“Singing whales, talking trees, dancing bees, birds who make art, fish who navigate, plants who learn and remember. We are surrounded by intelligences other than our own, by feathered people and people with leaves. But we've forgotten. There are many forces arrayed to help us forget -- even the language we speak.

I'm a beginning student of my native Anishinaabe language, trying to reclaim what was washed from the mouths of children in the Indian Boarding Schools. Children like my grandfather. So I'm paying a lot of attention to grammar lately. Grammar is how we chart relationships through language, including our relationship with the Earth.

Imagine your grandmother standing at the stove in her apron and someone says, "Look, it is making soup. It has gray hair." We might snicker at such a mistake; at the same time we recoil. In English, we never refer to a person as "it." Such a grammatical error would be a profound act of disrespect. "It" robs a person of selfhood and kinship, reducing a person to a thing.

And yet in English, we speak of our beloved Grandmother Earth in exactly that way: as "it." The language allows no form of respect for the more-than-human beings with whom we share the Earth. In English, a being is either a human or an "it."

Objectification of the natural world reinforces the notion that our species is somehow more deserving of the gifts of the world than the other 8.7 million species with whom we share the planet. Using "it" absolves us of moral responsibility and opens the door to exploitation. When Sugar Maple is an "it" we give ourselves permission to pick up the saw. "It" means it doesn't matter.

But in Anishinaabe and many other indigenous languages, it's impossible to speak of Sugar Maple as "it." We use the same words to address all living beings as we do our family. Because they are our family.

What would it feel like to be part of a family that includes birches and beavers and butterflies? We'd be less lonely. We'd feel like we belonged. We'd be smarter.

In indigenous ways of knowing, other species are recognized not only as persons, but also as teachers who can inspire how we might live. We can learn a new solar economy from plants, medicines from mycelia, and architecture from the ants. By learning from other species, we might even learn humility.

Colonization, we know, attempts to replace indigenous cultures with the culture of the settler. One of its tools is linguistic imperialism, or the overwriting of language and names. Among the many examples of linguistic imperialism, perhaps none is more pernicious than the replacement of the language of nature as subject with the language of nature as object. We can see the consequences all around us as we enter an age of extinction precipitated by how we think and how we live.

Let me make here a modest proposal for the transformation of the English language, a kind of reverse linguistic imperialism, a shift in worldview through the humble work of the pronoun. Might the path to sustainability be marked by grammar?

…English is a secular language, to which words are added at will. But Anishinaabe is different. Fluent speaker and spiritual teacher Stewart King reminds us that the language is sacred, a gift to the People to care for one another and for the Creation. It grows and adapts too, but through a careful protocol that respects the sanctity of the language.

He suggested that the proper Anishinaabe word for beings of the living earth would be Bemaadiziiaaki. I wanted to run through the woods calling it out, so grateful that this word exists. But I also recognized that this beautiful word would not easily find its way to take the place of "it." We need a simple new English word to carry the meaning offered by the indigenous one. Inspired by the grammar of animacy and with full recognition of its Anishinaabe roots, might we hear the new pronoun at the end of Bemaadiziiaaki, nestled in the part of the word that means land?

"Ki" to signify a being of the living earth. Not "he" or "she," but "ki." So that when we speak of Sugar Maple, we say, "Oh that beautiful tree, ki is giving us sap again this spring." And we'll need a plural pronoun, too, for those Earth beings. Let's make that new pronoun "kin." So we can now refer to birds and trees not as things, but as our earthly relatives. On a crisp October morning we can look up at the geese and say, "Look, kin are flying south for the winter. Come back soon."

Language can be a tool for cultural transformation. Make no mistake: "Ki" and "kin" are revolutionary pronouns. Words have power to shape our thoughts and our actions. On behalf of the living world, let us learn the grammar of animacy. We can keep "it" to speak of bulldozers and paperclips, but every time we say "ki," let our words reaffirm our respect and kinship with the more-than-human world. Let us speak of the beings of Earth as the "kin" they are.”

-- Robin Wall Kimerer, “Nature Needs a New Pronoun: To Stop the Age of Extinction, Let’s Start by Ditching “It”, Yes! Magazine, 4/1/15, published on the Truthout website (truth-out.org).

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Last week I briefly discussed “Indigenous Insights,” referring to some native wisdom that our often “nature-blind” culture might benefit from knowing.

I mentioned the proposal to rename Columbus Day “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” to honor the original inhabitants (whereas Columbus was a far-from-honorable man).

The above excerpt reminds us that the language we use can help desensitize us to the modern exploitation and destruction of the natural world that endangers all life.

It’s easy to think that such problems won’t personally affect us -- except they will, of course. That’s the case for global warming, the extinction of other species, etc.

The science of ecology essentially teaches that all living things or beings are in some way connected to other living things. That’s something earth-dwelling peoples have known for thousands of years. Our ancestors once knew, but their descendants forgot. Native teachings and language could help us reconnect with that wisdom.

-- Charlie Cook

 
“’Time is life’. With these three words, Karma Tshiteem, Secretary of the Bhutan Gross National Happiness Commission, ended his brief description of Bhutan’s distinctive approach to economic development. It caught my attention because of the striking contrast to our common Western phrase, ‘Time is money.’

 The event I was attending was a small international gathering primarily of indigenous environmental leaders. I was privileged to be among the few nonindigenous writer-activists invited to join them.

Recognizing the need for a new path, indigenous peoples around the world are revisiting the wisdom teachings of their respective traditions as a guide to their survival in a world dominated by institutional forces that have long sought to wipe those teachings from our collective memory.

Some among us are realizing that we, too, have much to learn from the traditional indigenous understanding of what Goldtooth referred to as “The Original Instructions.”

The Original Instructions call us to recognize Earth as our living mother and to honor and care for her as she cares for us. In the West we have forsaken the Original Instructions in favor of an economic theory that calls us to treat Earth’s resources as saleable commodities.

…There is good reason why the wisdom at the heart of the traditional indigenous worldview strikes a deep and appealing chord in the human psyche.

Those indigenous people who maintain their cultural identity view the world through a very different lens than do those of us who view the world through a Western cultural lens. The implications of the difference are profound.
 
Traditional Indigenous Worldview:

Time: Time is life and is experienced through the rhythms of life’s daily, seasonal, and generational circular flow. As humans we must be ever mindful of our responsibility to meet our own needs in ways that assure life’s continued healthful flow and balance now and for generations to come. The Gross National Happiness Index developed by the nation of Bhutan appropriately assesses economic performance based on indicators of the health and well-being of people living in harmonious balance with one another and nature.

Relationships: All beings are related and interconnected. It is our individual human duty to recognize and honor the rights of all beings, including the river, the rock, and the glacier. Mother Earth provides our means of living. Her bounty is a gift that we received in common and must share, respect and care for in common. None among us created that bounty and no one has a right to claim it for their exclusive personal benefit. We are entitled only to take what we need and bear a sacred responsibility to give back or share the rest—all the while respecting the natural balance of creation and the Original Instructions that constitute a higher law to which all human laws are inherently subordinate.

Place:  Earth is our sacred mother. Each being has intrinsic value and its rightful place within an interconnected whole. Our personal and collective connection to our place on Earth is sacred and inalienable. Individual human identity is linked to and defined by a deep and enduring relationship to our place and to the vocation through which we sustain ourselves and fulfill our responsibility to and for the community that in turn sustains us.”

-- David Korten, “A Plea for Rio+20: Don’t Commodify Nature”, Yes Magazine, April 24, 2012.

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Columbus Day was two weeks ago, and many of you know that for years there’s been a growing movement to rename the holiday Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

That’s to honor our continent’s original inhabitants, whose land was stolen by our ancestors, who practiced unspeakable brutality toward many of these peoples.

Historians tell us that Columbus was far from being the heroic figure he’s long been portrayed as. Among other things, he enslaved, abused, and killed natives.

Native Americans were no more perfect than the rest of us, but the majority lived peacefully and with dignity, not the “bloodthirsty savages” often portrayed by Hollywood.

Much has been written about the wisdom of many native traditions. Again, this isn’t to idealize them, but to recognize that they’ve always had a lot to teach us.

For example, the attitudes of our culture toward nature are often exploitative and destructive, whereas native perspectives tended to respect and revere the earth.

And… instead of making short-sighted decisions to maximize profit, native wisdom says it’s vital to consider the effects of our actions on future generations.

It’s regrettable that we’re taught so little about the people whose names grace many of the mountains and parks where we hike (names like Shawangunk, Schunemunk, Kittatinny, Ramapo, Wawayanda, Adirondack, and many more).

But it’s never too late to educate ourselves on these subjects, nor too late to urge/ pressure our government to redress some major injustices that were committed.

-- Charlie Cook

“It was Indian summer, a bluebird sort of day as we call it in the north, warm and sunny, without a breath of wind; the water was sky-blue, the shores a bank of solid gold.”

-- Sigurd F. Olson (1899-1992)

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“Swinging on delicate hinges
the Autumn leaf
almost off the stem”

-- Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)

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This is foliage month, and if you want to see the colors, NOW is the time. In the next couple of weeks the season will be winding down in the areas where we hike.

At higher elevations many trees tend to lose their leaves by the end of October, and in the lowlands there still may be limited color for a week or two into November.

How impressive have the colors been so far? We saw some lovely foliage on our 10/7-10 camping trip in the Adirondacks, like most years, although the colors weren’t quite as bright as last year, probably due to insufficient rainfall (more rain, please!)

Elsewhere the colors have often been beautiful -- a feast for the eyes and senses, as usual -- even if not as dazzling as they are some years, especially in more remote areas.

We first saw a bit of color on some mid-to-late September hikes, although at the start of October green still prevailed. But soon thereafter the foliage arrived in full force.

Right now it’s peak color time in many of the mountain areas where we hike (and past peak at higher elevations), with differences from one region to the next, as usual.

No matter how busy you may be, surely it’s worth trying to find time for some hikes during this always-memorable foliage season and thereafter.

Autumn is far from over once the leaves are down, of course. Conditions for hiking in November often remain close to ideal. And although cold snaps will become increasingly likely, December can be a great month for hiking as well.

-- Charlie Cook

“Adventure is about embracing the unexpected, venturing risk, letting things come to us. We take a break from the endless planning, acquiring and polishing of life. We deliberately release control and welcome an element of surprise and challenge. In doing so, we encounter new dimensions of aliveness (or Life with a capital L as some would say) and, in doing so, often feel or even discover new aspects of ourselves.

The “spirit of adventure,” for me, is the continual willingness to meet and be moved by the unexpected, larger forces and possibilities in life…

By embracing adventure… you’ll take off the blinders that keep you on the same track you’ve always been on (and dislodge yourself from any entrapping boredom and sabotage that can come with being stuck). In this regard, adventure is a potent… antidote to the modern scourges of self-limitation and malaise.”

-- Mark Sisson, "Why a Sense of Adventure is Important," from Mark’s Daily Apple, July 7, 2016 (marksdailyapple.com)

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“The first question which you will ask and which I must try to answer is this, ‘What is the use of climbing Mount Everest?’ and my answer must at once be, ‘It is no use.’ There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behavior of the human body at high altitudes, where there is only a third of an atmosphere, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation. But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron. We shall not find a foot of earth that can be planted with crops to raise food. It’s no use.

So, if you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for.”

-- George Leigh Mallory (1886-1924)

               *      *      *      *      *

“Something hidden. Go and find it.

Go and look behind the Ranges--

Something lost behind the Ranges

Lost and waiting for you. Go!”

-- Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)


(Selections from Everest: The West Ridge, David Brower, Ed., Sierra Club Books, 1966)

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Some of us are much more adventurous than others. But enjoying a taste (or even a “full course meal”) of adventure can add spice to anyone’s life.

Adventure can be stimulating, energizing, exciting, and fun. At the same time, seeking out adventure doesn’t have to mean risking your neck.

Many outdoor activities offer adventure, especially when practiced in wild natural areas, away from the predictable routines and comforts of life at home or work.

Those of you who know me could probably predict from seeing the title of today’s Update that I would be bringing up the subject of hiking. You guessed right!

Hiking is one of many ways we can add a measure of adventure to our lives. Adventure may enter a hike because we can’t predict exactly what will happen.

It’s rare to encounter real danger, or total surprises, other than coming face to face with a wild animal (who unless provoked will almost always flee without incident).

Every day on the trail is sure to be different. Weather, lighting, the people we’re sharing it with, our experiences – all are going to be different each time we hike.

Our senses, nervous systems, minds, and bodies constantly receive new stimulation from endless inputs furnished by the natural world. It’s the opposite of routine.

That stimulation is an important part of the formula for the “hikers high” that many of us know. It’s one reason why we tend to feel terrific during and after a hike.

If you’re not currently doing so regularly, are you willing to “take the risk” of enjoying some healthy doses of adventure…  and all the pleasures that go with it?

-- Charlie Cook