Connecting to the natural world means more than learning names

               For people in hunting cultures, a plant, an animal, or a rock is more than the literal real object. The name of the object more than identifies it, but also signifies all of the ideas and meanings the object symbolizes. This  way of thinking is a thinking oriented to essence, not form. Meaning comes when in contemplation -- listening, watching, and waiting. It is "seeing with the eyes shut"-- it is the connections that the mind makes as the physical object is seen (and after.) Some names are possessive, (like Wilson's Warbler) but the best are referent. Referent names comes from its appearance,  relationship to another organism, or  community of organisms (black-tailed gnatcatcher.) This way of thinking promotes a mutual courtesy between human and other members of the ecosystem that surrounds us

               The corporeality of what is visible is only the beginning. The hunter's eye seeks to understand, so identification is only the beginning. Observation is the key.  Appearance and behavior can be more than cause and effect. The human mind adds metaphysics in the search for understanding.

               For example, quail are secretive, their calls when unstressed quiet, soft, and gentle. Such calls become symbolic -- when a hunter knows that he/she is moving through a habitat as a part of the surroundings, not as an intruder. The calls are a symbol of the balance a hunter must find to be in tune with the surroundings. Successful hunters in a hunting culture say, "I felt as one with what surrounded me."

               Turkey need water to survive. A turkey feather becomes a remembrance of water. A turkey feather was often used by American Indians as an offering to a spring, a prayer that the spring will always be there, and a prayer of thanks for the water. The mind takes another step -- a turkey feather becomes an offering for the hope of rain. Rain brings the germination of seeds, so turkey feathers become symbols of germination.

               Swallows are symbols of water as well. They drink on the wing, swooping over a waterhole. They personify rain, for their graceful swoops are like light rain in gusty winds. Swallows are like the cool breezes after a rain, soft and gentle. their voice is a soft twittering -- the gentleness and articulate voices are like the murmurings of happy babies. Babies thrive in established secure lives. Swallows live in villages - clusters of mud nests on cliffs (and now highway overpasses and buildings.) The mud nests are like Southwestern adobe houses, so swallows become guardians of house and village, a symbol of civilized life.

               Hummingbirds display in an arc, like the arc of a rainbow. Their iridescent colors flash briefly, like the colors of a rainbow. They feed on flowers, the result of rain, so they become symbols of the glories of rain and its life-giving force.  Metaphysical thought is fleeting, quick glimpses at understanding what is too large to comprehend. Hummingbirds, by their fleet flight are symbols of metaphysical thoughts. Metaphysical thoughts are ephemeral, incorporeal, of the spirit world, therefore hummingbirds are messengers of the spirit world.

               Birds (and other organisms) are food, as well as symbols. Ritual connects the two paths. Ritual is more than human. In animal behavior it is phylogenetically adapted motor patterns of communication. It is displacement, the discharge of aggression, or bond formation. When a redwing blackbird bows and lifts its epaulets, and another points his beak to the sky, the cattails resound with ritual. The wild is full of ritual.

                Science is a ritual. The act of gathering information has a purpose of its own. There needs to be no goal or reason for research, no overlying economic necessity. Science helps us understand corporeality. We can never know all  of how organisms are interrelated. We can never know enough to control and direct life.  Science can help us be less ignorant and arrogant, although science has proven in the past to make us arrogant and hurtful. Our hurtful acts, however, have come from ignorance of the interrelationships that surround us.

               For millennia humans said to the earth "we are yours," not having the history or technology to see more than our immediate surroundings, like babies. For the last century we have been adolescent, learning the tools of knowledge and telling the earth "You are mine!" Now, with the expanding science of ecology, and the development of ecopsychology, ecopedagogy,  and ecocriticism, we are beginning to say with the earth, "We are one!"