All you have to do is be

Dear reader,

To walk is to fall. In a controlled way.

You’re standing. Stable, so far. But then you put your right foot forward and lean so that you’re off-balance. You tip forward.

That is, you fall.

What stops you from falling when you’re walking is that your right foot hits the ground. Then you lift up your left foot and repeat the cycle.

What happens if your right foot doesn’t hit the ground? You didn’t realize the deck had ended and your foot is now falling through the air. In this case your fall continues until either your whole body is on the ground, or you’ve managed to catch your balance in some way.

Jumping is different. When you jump from one spot to another, you’re trying to land on one or both feet in a way that fully maintains your upward-ness. Jumping is not falling.

To run is to string a bunch of jumps together. Running is to project your upward-ness forward through space. You only fall when running if you lose your connection to the ground, via tripping or a change in terrain.

I raise this point because of nuthatches. Nuthatches are that mid-sized songbird, often seen in our winters walking down tree trunks upside-down.

At least I used to think they were walking. Take a closer look.

Your hallux is your big toe. On birds, the hallux points backward. The nuthatch has three other toes that point forward. When the nuthatch lifts its right foot to walk down a tree trunk, its left hallux holds onto the bark above. Only when the right foot reaches and holds the bark below does the nuthatch release the left hallux.

Can you call this walking? I might say they grapple their way down the tree.

There is no definitive answer to why nuthatches are known as “the upside-down bird.” But the leading explanation is that it gives them a different viewpoint. They can see things that other birds can’t.

The bark on most trees is uneven. The thousands of small plates on a tree trunk create small cavities where plates come together. To shed water, those cavities point down to the ground. Because of this, insects can shelter in them. The nuthatch has a unique view to see and eat these insects.

Nuthatches also cache seeds during the summer and fall for later retrieval. Again, they can see and access hiding spots no one else can.

This bird evolved and became a species solely to access a point of view on finding food that no one else had! Does anyone else find this mind-blowing?

I wondered if this was unique in nature. Surely it must be!

But I look around and see more examples. The woodpecker has as much subtlety as a jackhammer when compared to the nuthatch. It pounds its way through bark and into rotten wood to reach hidden caches of insects such as ants.

What’s that you say? The woodpecker accesses hidden caches??

A hollow tree does not advertise its hollowness. It wants to stay whole and upright. (Yes, trees have wants.)

To find those caches, the woodpecker alights on the sides of trees and raps on them with its beak. It’s listening for the same sound as my mother walking around the watermelon patch when I was a kid. Any watermelon that looked like it might be ripe received a rap, just so, from the palm of her hand. A hollow sound meant the watermelon was ripe. A hollow tree trunk indicates rotten wood, likely filled with ants.

***

Think about how different Homo sapiens are. No other species stands upright on two feet and gets around by falling.

Yeah, some people call what humans do “walking.” But those same people call what the nuthatch does “walking.”

These people can’t seem to tell that words obliterate uniqueness. Not sometimes, but always.

Also remember that species classification is a useful but arbitrary discipline. Nature doesn’t have boxes. I may be classified as Homo sapiens, a Roberts, a writer, a father, a man, a Selectman, a white dude. But for each of those, I share some traits with members of my class, while other of my traits are unique to that class. Put together, I am unclassifiable. (So are you, of course—as mentioned previously, I’m in awe of you.)

Dear reader, who are you? What is your one-of-a-kind way of getting around? What do you see that no one else sees?

There is a physical shape and location that you take up, that no one else takes up. What’s it like?

***

Others will see the following as a coincidence. I trust you, dear reader, are ready to go deeper with me now.

The universe is ordered so that every part of the spectrum of what is possible is activated.

The red oak yearling in this photo was crimson red only a few weeks ago. With our December temperatures dipping now into the teens, those red pigments have been either reabsorbed into the tree roots, or just plain destroyed by frost. The leaves are dull brown.

At the very same time that all but the evergreens have gone brown, snow has started to fall. The snow provides brightness to what otherwise would be a dull landscape. Its whiteness provides us with all the colors of the visible light spectrum.

Note how as we go from one season to another, the world around us plays with color across the full spectrum. It seldom lets a channel go quiet for long.

The arrow-shaped kyanite I placed in the photo has the shape and feel of a regular piece of gravel. But its peacock colors are unlike any other rock.?

Go into a store like Beadnik’s in downtown Brattleboro, Vermont, and check out the variety of shape, size, and color of rocks and minerals.

The universe gives its stardust the full set of options to choose from.

This same stardust is what we humans are made of. Why, in turn, would the universe be any different in giving us the full spectrum to play with?

***

Like other people I know, sometimes I talk about what the universe “wants” or “doesn’t want” me to do.

We’re slaughtering our goats tomorrow, and I have mixed feelings about this.

Last night while stretching I pulled some muscles on my ribcage. Never done that before.

Is it the universe telling me it’s okay if I listen to my body and not participate in the slaughter?

I could start talking now about the rocks and minerals and how the universe “wants” them each to be unique. That would get pretty woo-woo. Or as my editor at the Reformer might say, and not in a complimentary way, “metaphysical.”

I’m going to go somewhere else. The universe doesn’t want or need anything from you.

It is enough that you have the space to exist.

The universe created so much space. So many ecological niches. So many colors on the visible, and non-visible, light spectrum.

The universe is infinite, and not in the sense that it goes on forever, because it doesn’t. It is infinite in the sense that it provides for every possibility.

The universe is not infinite in the sense that it provides birds the possibility to walk through thin air. But the air on our planet is thick enough to support winged flight, and so flying birds do exist. (The same people that call what humans do walking, probably also say that birds walk through the air. These people are so imprecise in their language.)

If it wasn’t possible for a bird to walk upside-down, it wouldn’t exist. But since it is possible, it exists. This is what infinite possibility means in practice. (This is part of what is so heartbreaking about extinction. That unique possibility has been snuffed out forever, and in the case of land development, unique animal habitat is usually replaced by sameness.)

It is possible for a rock to display these colors, therefore kyanite must. If kyanite weren’t possible, it would not exist.

***

Free yourself from the feeling that the universe requires you to do anything other than exist.?

This is a projection. In what ways do you ask permission to exist? Stop.

That permission was already granted when your existence began. It is possible for someone as unique as yourself to exist. Therefore you do.

Nothing further is required to justify your existence except to be.

Free yourself of existing according to someone else’s conditions. Listen only to what your body tells you as you rap your hand (metaphorically, please) on the people, things, organizations, tasks, and places around you. See what only you can see. Occupy that space.

Ask yourself, “If all I had to do today was be, what would I do?”

Let the possible spectrum of answers include, “Nothing.”

***

One last thing.

On any given day, your life can be deeply affected by someone or something external to you. An interaction with your boss can set you in the wrong mood for a whole day, or more.

The sweatshirt I’m wearing in this picture was given to me by my mom. It’s too big for me, and always has been. I don’t feel that great wearing it. But I’ve chosen to wear it on many occasions because I could throw it on over anything, go outside on the farm, and not worry about getting it dirty.

It’s one thing to let someone external to you, someone who doesn’t see your body, shape one day of your life. But allowing this to happen day after day is no way to live.

You and no one else are the primary shaper of your own experience.

Wake up tomorrow morning and remember this.

What do you give yourself that you enjoy, that helps you grow? Notice these things and make space for them.

What people or situations around you put you in a bad mood? Note how you are complicit in allowing this. Find small ways to take up space for yourself. Watch those people lose the name of your town (per Lucinda Williams).

Again, ask yourself, “If all I had to do today was be, what would I do?”

Let the possible spectrum of answers include, “Nothing.”

There’s room for you to be. Simply be.

Love,

Tristan

Quill Nook Farm

P.S. How do you eat your corn-on-the-cob? For people who go from side to side (vs. spinning the cob around), does everyone put the narrow end to your left, and chew to the right? I’d love to know what the counter-examples are.

Another side note: Everyone should listen to the This American Life episode with the blind kid who “sees” the world well enough to ride his bike by using echo-location.)

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