Will You Listen to the Trees?
By Caroline Allen
We all want to do something about climate change, right? Yet, many of us feel overwhelmed and incapable of action. What could a single individual possibly do?
When I began writing my first novel Earth, I wanted to explore fictitiously my childhood on a rural subsistence farm in the Midwest where as early as 5 I had to help with the butchering.
Meghan put the pan of boiling water in front of me. I always had to dunk. She hated the stench of it. Father had just butchered twenty hens. After he cut their heads off, their bloody bodies flew across the field, white hot shots of crimson lightning. I had to run after them and collect them in a pile. Meghan stood back watching it all with her arms crossed and her face disgusted. I held the first body upside down by the ankles and dunked it into the boiling water. The stink of matted feathers, boiled skin, and blood steamed up into my hair.
It seems obvious, right, that a book called Earth would heal my relationship to the earth, but still the healing that happened afterwards took me quite by surprise. I am not the only one with a confused relationship to animals and the earth,. As a book coach, I’ve come across many people who do not necessarily have a healthy relationship to nature. Either they were raised in a city apartment and had no experience of nature, or their manicured suburb had no hint of the true wildness of real nature, or their relationship with plants and animals was discouraged for more successful pursuits.
The healing that happened in my relationship to nature was multi-dimensional and as I’ve said, unexpected. I hadn’t lived near nature my entire adult life. After college I moved away from the Midwest and became an international journalist, living and working in Tokyo, throughout Southeast Asia and in London. I then lived in Seattle and near Boston. I had absolutely no relationship to the land.
Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet,
and the winds long to play with your hair.
- Khalil Gibran
When I finished Earth, I found myself choosing rural Oregon as my next home. I lived near farm animals for the first time since I was a kid. It was so silent at night that I couldn’t sleep -- the quiet roared loudly in my ears. I was blown away by the magic of fog playing in moss-covered branches. My poor Facebook friends were regaled with hundreds of bucolic photos.
It’s been three years now, and in my healing with the earth, I have come to understand that the single greatest thing a person can do to shift the global abuse of nature, whether it’s toxification of the soil, air pollution, deforestation, or animal abuse is to have a personal relationship with the soil, with trees and with animals. Then our fight for this earth transcends the intellectual and becomes personal.
I’m also a visual artist and during this healing process, I found myself painting the portraits of goats, deer, sheep and cows. I partnered with farm animal rights movements to help raise awareness using visual art. Believe me, if you’d have told me five years ago I’d be living in rural Oregon hanging out with cows, I would have laughed at you.
I found myself going vegan. As an adult, as my friends could tell you, I was a lover of fat greasy bacon cheese burgers, and thick bloody steaks. But something happened spiritually, and I just didn’t want to kill animals anymore.
I now live on 88 acres. Some days I cannot believe it myself. I take hour-long walks in the woods with my dog, Atlas. Every day, I learn anew that the only real way any of us are going to heal the planet is to heal our connection to rock and river. And that begins with having some kind of connection to blackberry bushes and wild rabbits. That means going deep into the forest and listening to the trees.
Caroline Allen is the author of the Elemental Journey Series: Earth, Air, Fire, Water. Earth was published in 2015 by Booktrope Editiosn. Air is due out this autumn . To learn more about Caroline, her novels, visual art and book coaching business, go to carolineallen.com. Artwork by Caroline Allen, Blue Goat, part of Operation 365, one painting a day for one year.
