A Coyote Blessing

A prospective new addition to NE this week: another participant, spending the week with us to see how NE might work for and with her. We met at Gazos beach again, our mission to get to know individual coyotes using the five measurements: length and width of the front foot in a walk, length and width of the hind foot in a walk, and length of the stride in a direct register trot. We greeted the coyote tracks as we entered the beach, and got down to business. But before we'd gone along the coyote trails, we found this mystery:


The head was missing, and it had been long since eaten by it's killer and by insects. The shears on the wing feathers, though, looked fresher, with the inner part of the feather less weathered.


The foot, also, had been sheared clean through, as if by garden clippers. The inside of the bone was still red, while the rest of the soft tissues of the carcass had been weathered to brown or gray.


We found this creature along a coyote trail, where the canid had deviated from it's trot into a walk to approach the carcass, then resumed it's previous path and gait past the bird.


We found that and more mysteries on the dunes. We took measurements and sketched individual tracks. We worked past lunch, then the brain burn got to us. One by one we dropped our journals, our measuring tapes, and our pencils. One of our number stripped to his shorts and took a swim in the surf. Another lay down and considered the sand and the sky. Two others had already wandered off in pursuit of a raccoon trail. I sat down and ate my lunch.

After our interlude, we came back together to play the cluster tracking game. Once we finished and were about to start up the beach, someone shouted "look!" We all looked up at the trailhead in time to see the coyote bouncing down the trail in a neat side trot. He zigged and zagged, looked nervously over his shoulder, and showed off many of the other behaviors we had been tracking! When he disappeared into the dunes we rushed over to find his tracks, shouting our thanks to the coyote.

Later around the fire, we talked with our prospective new member about the Native Eyes experience, and about the day. I was in conversation with the new person about how our group has tracked together for ten weeks now. We've seen eachother hit walls already. But it probably wouldn't take long for her to mesh with us-- we were crying in front of eachother on the first day.

Jon joined us at the fire and also took up conversation with our newcomer. I'll try to summarize the conversation.

In Native Eyes, we cry easy and we laugh easy too. Our journeys into connection with nature bring us into contact with powerful experiences that are our birthright. These powerful experiences make us quick to laugh, celebrate, give thanks, and make fun. For most of us, these experiences were stripped from our cultures in violent conquests generations ago. So this understanding also brings us into generations-old grief over what we have lost. For many of us that grief is close to the surface and can easily spill over in tears.

People may expect this program to work within the conqueror model of education that prevails through most of our culture. Compromise with the conqueror model helps those of us who grew up conquered stave off the grief of realizing what we've missed. But it also keeps us from the powerful nature connection experiences that give us back what we've been missing. Native Eyes is one program where they won't compromise. They notice that grief comes up, and keep up the coyote mentoring anyway.

Forgiveness and Evaluations

Before launching into my recap of this week’s class, I’d like to give some background to the events. This entry centers on a custom called Mihi Kala, a description of which follows. Also note, I managed to kill two sets of camera batteries in a row, one right after the other for no apparent reason, so I could not use my camera for this class and this entry will be text only.

Mihi Kala is a custom from Hawaii that centers on the asking and granting of forgiveness. It’s said before the thanksgiving for the evening meal, like a precursor to Grace. The intent of Mihi Kala is to relieve people of the dross of the day and thus to make space for thanksgiving for the gifts of the day. It is a simple process of speaking aloud the harms one has dealt others, the mistakes one has made, any actions one regrets or feels badly about, and of asking for forgiveness for those things. Once others grant forgiveness, it’s important that one also states forgiveness of oneself. This ritual helps bring everyone into presence with each other (and themselves), and what remains in a person after forgiveness is granted is genuine, peaceful thankfulness. Mihi Kala, if practiced honestly, brings the bothersome and painful mental stuff accumulated through everyday life out into the open and releases it with words of forgiveness, clearing the way for a genuine feeling of thankfulness to shine through one’s life.

In Native Eyes, we learned this custom after our buckskin day and crab feast. The seven of us gathered in the yurt and spoke in turn of our regrets and trespasses thus far in the course, and each in turn received forgiveness from the group and from themselves. As everyone said their piece, the spark of hot migraine pain that had been smoldering all day rekindled behind my right eye. When everyone else had spoken and it came to be my turn, I found couldn’t speak. A full-blast migraine blazed in my forehead and my throat tightened up, allowing no more than a squeak to escape. Swamped with pain, frustration, anger, and grief, I just sat in the circle and cried.

We ended the evening without my having said a word. I curled in my sleeping bag under the redwood tree for a long time, feeling the cool night brush by my face, waiting for sleep to bring an escape from the nauseating pain, and from the frustration at not being able to speak from my heart.

In the intervening week, my thoughts on Mihi Kala gestated and finally coalesced into a letter, which I sent out to the Native Eyes crew. Here is an excerpt of my Mihi Kala email:

… I find it very hard to own my flaws, and in asking for forgiveness I've got to state plainly that I do things wrong sometimes, and that I don't live up to my ideals. I think my rational mind panicked and hid at that, and all the more so at speaking from my heart about my own experience.

Please forgive me for acting pridefully, and for trying to look like I do things right all the time. I know this is a strong, entrenched flaw in my personality, and I don't think that just by identifying it I've released it. But I am working on it.

Please forgive me for being less observant and careful than I could be. I think despite my intentions I'm very callous, self-centered and ignorant at times, and I'm sorry for that. I feel like a clumsy toddler in a very subtle, complex and elegant world, but I know I have the potential to be just as subtle, complex and elegant. Forgive me for stumbling around in my self-centered focus and kicking up a bird plow sometimes, and for forgetting to be thankful or ask permission before taking something that I think I need. I have, of course, grown up in urban America, a culture that we all know promotes self-centered callousness. I'm working my way toward a dignified and present adulthood from an artificially lengthened clumsy adolescence, but I'm definitely not grown up yet.

I'd like to ask Mikko especially for forgiveness, as well. I feel a familial closeness with you, and I have a tendency to get annoyed with family. Please forgive me for having a shorter temper with you than I have with others. I love you like a brother. I think perhaps I tend to have less patience with loved ones because I believe I can stop trying to prove myself worthy, and allow myself to have flaws like a bad temper. Regardless of the origin of my behavior, though, I don't like snapping at you Mikko. Please forgive me for being snappish and having a short temper, and for being prickly and distant at times. As with the previous issues, it's something I'm working on.

When I came back to Native Eyes the next week, all of my classmates except for Mikko had read and responded to my letter. I felt lighter having heard forgiveness from them, and I was touched that they empathized, but things also felt unfinished. I had not yet stated aloud forgiveness for myself, and I hadn’t heard anything about Mihi Kala from Mikko.

On Wednesday morning we had an awesome and enlightening bird sit, which I’ll detail later on. After mapping, Native Eyes broke from RDNA and piled into cars to go tracking in the Bolinas mudflats.

Except we weren’t just tracking. The staff had decided to pop-quiz us with a mock Cybertracker evaluation. The format was similar to the Alien Test in the beginning of the year, in that we toured a series of stations answering specific questions about the tracks at each one. We turned in our answers at each station, and were not permitted to discuss or comment on the station until everyone had turned in their answers.

It was fun at first, taking the time to examine tracks in as great a depth as I wanted and challenging my intellect with questions that danced beyond the edge of my understanding. But my weekly headache had resurfaced and with each wrong answer (and about half of them were wrong) I was getting tenser. I hunched my shoulders and curled my ribcage over the ball of fury growing in my belly.

We moved out to another station. When we passed a clump of tall grass the resident Marsh Wren started giving us hell, buzzing his little head off in our direction. I’m sure everyone else heard the little loudmouth rattling on about my bad mood, but at that point I was so off-balance over the test that I didn’t care what kind of bird alarms I set off. I was furious with the world for not providing me with the information to ace this test as I should, and furious with the Native Eyes staff for giving the test and smoking out all my ignorance and lack of skill. Mostly I was furious with myself for being so damn wrong.

Finally I realized that I had to relieve the pressure or I wouldn’t be able to participate in the activity. I decided that I simply wouldn’t turn in my answers, but I’d write them down and otherwise participate normally. I’d get the advantage of learning from the answers without having to expose my ignorance to the world. True, the stated reason for this test was not to evaluate us, per se, but to find our edges so that our instructors could teach us more effectively. But I still resented showing my ignorance.

When I decided to refrain from sharing my answers, I unexpectedly felt the pressure to be right lifted off. I straightened up, my belly relaxed, and began to breathe more deeply again. The wren quieted down, too. And at the end of the testing session I felt light and confident enough to turn in my answers anyway, even though I knew many of them to be wrong.

It helped that I got the last four questions right. But mainly I had desperately needed a respite from the parents-and-public-school-borne pressure to give right answers. I didn’t know how to stop applying that pressure to myself while still participating in the evaluation. After I removed myself from the evaluative context of the activity, though, I could engage on my own terms and I found that I could decide to let myself be wrong. At the end I found that I could judge my success not according to how many questions I answered right, but on whether I chose to move past old and damaging patterns of thought and begin to create new more effective patterns. Granted I fall into old patterns more often than not, but since I’m the only one evaluating myself using these criteria, I can decide to appreciate what progress I do make, rather than think badly about myself for the times I fall back into old patterns. Or I can choose to think badly about myself, as I often do. It’s my decision, not my teacher’s or my parent’s or my boss’s. And the wren, along with his passerine compatriots, will tell me with certainty whether I’ve released those old habits or not.

The following Friday, after class had been over for more than a day, Mikko and I were up predawn and getting ready for our internship with the Riekes Center. Mikko was sitting on my couch reading email as I packed up a lunch. He closed the laptop, walked up silently, and ninja-hugged me from behind, saying, “I love you too, and I forgive you.” I’d forgotten about the Mihi Kala email but now the remainder of a weight I hadn’t known I was carrying lifted, and I breathed easier.

The next morning I woke up with a single phrase resounding in my mind: “Thank you.”

Native Eyes and the Art of Mentoring

I’ve just come back from the Art of Mentoring, held at Commonweal Garden in Bolinas, California. It was quite an experience. I’ve tried to write my experience coherently, but it was such an intense one (the class was an intensive, after all) that I find I need to write it as a semi-fiction, to step back a step and inhabit a different point of view in order to communicate my impressions. What follows, then, is a travelogue from the point of view of a Western explorer visiting an exotic culture, one so different that they are named as a new species of humans.

Homo funis and the Ars Rector festival

I’ve returned from a different land. There are people there, but of an entirely different species than those I live alongside at home. The people are remarkable in their behavior, being social and independent at once, compassionate and welcoming, as well as stalwart in their maintenance of boundaries and rules. They are different enough to warrant a new specific epithet, and have come to be known by some as Homo funis. The land, too, is uncommon in its contradiction and cohesion, being a managed wilderness, wild nature worked like a tool but possessing diversity, complexity and resilience not seen in civilized life, and is sometimes called by the name Ortus Bonus Communis, or simply Ortus. This journal chronicles my contact with this people on this land.

First, some background: I initially encountered rumors of these people years ago, while at school. At that time the rumors were few and garbled, so I continued on my way and filed the information away for later. But as our body of data on Homo funis grew, these people seemed increasingly like a worthwhile subject of inquiry. My explorations then brought me to Africa, where I witnessed both broken and vibrantly vital cultures. The people there inhabit both at once. They do so with deep compassion and readiness to help, held forth from a simple and matter-of-fact understanding: life is hard, but people help each other so that life is possible. The children of villagers, who grew up hunting and farming with their elders, especially exemplify this understanding. When I returned home I vowed to learn my land as well as they knew theirs and to seek out and live from that same understanding in my own culture.

I remembered the rumors of Homo funis and their land, and set off in search of them, for if the rumors were true, those people would posess a similar understanding to the one I encountered in Africa. After much wandering and exploration, I met another explorer in my own country, and we decided to pool our efforts. We met travelers from Ortus, and learned from them for a time. We encountered more of the stories and practices of Homo funis, and through them began to learn more about our land. We joined others on similar journeys and learned from them, and more people saw what we were doing and some came to practice with us. Finally my companion and I received an invitation to join the people of Ortus on their land and learn from them more directly. The meeting place was only a day’s ride away, so we were eager to embark. We packed our saddlebags with three day’s rations and set out riding high in our saddles, ready to chronicle our discoveries and bring them back to our civilized community.

The first meeting would be brief, only two nights and a day. We rode along the coast through thick fog, up the faces of mountains and down again over their drizzle-slick flanks. We arrived at Ortus Bonus Communis, and there were greeted as friends. We camped for the night and made plans for our time with the Homo funis. We were told that we would be able to participate as part of the scout society at the upcoming festival and to seek out one of the elders. The name of the festival is untranslatable into our culture but I have chosen to identify it here as Ars Rector. We returned to civilized land two days after, and made preparations.

We had received word of highwaymen on the coastal route and so rode to Ortus over the mountain instead. After a grueling mountain passage, we arrived in the mid-evening and all was raucous chaos. The village held many times the inhabitants that it had previously, most of whom appeared to be visitors like ourselves, come to celebrate the Ars Rector. My traveling companion and I were soon absorbed into separate Clans and Societies and were given new names, with the elder who we had met previously still nowhere to be found. We made camp and, feeling uncertain and still very bewildered, gathered around the fire.

The first few days it seemed that most of the visitors, including myself, felt a general apprehension and reluctance. None of us knew exactly what would happen here at the Arts Rector, only that we liked what we had heard of the Homo funis culture and came to learn more. Our first lesson came as the greeting custom of Thanksgiving and uniting our minds as one for the festival, a beautiful litany of things in creation with greetings and thanks for each part, and a final statement of unity of mind. Many of us loved the words, but still felt uncertain about our presence there.

Our second lesson came as an introduction to another of the tools of Homo funis culture, moieties. Each of us had been invited into a Society and a Clan. Each Society had a specific role to play, and each Clan had at least one representative from each Society. The Clans became the basic unit of the people for the duration of the festival, and functioned smoothly with different Society members performing different functions for their Clan. My Society held as its responsibilities greeting, welcoming, and warning, among other things. Each Clan also had one or more experienced Homo funis people, to help guide the newcomers in the Ars Rector. Though everyone participated in the activities of the festival, it was clear that some were more knowledgeable than others in these practices. Those who were more experienced took positions of leadership and guided the newcomers.

As the week progressed, most of our number let go of their trepidation and fully integrated into festival life. There was singing, storytelling, many impromptu childlike games, organized gaming, and feasting. Their finest cooks collaborated to give us the best food any human palette has yet encountered, much of it from their own lands but some imported from other villages as well. We were given permission to wander the land and explore beyond the village gates, and some of us adopted special places on the landscape where we felt particularly able to hear the rhythm of the land, and touch its spirit. We wandered to these alone in the morning or at dusk, and kept watch over the landscape. We also gathered frequently to hear the Elders speak, and they told stories and spoke deeply on the Homo funis culture. We stayed up late into the night around the fire, singing and telling jokes and stories. We rose early to listen to the land, and engaged in solemn ceremony. We laughed and cried together throughout the day.

Many of the participants came to love the village and the Homo funis people during our stay, but we all knew that the festival would come to an end, which saddened many. The greeting custom of giving thanks and bringing our minds together has another side to it, though, created to ease parting. This part of the custom consist of participants stating that they are now separating their minds. I have participated in other cultural gatherings of similar intensity, but never have I encountered as effective a mechanism to ease the inevitable parting.

Though the Homo funis claimed that the Ars Rector was an example of their culture in action, it was far more intense than everyday village life for these people. The Ars Rector is, more accurately, an initiation into Homo funis traditions and culture. The festival does not present their culture as it is lived on a day-to-day basis, rather serves as an intensive introduction to culture that creates new behavior in participants.

My traveling companion and I left late on the last day, having packed our supplies and readied our steeds. We made the journey over the mountain in time to see the sun set over the ocean, dipping quietly into a sea of summer fog that sat beyond the shining ribbon of water. The fog sat on the edge of the world with the presence of a Pleistocene glacier, gray and heavy on the horizon, waiting for the sun to sink before advancing to envelope the world. As we rode, we passed this landscape that now seemed to take on an intense animate presence, and at times we talked animatedly but at other times we rode in silence. As the light bled from the Western sky and the darkness enveloped the East, we mounted the bridge to the City. Creat golden girders and steel cables sliced between the coast and ourselves, and to the South we saw the glitter of countless lights piled up in concrete towers. We entered the City once again.