Patterns

Those of us who spend a lot of time in Nature begin to notice things that most people never see.

To the casual observer, Nature seems random.  Trees grow in random locations, and streams wander aimlessly.  Rocks and soil, grass and leaves, clouds and wind, unordered, seemingly aimless.  

To the casual observer, Nature seems composed of individual objects.  A tree here, a shrub there, a creek making its way through a meadow. 

Look closer.  Sit.  Watch quietly; patterns emerge, webs of design, webs of energy, webs of Life.

Consider a tree, standing in a forest.  Watch the activity around the tree.  The tree is a plant, a mechanism for converting sunlight to energy.  The tree is a home to small animals and birds, shade and food to larger animals.  Underground, the trees roots weave the soil into a pattern, providing minerals and water to the branches, stability to the soil.  Remove the tree, and ripples spread through the local ecosystem, ripples like those from a stone thrown in water.  Remove the tree, a squirrel is displaced; the squirrel is a mechanism for turning the sunlight stored in the plant into flesh. In the day spent looking for a new home is killed by a hawk but the hawk, in killing the squirrel, provides food for its young, who grow to hunt and raise young in their turn.  The hawk is a pattern in itself, turning the squirrel into itself, and on it’s death, returning the energy to the Earth, to nourish a new generation of plants, a new generation of squirrels.  Patterns in Life, patterns in Death, patterns in Rebirth.

There is no morality in Nature, no Right and Wrong, only patterns…  Life feeds on Life, and Life gives Life to Life.  Ephemeral concepts, “rights” “justice” all end at the treeline.  Only the primal patterns of Life carry on.  Energy flows from the Sun, spreads out in a web across the earth, changes form, ebbs and flows, soaks into the soil, is converted to food by the plants and hence into earth by the animals.  The air flows over in webs of its own, varying carbon dioxide from animals to plants and oxygen from plants to animals.  Water rises in vapor from the great oceans, and falls in rain on the mountains, and in a web of brooks, streams, rivers, finds its way back to the sea, and no force can stay its journey, its progress through the endless cycle.

Air, the breath of the Earth, the primal patterning force of the sky, where wind meets earth the patterns unfold.  Sunlight, the bright fiery source of Life, is the primary source of Nature’s patterns, without the Sun, no life could be.  Water, sparkling and clear, murky and dark, green and saline, is another source of patterns, moving, always moving, restlessly against the Earth, the womb of Life on Earth.  The Earth itself, forming patterns in the mountains, the valleys, the great plains, the vastness of the steppes, the barren deserts, all intertwined, all conjoined, all together, the mother of all Life.

Visual patterns, the tracing of branches against a pale winter sky; the pattern of an elk bull’s rack branching from the base.  Wind swirls the grasses in a meadow, each seed-laden head swaying to and fro.  Sunlight strikes sparks on a stream, and glancing through the leaves in an aspen grove dances in patterns in the leaf litter on the ground.  The dance of light, the dance of leaves, the gentle movements of a deer feeding along the forest’s edge.  The deer is the air, oxygen drawn into her lungs, spread through the body, bringing life to each cell as the deer browses on tender spring shoots.

Olfactory patterns, the smell of a skunk wafting on the wind, carrying the animal’s rage on the breeze, a warning, STAY AWAY!!  The sweet smell of a hedge of lilacs, the sharp tang of an orange peeled as you sit in a clearing.  The patchwork patterns of smells in the forest, now the musky smell of a deer, now the sharp rankness of a fox, now the smell of smoke from a breakfast campfire bringing with it the smell of bacon on the morning breeze.  The bacon is the fire, bringing the warmth of the pan, the energy of the primal Fire of the Sun in the energy stored in the flesh as you eat to fuel your body for the days’ adventure.

Patterns of sound, the whisper of wind across a crust of snow frozen hard in the night; the schuss of grains of snow blowing across the surface.  A stream chuckling its way over smooth, rounded rocks, between banks of moss.  A bull elk tips his head back and bugles, the bright clear whistle rising into a September mountain morning on the fog of his breath.  The elk is the water of the stream, the water of life drawn each morning from the stream as the bull drinks, flowing in his veins, carrying the energy of sunlight to each cell as the bull calls to rivals in his valley.

Tactile patterns, the patterns of touch.  Place your hand on the Earth in a sunny glade, feel the warmth of the Sun’s energy pouring onto the planet’s surface; turn your face up to the warmth of the Sun, accept its warmth and energy into yourself, the source of all Life in Earth is in the glowing globe in the sky.  Place a hand on the rough bark of a spruce, feel the coarseness of bark and the stickiness of sap.  The tree is the Earth, the minerals of the ground drawn upward into the branching, spreading, growing pattern of the tree.

The wind, the fire, the water, the earth, the elemental parts of which all patterns are woven, in the great dance of life.  An elk calf falls to a mountain lion, and the wind does not pause to take notice; the mountain lion dies in a snow slide, and the water locked in each snow crystal is indifferent.  Comes spring, and the lion’s body is warmed by the fire of the Sun, and broken down to return to the Earth, and neither Sun nor Earth notes its passage; but with the spring, the lion’s body nourishes a lush new growth of tall grass, upon which a new year’s elk calves come to feed, as the wheel turns and another pattern webs out from the old.  A pattern of Life, a pattern of Death, a pattern of Rebirth, a pattern as old as the Earth.

Patterns, everywhere patterns, some visible, some not.  All interwoven, all intertwined, all inseparable; an injury to one is an injury to all.  From the Sun to the Earth, patterns flow, and can be seen and understood by those with the wisdom and the patience to simply sit…

…and watch.