Are you going to let the last bit of wildness in you die?
Will you turn the lock to your own cage and throw the key just out of arm’s length? Let the animal inside you be snuffed out and swept away by the call to civilized life?
Or will you fight for its right to live?
I’m going to fight for it. In my body and yours.
I just spent five weeks roaming the paved streets of Europe and returned to the tree-lined roads of Western Canada where I currently live. It’s a juxtaposition in places I feel at home, a juxtaposition that has always lived inside of me. Me, who prefers to be barefoot as much as I love to stroll the marble floors of the world’s best museums. Me, who loves my oak tree as much as I love a meal served on china. There’s a reason I can be at peace in either place. Its name is wildness, and it is my home no matter where I go.
Home in the Heartland
I don’t know when or where I found this home. Maybe it was in my childhood, a time spent diving into the unseen depths of the Great Lakes. Or perhaps I gained it in my teenage years, roaming Detroit in the 90s and finding beauty in the way nature took back the buildings no one else wanted.
However my wild home inside was built, it has allowed me to abide by the constant pull back and forth between natural and urban living that has defined my life. It has given me the dexterity to balance on a teeter totter that opens to sharp teeth no matter which way I land. I sway this way and that and still find my primal center, the kind that knows when to lick something clean and when to bite back.
My message from this place is simple: whether you’re wearing denim or furs, the wild is alive in you. You have no choice about that part; your only decision lies in how much you want to tame it.
Fear This
Humans are strange animals (certainly no shock to anyone who has been alive long enough). For all of our trespasses our worst is that we forget we are animals. We deny nature’s heart in us, dismiss her power even while it pumps life through the thickets of arteries and veins in our bodies.
Perhaps we reject the nature within us because we fear its unpredictability. Nature is indeed an erratic genius. She is at one moment a nurturing mother and the next, a bloodthirsty death goddess. She feeds us and kills us; these are her only jobs.
Her powers on both ends should be revered, but our focus has been too fixed on consuming the gifts of the mother in a pitiful gluttony. We leave her so hungry she has no choice but to eat us alive through hurricanes, forest fires, and cancer cells.
The way out – of the mess of destruction, of the fearful maze of uncertainty – is to step back into worshiping the wild. Within us and outside of us.
IYKYK
Those of us who know – those of us who hear and speak with this great capricious force – understand that the true reason we run from wildness is not out of fear of its tidal waves, but because of its power to generate life and destroy what gets in the way of that. Yet, when we know that it can fuel us with the joy of being alive, we run to it.
The wisdom of the wild, like that of the erotic, follows life force. To know it is to ride a savage beast as it jumps from one thing to the next for the joy of its own creation. And yours. It’s a simple task, but not always easy.
To be wild is to claim this beast as not only your familiar, but as your vital essence. One that needs you as much as you need it. Your job is to follow it and live according to its fancies. To heed its warnings when caution is needed. To free fall when it promises a safe landing. This requires you to return to your senses, to hear what you hear, see what you see, and feel exactly what you feel. It is a life built on trusting the mystery, and a recognition that you’ll never have it all figured out.
Figure This
This desire to figure it all out is exactly what kills the wild parts of us. It puts us in tightly laced shoes that make our feet ache and blister in the hopes of protecting them from the elements.
The wish to decipher the cryptic text of the wild is based on a misbelief that we are separate from nature and therefore her subject if not her sovereign. This is why we fence ourselves in. Regulate the air temperature. Sterilize the surfaces, and thereby do the same to the living beings who reside in them.
Of course we benefit from the technologies that have come from our desire to manipulate the environment. We don’t need to go live in tree hollows to embrace the wild, but simply need to admit that it is our untamed curiosity that inspires us to invent all these conveniences. They are the creations of our free-range minds that are constantly exploring “what if?” Rather than trying to tame our natural wonder that has given us AI, let’s use all that is “artificial” to give us space to roam in the creative expression that follows the rushing river of life force.
To misquote Thoreau, this is how we avoid becoming tools of our tools.
Wild Isn’t Feral
I must make a distinction: Claiming your wildness is different from being feral. A feral creature lives in fear of the paved path. It is one so removed from the thinking mind that it risks damaging itself or another by turning away from what allows the young to grow old enough to claim their wisdom. If freedom is a trade-off for security, and vice versa, to be feral is a move too close to the teetering edge.
Freedom or Security
Neither freedom nor security is the wrong direction; it’s more a matter of degrees. A matter of how delicately you can balance at the middle point as it shifts with the wind, with the tides. On this tightrope it’s just as easy to become addicted to clinging to the edges as it is to get hooked on the thrill of running across a razor-thin wire just to laugh at death.
In all things, seek balance. Become untamable, but reverent. Be unafraid to change your mind, but remain steadfast in what you know to be true. Be unwilling to live by rules that are against your better knowing, yet remember that being unleashed is a privilege that comes with great responsibility.
So go on, do your dance. Admit you’re an animal, be it predator, prey, or, like most humans, both. When you do, you’ll find you can sink your claws into bare earth just as easily as you can rest them on carpeted floors.
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