Connected is an understatement

This morning, one of my friends sent me a message, prompted by some thoughts they had while reading a novel. The main gist of the message was why it is that the rightwing prepper/homesteader/self-sufficiency type of person doesn’t show more love for the land in their words and actions.

How, my friend wondered, can someone aspire to live off the land and/or farm, both of which are practices requiring daily interaction with the more-than-human world, and remain okay with the environmental destruction that is the inevitable result of the worldview they endorse and the policies they support?

Those are incredibly valid questions.

I replied a bit about how—having grown up around that genre of person, while being as willing to speak truth to power as a kid as I am now (thanks, autism, and my lack of any inherent understanding of why it is somehow considered rude to share information with folks of higher levels of social privilege)—I got to witness the very few ways that folks usually reacted when challenged on how they treat and think about the ecosystems in which they live.

The most common is to completely reject any idea or information posed to them about mutuality with the more-than-human world with an exclamation designed to shut down any thought or conversation about it. Frequently heard ones are:

• "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

• "Do you actually believe that shit?"

• "It's just a [forest/deer/insert species or ecosystem member here]."

• "Who cares?"

Like a hand from the proverbial hot stove, such minds respond with reflexive aversion to any implication that they are interconnected with beings not exactly like them.

I thought about these ideas more while I did my morning chores.

I brought out the food and water for our chickens, scattered some dry straw under their coop, and sprinkled some scratch grains in the dry straw. I clucked happily with the hens while doing my best to convince the roo (Sir Dorothy) that I wasn’t worth paying too much attention to.

I then emptied the kitchen compost onto our compost pile, mixing it in a bit before topping it with a fresh layer of straw.

By that point, the dogs needed to go out, so I watched them for a while as they ran around, being goofy and playful.

Once the doggos and I were back inside, I got some coffee brewing.

While that was in process, I tended to the current ferments I have going, making sure that everything got the stirs, shakes, feeds, and tastes that they needed and getting a loaf of bread dough made before feeding my starter.

Every single one of these tasks—these simple, unglamorous tasks—is an example of the profound interconnectedness of the human and the more-than-human world.

The chickens not only provide eggs and good humor: they—along with the compost—play an essential role in the process of soil restoration that is so needed in the areas of The Wild Within Acres that have been cleared and previously farmed.

The compost, the soil, the many fermenting goodies: each of these are representative of the ways that we humans are not separate from the more-than-human world, including the deep mysteries of the microbial realms.

Later, I went for a walk in the woods with the dogs, taking gentle note of what changes occurred during the recent wind storms, smiling at the various tracks that I spotted—deer, rabbit, squirrel, fisher—and thinking solemnly about the work that needs to be done in order to give the many present native species a fighting chance alongside the invasive honeysuckle that has overtaken some areas.

(Side note: Earlier this week, I spotted some beautiful frozen drops of water on moss: isn’t it incredible?)

And so to circle back around to my friend’s question: I honestly don’t know how someone could spend a significant amount of time consciously interacting with the more-than-human world and not have a profound sense of symbiotic, deeply felt love.

I have to say: it's no wonder to me that folks who willfully resist experiencing such deep, tender, connected love with the more-than-human world also manifest so much hostility and xenophobia in the ways they move through the world and their relationships.

To resist being conscious of our symbiotic connections with the more-than-human world is ultimately to estrange ourselves from what it means to be a loving, living, tender thing.

To resist the lessons to be found from our not-separateness with the more-than-human world is fight for one’s right to be intentionally schismatized from all of existence except for that of other people who won't challenge one’s commitment to alienation.

Let us remember, let us keep remembering in each moment: not only are we connected with the more-than-human world, we are very literally not separate from it.

Some suggested reading related to remembering our interconnectedness:

• Braiding Sweetgrass and Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer

• Our Fermented Lives by Julia Skinner

• We Are Each Other’s Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers, Land, and Legacy by Natalie Baszile

• Soil and Spirit: Cultivation and Kinship in the Web of Life by Scott Chaskey

• Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations, Volumes 1-5, Edited by Gavin Van Horn, Robin Wall Kimmerer, John Hausdoerffer