Well the Hekla Forest was
definitely not what I expected, but it didn’t disappoint! While picking seeds
off the birch tree today, all I could think about was how it finally felt like
fall. My favorite season. And it didn’t just feel like it, we were engulfed in
it. Each birch had brilliant arrays of orange, pink, red, yellow, green, brown,
black, and white. Just spacing out and picking the seedpods off the skinny
branches was amazing. I started to feel everything, the slight stickiness of
the branches and leaf endings, the crispness of the cool air, how warm my
fleece was making me, how the music I was listening to (classical Beethoven)
was perfect for the moment. Its funny Sarah discussed “mindfulness” in her
learning forum because I think that was one of the most mindful I have been in
the past few days.
Sometimes
it’s easy to forget I’m in Iceland and I’m experiencing something special. But
back to the seed picking, this mindful state sent my thoughts into haywire. I
started thinking back to one of my favorite quotes of all time, “And lo, the
beast looked upon the face of beauty, and beauty stayed his hand. And from that
day forward, he was as one dead." I’ve always found this quote to
perfectly show the power of beauty and not the kind of beauty as in physical
human beauty but inner beauty, natural beauty, untouched, uncontrolled, ever
strong, ever-alive beauty. This kind of beauty overcomes and stops “beasts” in
its tracks. This is the kind of beauty I have been experiencing here. This is
the kind of beauty I cherish in my life and what has caused my passion for all
I’m learning and doing.
Now, it’s a different task to
identify who the beast is in the quote. The meaning of this character has
changed many times in my life including today. It’s easy, in the environmental
field, to see humans as this “beast” that challenges the place, safety, and
even existence of beauty. When we all watch movies that tell about Monsanto
(and most mass food production) or read articles on the “average” human
consumption I just feel so bad and feel like such an ugly part of the natural
world. But, this feeling changed today. In part influenced by how simple today
was and also the book I’ve been reading, “The Natural Step”. My book is about the
quiet revolution started in Sweden by a cancer scientist who decides that what
we need to create a more sustainable world is to create a new way of thought.
To sit and discuss and share all our separate views in a way that is never
negative and only constructive. Creating the future of sustainability by
agreeing in all aspects.
This leads me to the simplicity of
today. We were picking seeds for a collection that would later be planted in
order to continue the work of the Hekla Forestation Project to continually
improve the environment of the region and Iceland as a whole etc. Our simple
act was part of a beautiful cause. These two things shows me how not ugly and beast-like humans are. I don’t
think of myself as a rare person to think this way. We as humans have developed
with an intelligence that sets us apart as a species. We can think of the
future and implications, and can imagine outside ourselves and can release our
basic survival instincts and think about others. On the first “solo time” I
mentioned that I was thinking that humans don’t really have a place in the
world, we can be so un-natural and removed from the rest. But, I am starting to
realize that our place in the world is to figure it out. We are created with
the capability to make mistakes and see and learn from the consequences. We didn’t
harm our planet with the point to harm the planet. We didn’t’ evolve
technologically to further remove ourselves. We aren’t terrible people because
we can begin to understand what we have done and do something about it. The
quote still has relevance to me, but after today in comparison with humans and the
environment, both sides of the story hold beauty within.
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