Listening to the Mother

8th Installation of 12

January 21, 2023- February 20, 2023

Stream of Life

Stream of Life

The 8th installation of the ‘Listening to the Mother’ project.

Throughout this project, the year I’ve committed to Listening to the Mother, I’ve been reminded time and again, that we as humans are simply part of nature.

Not superior to nature.

Not at the whims of nature.

We don’t have to fight nature or survive nature.

We aren’t separate.

We are nature.

When I step into the forest I am fully aware that I am not tree.

I am not salal.

I am not the forest floor with infinite mycelium network’s connecting and interacting with every part of this non human world.

Yet I am this nature that welcomes me every time I am open to feeling that welcome.

There are more ways of life expressed in one forest than we are capable of knowing.

It is a dynamic place, always changing and evolving, adapting and cycling through life and death.

Beyond what nature can do for us, like provide resources and medicine, enhance our immune system and our sense of wellbeing, nature deserves a reciprocal relationship. The human centric observer of this giant cosmos of seen and unseen is only one way to know our world, this earth, nature.

There is much to learn. There are many ways to study with nature. In the past I’ve relied on books and research, and still do, but to go deeply into nature’s world and to leave my human need for quantifiable information, I must be in nature.

I must touch the humus and the rough bark.

I must breathe in the chemical compounds that set my heart beat into a slower rhythm.

I must taste the morning air.

I must soften my gaze to take in the kaleidoscope of colours and forms.

I must listen.

I am not other.

I am not observer.

I am of and with nature.

And she is of and with me.