More-than-human education

I have been thinking about learning from non-humans. Of course, they are not there to teach us, but attending to them, just as attending to a good person, can offer insights into better ways to be.

Tane and I spend time together every day. He reminds me that life, even when short in my terms (a few years), is rich, offering plentiful opportunities for joy, passion, friendship, and exploration. He shows me that solitude does not equal loneliness; that there is a time to be busy and a time to perch in the bushes; and that attention to one’s surroundings is essential to fully inhabiting the world. Nearly every day this tiny creature surprises me with his courage and impresses me with his intelligent ways of responding to problems.

Yesterday, he was aware that the food had not been put out. He was looking around. Then he saw me through the conservatory window. He came to the edge of the table on the patio and stared at me through the glass. Then he flew to the side window, landed on the ledge and gave me the eye from there. On another occasion, he watched the starlings eat from the window-feeder and, as soon as they went, scared by me entering the conservatory, he copied them.

Then, there's Kairos, whom I visit at least once a week. I run down a track, with coffee and lunch in a backpack, whatever the weather, and sit, resting against the bark, to eat and then think with the tree. Kairos bears a beauty that takes my breath away in every season, on every visit. And as I sink into Tree-Dreaming, I sense the lessons of presence, connection, hospitality, and communal conviviality. I am reminded that all our bodies (and minds) are scarred by life, healed by living and must cede with grace and generosity to the inevitable dying.

In both the garden and on the Nature Reserve, I am aware that through these beings, bird and tree, I start to sense the community of life and death in which we are all enmeshed. My thoughts can never attain anything of the profundity of the entangled actions of the multispecies gathering in which I am denizen, not citizen. They, those who live their whole lives in and on and under and from and by and through the soil, air, water, plants, fungi, invertebrates, birds, mammals, amphibians, fish, lichen, microbes, and reptiles of that place, without buying avocados from far away countries and oat milk from factories, they are the citizens. And they know how to inhabit the land far better than I ever will.

Inside, the cats, about whom I feel such guilt at their confinement, offer further lessons. Oh that I could match their ability to sleep! I think what I most respect about them is forbearance and forgiveness. All the times I rouse them from their dreaming, and they settle again once I do. I see them fight and minutes later, they are curled together.

Wuji was yowling one day when my nerves were stretched and I grabbed him and shouted, "STOP!" My anger in that moment was terrifying. He ran away. My self-hatred rose like a spring tide and I walked into the other room, to find him. He strode up to me, and rubbed against my legs, not with the appeasement of a dog, but with the confidence of a beloved feline. The incident accepted, like the fights, as a lapse in relations, not a stain. Although I feel the stain.

The world is full of wonder and most of it is not human.