Month 8, Day 16: Interacting with Nature’s Creatures

Maybe part of the problem is that it’s too damn hot lately, but I’m having a lot of trouble being “one with nature,” like I’m supposed to be this month as a Native American. As someone who always prefers curling up on a sofa with a book to being outdoors, I’m just not the ideal candidate for a nature-based religion.

But despite the inherent disconnect between me and good old Mother Earth, I keep trying. I’m even trying to see the natural world around me as being full of spirits, and as something I can and should interact with.

Native American writer Vine Deloria, Jr., wrote in God Is Red:

“The Indian is confronted with a bountiful earth in which all things and experiences have a role to play. The task of the tribal religion . . . is to determine the proper relationship that the people of the tribe must have with other living things and to develop the self-discipline . . . so that man acts harmoniously with other creatures.”

Part of “acting harmoniously” with the creatures of nature, I’ve learned, is to avoid harming them. And so, I’m both pleased and profoundly freaked out to report that when I saw a little spider running along the ground near my desk yesterday, I did NOT give in to my instinct, which is, of course, to pound it repeatedly with a shoe and then weep hysterically until my boyfriend comes in and cleans up the squashed carcass.

No, the spider in my house did NOT look like this one. Thank you, Great Spirit, for that!

Instead of doing the usual, I let the spider go (although I admit that I did keep my hands and feet up in the air so it couldn’t possibly end up touching me), and I watched the spider until it scurried away beneath the baseboard heater.

This semi-successful interaction with a creature of the natural world inspired me to try again today. So, believe it or not, I actually sat outside on the back porch, despite the heat and the bugs. And the physical discomfort I endured was rewarded: I saw a hummingbird—the very first one I’ve ever seen in my entire life, except on TV, of course.

After 39 years without seeing a hummingbird, I was starting to think they were a myth and that people who claimed to have seen one were just in on a joke that I didn’t get. I’m glad to learn I was wrong.

Excited, I immediately turned to Bobby Lake-Thom’s book Spirits of the Earth, which informed me that hummingbirds are very good signs. They are messengers of good luck, healers, and they can teach us how to be more spiritual and even more psychic.

I don’t know about all that, but I do feel proud of myself for getting out into nature and interacting with the creatures I meet there—and doing it without a fly swatter or shoe in my hand.