. What dazzling diversity in a narrow two-mile strip: tall white night herons with purple black hoods, colorful shovelers, Canadian geese honking overhead, a pair of gorgeous ruddy ducks, a harrier hawk poised in midair, countless mallards and gulls and one great white egret. I was with a group of about 25 folks on their monthly outing in a yearlong program called "A Sense of Place." Begun in April, 2002, the program consists of twelve outings to various sites near Palo Alto; each one is designed to "foster in participants a deeper understanding of and connection to the place in which we live." Each outing has had its own leader, either a naturalist or a park ranger. On a weekday evening prior to the outing, the participants meet to hear a talk on a broader aspect of local ecology or natural history that puts the upcoming experience in context. What a fine idea!

My colleague, Sandra Lewis, and I met the organizers of "A Sense of Place" in the summer of 2002 at an earth literacy meeting. We knew immediately that we wanted to do a similar program in our part of the San Francisco Bay Area. "Close to Home: Exploring Nature’s Treasures in the East Bay," launches on April 7, 2003. For the next twelve months, we’ll explore local geology, native plants and wildlife, watershed dynamics, creeks, hiking trails and the history and culture of early native peoples. Our first Saturday outing is to Mount Diablo to see a huge profusion of wildflowers and to learn how to identify birds by their songs. The mountain has been recognized as "the birthplace of the world" by local native peoples for centuries.

The vision for "Close to Home" is "to awaken in us an awareness of the East Bay’s natural beauty as part of our own identity." Three years ago I knew very little about the natural history of my area"–how the land, bodies of water, and geological features were formed and the ways they interact with each other. (There was no San Francisco Bay just 10,000 years ago.) I didn’t know the creek nearest my home. I didn’t know any of the migratory birds and their flyway path. I was in good company. The late Galen Rowell confessed in his marvelous book, Bay Area Wild (Sierra Club Books, 1997): "Though I had spent decades celebrating the grand design of natural areas around the world in words and photographs, I had looked right past the extraordinarily rich and varied wild hills, valleys, delta, bay, ocean, islands and mountains in my own backyard."

So why this attraction to earth literacy? Why embark on a program to learn more about my bioregion? Because I’m feeling compelled to make a deeper connection to my home, the Earth. The naturalist who led that marsh walk demonstrated something I’d never learned–the ability to tune in to subtleties of shape, size and coloration of the birds. Maybe the attraction is a survival instinct, given the perilous conditions in the world. What I feel is this urgent longing for balance, for the sanity of the cycles of nature to counter the seeming insanity of some powerful fellow humans. Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh said sometimes looking up at the blue sky was the only thing that kept him going in the face of the horrors of aiding the dying who had been hit with napalm and shrapnel bombs.

Maybe it’s a progression in my spiritual growth–the evolving recognition that my existence embodies earth, water, air and fire. The beauty of natural settings never fails to nourish my soul. Maybe what’s dawning in human consciousness, as Thomas Berry says in The Great Work (Bell Tower, 1999), is "how the human community and the living forms of Earth might now become a life-giving presence to each other." One place to begin is to learn how we humans–by our presence– irrevocably impact the lives of other species. If I want to make ecosystemic principles the basis for my life, how can I integrate them except by spending time in nature and learning what they are?

We’re calling the participants in "Close to Home" a "learning community." Where else could we begin but close to home? Just as the founders of "A Sense of Place" were thrilled to give away the template for their program, so are we. You can access their information through the website for the Foundation for Global Community at www.globalcommunity.org/sense/. Please help yourself to our ideas at www.close-to-home.org.

Cindy Spring is co-director of "Close to Home" and co-author of Wisdom Circles, A Guide to Self-Discovery and Community Building in Small Groups. She can be reached at spring5@mindspring.com.  Sandra Lewis is co-director of "Close to Home" and can be reached at sel27@earthlink.net.