Twenty of us sit on wet tree trunks, each on our own fur, around a wood fire for the introduction round. Next to me sits a man with homemade leather footwear on his feet. Opposite me someone with a turned up animal skin as a coat. Above the fire hangs a large pot with water and pine branches in it.
“I don't really like being in groups,” I say when it's my turn.
If I had been really honest, I would have said: not in these types of groups. It feels like we're going to play primal man. And I don't like costume parties. Even less when there's a back-to-nature vibe. As much as I enjoy reading about the lives of hunter-gatherers, I don't want to be associated with people who make this their hobby.
Yet here I am.
“I just got over it,” I continue, “because I really want to experience nature. I think I feel something of a connection.” I get nods of agreement and welcoming looks.
Nature has occupied me all my life. When I was ten, I suddenly decided not to eat meat anymore, after reading while doing a school paper how polluting factory farming is. During my studies, I studied the question of how we can develop as humanity without destroying nature. And in my working life I write about those same themes.
At the same time, I am hardly in nature. Well, I sometimes walk, run or cycle through it; the young forest next to my house provides a soothing backdrop for my work breaks. But I never stay there long and my mind is usually elsewhere. As soon as my exercise intermezzo or telephone conversation is over, I quickly return to the built environment. Back to my computer to read about nature.
Why don't I ever stick around a little longer? Am I not listening to the birds? To the rustling of the leaves? Am I not making contact with the ground under my feet?
There are plenty of reasons: a deadline is approaching, the children have to be picked up from school, it is raining. But there is another reason lurking deeper beneath the surface, as I realized when I delved into the work of ecologist and philosopher Matthijs Schouten: shame.
Natural shame
In his book The other and the own (2022), Schouten describes the dominant rational view with which we view the world in Western culture: we categorize our environment based on what we observe and divide it hierarchically. “But there is also another approach,” says Schouten on the phone. “I always explain this to my students by asking: 'Who here is in love?' There are always a few hands raised. “Describe your loved one to me,” I then ask. Then people do not come up with a list of sensorially observable characteristics such as weight, height or heart rate. A person truly in love comes up with metaphors such as 'when my loved one smiles, the sun rises'. From the first approach, that is of course complete nonsense. But that first approach is not enough to express our love. Here we enter the domain of poetry, art. And it is about relationality, about feeling, experiencing and being meaningfully connected.”
According to Schouten, we are ashamed of that second domain. “Going into nature and letting it touch you, maybe even feeling in love, that's what we call 'subjective'. That is something for the weekend, and should not become intertwined with serious matters such as our work.”
In his book, Schouten describes how the Western view of nature is based in the urban environment of Classical Antiquity. Plato took Socrates out in the dialogues Phaedrus say: “I cannot learn from the landscape and the trees, but I can learn from people in the city.” The image of nature that emerged from this is diametrically opposed to the Hindu and Buddhist image of nature, in which wisdom was traditionally sought in nature. When Christianity also removed the soul from nature, which was reserved only for humans, according to the late French sociologist and philosopher Bruno Latour, nature was reduced to nothing more than a collection of objects and colonizable space.
“Many of us still walk around outside with that look,” says Schouten. So am I. I stay far away from tree huggers. I like to see myself as factual and objective, not as someone who feels something for nature. I always write about it from a rational view. And even in my spare time I behave according to the detached norm: like an exercising, talking on the phone, well-thinking person.
But do I really know nature if I only know it from books? When I never connect with it? Doesn't nature itself have something to teach me? Time to look my natural shame in the eye. I took a course at Bosbeweging, a school where you learn to survive and connect with nature in an indigenous way.
Resilient moss
My feet are pale. The bluish white contrasts sharply with the dark forest floor. My sturdy outdoor shoes, specially greased for this weekend, had to be taken off. “You experience the forest better barefoot,” said teacher Tibbe de Raat.
We are a diverse group. There is a doctor, a former marine, a carpenter, a communications advisor, a teacher. All types that I did not immediately expect on a course like this. And there are three more volunteers. They have clearly been here before. They wear the homemade shoes and the animal skin coat. One has a woven jute bag around his shoulder. The other a braided necklace. They seem less focused on the people present, but more on the environment. Their calm, serene appearance gives the impression that they are observing things that I am not aware of.
We all leave our shoes behind. Except for Tibbe de Raat, he was already barefoot. We move slowly through the trees in a long line. We feel the icy cold ground with our toes, always looking for a safe place to shift our weight. Sometimes a stinging pine needle, or even more painful: a pine cone. Then wet leaves or velvety soft, resilient moss. I never realized before that my feet are so sensitive. That they can provide me with so much information about my environment. Like I have an extra pair of hands.
A slight bend in the knees and our gaze emphatically not on the ground, but forward; the feet do the work independently. 'Fox pass', De Raat called it. We creep along silently. Dusk falls. De Raat whispers that we can all follow our own path until we are called back. The cold dulls the sensations in my feet. I focus on the environment. I see bushes and trees whose names I don't know, but I move between them in a fluid movement. I jump over a puddle, climb down a steep hill, slide over a fallen tree. It feels like a dance, in silence, together with the forest.
I hear rustling up ahead. What will it be? A mouse? A deer? The wind? I get goosebumps.
Suddenly I feel it in every fiber: this is what my ancestors have always done. This is what I was made for. Sneaking around in nature, sensing what the environment is telling me. What a waste that my body wears out all day sitting in front of a computer. My whole body, all my senses, are there to allow me to attune to nature. I am a collector. A predator!
Well, potentially then. Put me blindfolded in a city and I will tell you exactly whether I am standing in a run-down shopping street or in a yuppie neighborhood. Put me in the woods and I can't tell the difference between a cuckoo and a hawk. Let alone that I can get a meal there. But the ability is within me. I have always only used it for the man-made world.
Nose grease
The next day we learn to make a fire without matches. De Raat lists the required items: a fire bow (a bent branch with a tensioned cord attached to it), a spindle (a round stick with a point at bot
h ends), a motherboard (a small board in which the fire is turned), a pressure block ( a piece of hard wood to press the spindle into place) and some nose grease.
“Nose grease?!” I almost choke on my forest herbal tea. “Well, the fat from your scalp also works fine,” De Raat continues matter-of-factly. “And we often have some fat in our auricle. It helps prevent the top of your spindle from burning in the pressure block.”
Unbelievable! That shiny substance that I so furiously brushed off my face as a teenager and was still out of my hair is 'useful' here. An easy to harvest raw material. Luckily I haven't washed in two days. I drag the blackened tip of my spindle across my nostrils and see how beautifully it starts to shine.
At dinner I eat my first bite of mouse: it came from the trap in the cooking tent and we skinned it and roasted it on the fire.
We play hide and seek in the dark. Singing around the campfire about respect for the forest, nightfall and a song entitled 'Hail Mother Earth'; Forest movement variation on 'Hail Mary'. I sing along with all my heart.
At night I unzip my tent and slide my mat out a bit to see the starry sky. I listen to the owls, the rustling of the leaves and the soft nibbling of insects. It gives me a feeling of connection that I have never experienced before. A fulfillment of an emptiness I didn't know existed. I slowly feel myself becoming a primal human. But it doesn't feel like playing. Maybe this feels more real than my daily life.
The next day when I am looking for edible mushrooms, a hiker approaches. Matte-shiny down jacket, black with gold sneakers, dog on a leash. She is not part of the course. She looks at me with a look between amazement and mild panic. I become aware of my appearance. My feet black from the earth, unkempt hair, definitely a dirty face.
I press my feet firmly into the ground. I feel love for nature. I am nature. And I do my utmost not to be ashamed of that.
I kindly say hello to her.
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