wild

We have lost our wild. The way we used to put our ears close to the ground, feeling the pulse of what was next. We have fallen prey to the constraints of rapid fire media that drown our intuition and the rigid routines that choke our instinct. We have forgotten how to howl.

Out grief is stuck in the cells of our body because our culture does not allow for wailing by the sea. We do not get lost in the forest anymore, because our calendars are too packed to prioritize this kind of assignment.

We dampen the desire to thrash and scream and even experience pleasure aloud, because that would be too much for most. We have forgotten to follow the grain of the seasons, the animals, the earth ,and the moon.

I think we may be our most wild when we are first born and then again very late. Ironically, this wild is most potent when our bodies are the least able to act on it. When we are very young and very old, our minds are less limited by the witness of humans on the sidelines and cultural suffocation. I wonder if we are wild enough to change this. I wonder if we could let ourselves unwind these tendrils that have tightened over the years, trying to be good and right and presentable.

We like the idea of it, the wild. It is trendy and we pose in our pretend wild state. We order books about the wild, pass around memes, and carry ceramic mugs demonstrating we are wild underneath it all.

But the real wild is messy and ragged, and not at all polished for public consumption. I think to access it we may have to crash first, and then regroup in the darkened quiet. Like the womb but more conscious and awake to what is next. We could turn off the electronics and the murmurs all around, the polling and the comparisons, and get incredibly low to the ground.

We could reinstate our instinct and derail what is always expected and curated. The wild is a return to listening and not making decisions ahead of where we are being led. It comes from a rumbling underneath what is expected of us.

After telling my friend Cheyenne Kowal that I am depressed and struggling to find a way out of the grief over losing a friend, she sent me a voice note, which expanded my lens and gave my heart some space today.

She said this: “I am sending you a lot of ground, right now and a reminder that somewhere there are elk bugling, and there are animals under the ground, burrowing, and snuggling and keeping each other warm. And that there are so many layers of magic happening out there, right now, in the holy wild. And that is actually real life, that is actually the real world.”

Thank goodness for friends like this, that point us to the wild, when we are not clear of the way.