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The beginning.

The Lizards Dance

21/2/2016

17 Comments

 
PictureLife on the edge. This frog chose Rotty's bowl as its home.
“Lizards are just walking right up to us, locusts are hanging out with me having a shower, it’s very strange. The robin...he sings to me while I pee.” said a friend of mine who’s looking after my mud home, while I make a short trip to the UK.

Ah how I smiled when I listened to his voice message. Yes, the robin is a cheeky little devil. I know him well. All of a sudden my mind sailed out of my dad’s living room in Essex. I was back there in my Eden, with the butterflies fluttering over the kale plants, and the squirrels scampering along the pines. You see, this is why I’m rather cagey about people entering the land. Because it’s true. The wildlife within the magic ring of my property knows me. The beasts, birds and insects trust me. And I trust them. In fact, as my friend pointed out, there are now generations of insects and lizards with handed down genetic knowledge that ‘The Human’ loves them. We are a connected ecosystem. We are family.

But I wasn’t always like this. Once upon a time, I too killed scorpions and feared the boar. Ten years ago, I would have laid poison and traps, thinking it was simply the way things were, and that I had to protect myself to survive. I wasn’t even particularly bothered about dogs. I’ve changed. Or rather I’ve been changed, and nature is the transformer.

Nature comes laden with gifts so extraordinary, we moderns don’t even believe them possible. When you approach it as a friend or kin, you will witness miracles, some of which leave you slack-jawed. Let’s take the army of ants nesting just outside my kitchen. Ten years ago, I’d have been sure I had to get rid of them. But now? Well, I have observed these incredible insects. At some mysterious agreed-upon day and time, they congregate on the kitchen floor. Masses of them. The earth turns into a dark moving carpet. I wait. An hour later when they have moved on, I see. The ants have cleaned the floor. Perfectly. Yet they never delve into my honey, nor my carob molasses which sit in open jars upon the shelf. How? Why? It is indeed strange.

Typically, when we hear survival ‘into the wild’ type stories, machismo is the name of the game. This is tragic. Of course, machismo has nothing to do with masculinity. It is an aberration; a fake set of values – generally violent and emotion crushing – parading as bravery and hiding cowardice. The glorified wilderness survival tales we have thrown at us in film or book form are a neatly packaged slice of this machismo. They are sold to a modern world that has become so tedious in its convenience that the only excitement left is bungee jumping, cocaine or having an affair. Thus the wild is peddled as the ultimate dangerous adventure. The last frontier.

Yet nature isn’t a frontier. It’s where we all came from. It’s home! Even the word ‘survival’ when talking about living in the wild seems inappropriate, because it is based on a fiction that nature is some sort of alien monster out to attack us, rather than the very thing that sustains us. The natural world is where we belong, the place we are designed for. Anyone who has spent a significant time alone in nature and attempted to get to know it a little, realises this. The indigenous peoples of the forests, those who have evaded the great train of ‘civilisations’ realise this. You don’t see them indiscriminately bludgeoning any animal that crosses their path. They clutch the last remaining shreds of ancient wisdom in their cultures, namely that everything has its place.

Nature is alive, and like all living beings, she’s responsive. She is also very fair; not sentimental, but fair. What you give is what you get with nature. I’ve seen it over and over again. You enter a territory and become the savage hunter, then you will at some point become the hunted. You will not be trusted. You will have set up an energy field of fear and aggression, and every living being that enters that field will reflect that back to you. Hence why I don’t own a gun, nor do I allow them on my property. I don’t want that energy circulating on my land.

The reason I can live in The Mud alone and feel safe, is because I am safe. The energy of my land is one of love and respect, not fear. There is no struggle to survive. In fact, as time goes on the land provides more and more in the most incredible ways. There is a delicious wild plant known locally as turnip grass. It’s rich in iron and vitamin C, and very versatile to cook with. Last year I spoke to the land and expressed how much I love that plant. This year it has sprouted all over the lower end of my garden. I’ve such a surplus, I now give it to Dudu. Struggle? Survival? Nature feels a lot more like Santa Claus to me.

The wildlife has taught me one final lesson; We humans have been blessed with the power to create the emotional signature of our territories. We can choose the energy we want to emit, and the attitudes we hold. Me? I want paradise on Earth. I want a world full of love, respect and kindness. I want wonder and magic. Utopian dream? Not for me. Well, definitely not within my space. Because this land, The Mud, is my world, and within those boundaries my rules apply.

We may not be able to change other people, or dictate what they do with their spaces. That's just as well. Who knows what's right in the larger picture anyway? Still, it takes conviction and effort to maintain a positive state of mind. I struggle when I hear hunters killing tiny birds, apparently just for the fun of it. And I'm no innocent. Things have been killed inadvertently here, and once from a lack of self-belief. Yes, at times I've wanted to buy a rifle and shoot back at hunters too. But I’ve not given up. Like my freshly germinated spinach seeds, I just keep pushing upwards, striving bit by bit for the light, trying to hold the kind of world I want within me. And now I see. My space has responded. It has been created. The gunmen have moved away. The land holds the vibration. Gekkos clean my saucepans. Swallow ballets are performed over my gazebo. Wild boar career through my land, yet leave my potatoes untouched. And now the lizards dance and the robin sings, not just for me, but for my friends.
 

Picture
One of my favourite star agamas, simultaneously sunbathing and catching any bug that tries to eat my veg.
17 Comments
Cathy
22/2/2016 10:45:57 pm

thank you for the inspirational message - you have made the start of my day beautiful!

Reply
Atulya
23/2/2016 12:50:48 am

:) Thank you Cathy.

Reply
Jon J
23/2/2016 04:41:58 pm

Loved it!

Reply
Atulya
24/2/2016 12:25:41 am

Thanks Jon!

Reply
Sharon
24/2/2016 05:34:10 am

I too, can say the same. We have a hectre of land. And we try t disturb it as little as possible. Even cutting the grass feels wrong to me, although I tend to keep it short around the house. Yes, I do have ants in the house. Small ones and big ones. But they don't get into our food supplies, they only clean up. We have free-range chickens roaming around, sorting out the bugs. We have a lamb that eats the weeds. Lots of geckos and lizards. But best of all, the birds. I do not know all their names in english. But they have such beautiful calls. We get woken up each morning by a bushveld pheasant calling krakakrakakraka. Then an "oranjekeel kalkoentjie" calls with his mieeouw sound. We have a falcon here, an owl, lots of white brested crows, finches, and tons more. We even found two porcupine quills outside in this week. It is just awesome. Our north view looks toward a mountain,and for a "fence", we have planted christs thorn and cacti. Our east side has a high formidable wall that was erected by the neighbour long before we were here. Our south side, we have put a feeble wall of wire easy enough to climb over, and planted cacti along it. The wire fence is to keep the lamb from wandering into the road. And currently, we do not yet have anything on our west side. Just more veld.

We do, however, have termites. And because I am scared they will make nest in our new house, we intend to add diatomaceous earth to every sandbag. It is a natural product and quite safe to use.

Reply
Atulya
24/2/2016 01:29:53 pm

So glad you've written this Sharon. I was just wondering if anyone else experienced this and was about to add the question on the bottom of the blog post:) Yes, I hear you about the termites. I have the same issue with dog fleas and mosquitos. I'm not sure if it's a question of time (I have noticed it takes a while for the animals and plants to adapt to The human, and some are quicker than others. Ants are one of the quickest. The agamas took a long time to stop being shy.)

Reply
Jan Zandvoort
5/4/2016 03:25:28 am

Hi Sharon, sounds you build yourself a similar earthbag kind of house like Atulya did, is your house situated in the southern hemisphere by any chance? Could it be in the region of Southern Africa? Please send some more details and/or images, if you would be so kind. Lots of succes, Jan.

Reply
Jan Zandvoort
27/2/2016 07:55:24 am

Dear Atulya, thanks for your wise words, although I'm not the youngest and almost an ''old age pensionar'' you teached me a lot, not just by reading your wonderful Mud Ball but also by reading all of your blog posts. I now also got my son interested and he is eager to read your book. Sharon, sounds like you also build yourself a earthbag home, you couldn't do me a greater pleasure than to show some pictures!! Hope to hear more from you both of you. Warm regards, Jan.

Reply
Atulya
27/2/2016 09:12:50 pm

Ah, good for you Jan! Glad you got your son on board. Best wishes to you.

Reply
Kate Gold link
28/2/2016 08:43:45 pm

Thank you for sharing your love. The love of the land and your community of creatures. You inspire me and I hope so much to one day live like this too

Reply
Atulya
28/2/2016 09:08:39 pm

Thank you Kate. I really hope you live like this too! The more people who do, the more happy spaces:)

Reply
Jessie link
5/4/2016 12:15:34 am

Beautiful. Love your true connection to nature.

Reply
Atulya
5/4/2016 12:14:22 pm

Thanks Jessie!

Reply
Andrew
25/4/2016 10:53:42 pm

From me to you, a small gift, a small token of gratitude for all the full-of-wonder writing you have blessed all of us with.

THINGY SIDE UP - a transformation. Part 1

Beyond the common pithy 'Everything is connected' saying that most everyone is familiar with, at least on a superficial level, I first became aware of the possibility of communication with the earth and with plants when I bought a book by Stephen Harrod Buhner, "Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm - Into the Dreaming of Earth".

I bought it as a result of my latest scramble, this time, down the rabbit hole of naturopathic medecine as I rooted in turn through its many branches, leads and possibilities, trying to establish some baseline of knowledge in my relentless drive towards independence from The Matrix and self sufficiency with the earth.

Then last fall, I spoke to the huge water oak in my fenced-in back yard off a long defunct but still regularly mowed golf course fairway, now community "green-space". But it took a while. It took time.

I had for years now, wanted to make acorn flour. This was my year. I'm retired now, I've got the time. I started picking acorns off the tree, fully formed but still very green... Lots of them, loads really, obscene ammounts. Many many hours and several nights later, having cracked them, peeled them gleefully only to have them turn rapidly brown, like a potatoe peeled and left to sit forlornly on the kitchen counter, rancid. But I stuck with it, diced them up, rinsed them repeatedly with water, let them stand in water, for days, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat... and still bitter. After a week or two of this, the bitterness went away... mostly, kinda. Dried the chopped up nuts, now chocolate brown from oxidation, and ground them up in a coffee grinder into "flour". Not convinced! Neither was the wife. But they sit, like the kid that was never picked for the game, in a brown paper bag in my wife's pantry.. or at least they did... Come to think of it I haven't seen them lately. Hmmm.

Meanwhile, I am still collecting, in waves, acorns which are now raining prolifically from said tree over weeks and weeks. And I am daily collecting them up, and making small organized, at least that's what I tell myself, mountains of nuts on the dining room table, yesterday's nuts, the days before that's nuts, the day before that's nuts... convinced that I will discover the optimal way to prepare the acorns so I can make the bloody acorn flour that sounded so-simple-a -child-could-do-it in the research I did online "... just rinse, then dry, then grind". So simple.

I tried another angle. Ok, what if I do the same thing only immediately immerse them in water, shutting them off from oxidizing oxygen. Pretty much same result. Bereft, and feeling very guilty for wasting all those precious acorns to pretty much oxidized, bitter, forlorn waste matter. My efforts at leaching them with water were exactly as blithely described by several articles on the topic... Damnit, I did what I was told! It sounded so easy. No, nuts... nada.

And another angle, and by now it's a week or 2 down the pike. And it's still raining acorns. So now I'm exclusively picking nuts from the ground, every day, all of them. Now I get a feeling... What if I let the nuts dry out on the inside for like three days, then crack them. Hah! It went a leeeetle better. But the crush marks from my nut cracker's ribs make bruises which, like before, oxidized badly, rapidly, deeply, but the rest of the nut, although not much left, seemed to be of a lustrous orangey buttery goodness.

I'm missing something obvious.

So by now I'm armpit deep into Stephen Harrod Buhners book. And it occurs to me to ask the tree - if you've read this book you will understand why. I'll paraphrase my conversation:

"I'm really sorry for wasting all those acorns, I see all the baby black cherry trees sprouting up from this summer's prolific crop of cherries pooped all over by droves of appreciative birds and they're popping up everywhere, and I just decimated your prospective children. I've killed and wasted all your children! I've collected so many acorns, my wife is at the end of her patience, we can't see the dining room table anymore and the spare room is almost full. I mean it's all organized and all, and I know which pile is which, but I can't do this any more. I'm really sorry. Do you want me to bring all the drying nuts, the cracked nuts, back and scatter them, that way the squirrels don't get robbed from all the food I stole from them. Are they going to be able to make it through the winter? Did I kill all of their children, in advance, too? They should still be good right? Please? I hope they're alright for the squirrels and the birds still to eat?"

It was at last light that day when it happened. The back yard was bathed in that ethereal sunset glow when the tree spoke to me.

The tree spoke to me.

Silently but unmistakably it spoke to something deep inside me which I heard lo

Reply
Andrew
25/4/2016 10:56:52 pm


Part 2

The tree spoke to me.

Silently but unmistakably it spoke to something deep inside me which I heard loud and clear. Again I'll paraphrase:

"It's ok. I've been watching you. I love you. I want you to make acorn flour, I'm ok with it. Thanks for asking and talking to me. And you're right, I WOULD like a few children, so maybe we could take it easy on the nuts, I mean it's what we do right?... would you please spare a few. So maybe just take only the acorns that are thingy side up. All the acorns thingy side down, leave them be. You see, the roots grow out of the thingy, and so, well you can see that if the thingy is down, well they have a sporting chance of making it. I shed enough acorns for everyone: you, the squirrels, the birds, the micro organisms in the soil... everyone."

I looked about me after the tree spoke, and what I saw took my breath away. The thingies on the freshly fallen that day thingy-side-up acorns were glowing. I mean they popped conspicuously in the sunset glow like little luminous beacons amongst the darkening carpet of leaf litter, tufts of grasses, and thingy-side-down acorns, that make up my back yard. Something about the thingies, that I didn't know at the time, clearly visible under a strong prospectors magnifying loop, is that they are fuzzy, like very fine tan velvet. And something transformative happens when the golden peachy rays of sunset wash over that velvet. Like when the chocolate hits the peanut butter. Something magic happens. They glow.

It's that same light that makes hungry fish break the surface feeding on bugs, throwing caution to the wind, leaping and twisting with lustful abandon. I don't speak 'fish' but if I could I'm positive they would describe it as joyful. The insects may disagree.

The freshest ones glowed the most, beckoning me to pick THEM up. Which I did, under the approving gaze of the tree and the first come-and-get-me flickerings of fireflies. I felt liberated, freed from the guilt of pointless waste of my denying the oak's offspring a chance at life; I felt like the tree was proud of me... it was a rush. Enchantment was in the air.

And so it went on for the next couple of sunsets. Me eagerly anticipating the end of each day. It, the whole thing, enthralled me: the approving gaze, the glowing freshly fallen thingy-side-up acorns, the sunset, the fireflies. It was mesmerizing... transformative.

That great big beautiful water oak taught me how and when to harvest its acorns, the effortless natural way, the fair way. No more death defying, ladder mounted, wobbly, one legged, tip toed straining to reach that one last green acorn... waaay up there in those leafy boughs.

Such grace, such patience. Stunning. Transformative.

I am not a man normally given to words like 'magical', 'enchanted', 'ethereal', and I had never talked to a tree like I meant it before. But after 26 years in the infantry and 6 combat tours accumulating 5 years overseas in hell holes like Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, fighting for and serving what I used to believe were good and just causes, I am emerging from a darkness having undergone a paradigm shift, an awakening. Seeing through the acrid smoke for the first time. Being transformed by the staggering realization that what I had committed my adult life to thus far was nothing more than a criminally inept enterprise fueled and driven by insatiable corporations that control our governments, has been, understatedly, an adjustment. A transformation.

The spectacular ineptness of the US State Department, and the presidents, all of them since WWII, massive glaring monuments to ignorance. Their breeding and selection process of cow-towing no-imagination no-backbone yuppies to the senior leadership of our armed forces, cabinets, agencies and departments - to the halls of power and control, all, a self-licking ice cream cone. And it is to these pseudo-intellectual twits, these posturing morons, that MY country, and MY tribe, Rhodesia, was sacrificed on the deceptively self righteous higher moral ground alter of fairness, seemingly on a whim. Bastards. I have not forgotten. My bitterness has mellowed... it now has a smoky charcoaled oak barrel piquant.

Sin against man... and tribes get wiped out, ending this tribe or that tribe's way of life, oh well, __it happens... Always has. Not a new phenomenon. It IS devastatingly painful when you are on the losing side. Moral indignation and sour grapes are the lot of the losing tribe. Believe me, I know. But it happens, it's always happened. And I'm ok with it now, I understand the phenomenon.

Sin against the earth however, well that's just not very intelligent. Your own civilization, your tribe, your species, begins circling the drain. It's always been this way. Count the civilizations that followed this circuitous spiraling route. And even STILL she loves us, holding out to the bitter end, ready to forgive and repair and transform if allowed to. The loyalty! Crushingly un-recipr

Reply
Andrew
25/4/2016 11:00:50 pm

Part 3

Sin against the earth however, well that's just not very intelligent. Your own civilization, your tribe, your species, begins circling the drain. It's always been this way. Count the civilizations that followed this circuitous spiraling route. And even STILL she loves us, holding out to the bitter end, ready to forgive and repair and transform if allowed to. The loyalty! Crushingly un-reciprocated, her faithfulness is heartbreaking.

SQUIRREL!

Where was I?

Oh yeah... acorns... so it's spring now, and I've been checking on them periodically through the winter, those acorn remnants, still in their shells, piled high in the cool dark spare room in a rusting gold miners pan. They're perfectly fine, the nut meat much drier now of course, but still with that buttery orange goodness, I swear they seem to glow. And if I'm not mistaken less bitter than last fall. It's like they are preparing themselves to be acorn flour, mellowing, gently working out the tannins, aging beautifully, waiting patiently. Transforming.

So lately I've been wondering when is the right time to crack those acorns and grind them up? I thought I should ask the oak.

Well I did. And afterwards I noticed the fuzzy catkins, everywhere, fallen from little nubs at the base of the new green leaves. Nubs that will be... tada!... this new year's crop of acorns! The new acorns are poking their little heads out, a speck of their little fuzzy thingies deep down at the base of their host green leaves, not yet fuzzy, but doggedly determined to meet their sunsets. At the appointed time.

Suddenly, a nugget from all my acorn flour research popped into my head - some Indians used to bury their acorns in river bank mud... for a long time, and that's what leached the tannins. Pondering about that, I wondered if spring flooding wouldn't erode the mud banks and sweep the acorns away. Well of course they would! Spring floods come in a cycle. Every Spring! Cycles. It's Spring now!

I will finish what I started last fall, now, in the spring. It's time!

Thank you my dear friend, mighty water oak, thank you from the bottom of my heart. The answers come. They trickle in like crystal pure spring water, dribbling through the cracks of the mountains. Even the toughest most bitter hide gets penetrated and transformed.

I just had to ask, and mean it, with faith. Faith. Like what was gifted to me by that amazing water oak; faith from revealed breath-taking, enchanted, knowing.

Faith, in thankful expectation and patience, begets answers. Answers you can depend on. Solid answers, real answers, from the source, the Creator, who created the earth. You KNOW this! It just takes time which requires patience. And patience requires faith. Faith which requires experienced solid answers to questions and requests, results, results which require faith. Everyone has to make a decision at some point to get on the wheel. Round and around it goes.

The tree is telling me that everything has a cycle. The new acorn buds are coming. It's time to finish the processing of the old acorns, to put up the old and take the knowledge gleaned and expand it, apply it to other things I have deeply wondered about in the past. Things only I know, deep down in my dark little heart.

Last year I really want to make Elderberry wine. It sounded Hobbity for some reason, and I yearned to make it. I got introduced to an Elderberry bush by a woman, in the spring, last spring. She said she would be happy to share. Well, the berries come at the end of summer around here, and I remembered... in the fall... too late that year. It wasn't to be. It wasn't my time. I will send out word now, to the mycorrhizal subterranean internet, of my intent. I already know where one such plant is and I will seek it out and go talk to it soon, even though it will know already. It will have opened its Inbox.

You've been blessed with experiencing the miraculous, repeatedly. You of all people KNOW the answers will come. The time WILL come. In the mean time, make Elderberry wine, and celebrate your Hobbityness like a hungry fish rising at that magical time around sunset.

Reply
Raghav Kumar link
15/7/2020 09:33:37 am

This is so beautiful! Thanks for everything.

Reply



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    Atulya K Bingham

    Back in 2011, I found myself camping alone on a remote Turkish hill. There was no power or water on the land. It was the start of an adventure that profoundly changed my beliefs about what is enjoyable, or possible...

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