Echoes of the wilds
A few years ago, I woke up feeling lost and loss. I dreamt of being wild, utterly in kinship. When awake, I grieved the ancient and profound loss of keen senses and radical awareness, of living ritually as an integral part of the cosmos.
Before humans learned to fear ourselves, we lived in deep-rooted connection with everything else — embraced in the essential kiss of the black earth beneath our feet and the potent caress of the skies above, swaddled in the bones of the ancestors.
To connect to the ancient wild being we carry within since the dawn of times, we need the deep silence of infinite radical presence. But we are immersed in pervasive modernity noises. White background static distracts us from what’s in front of us. Around us. All the time. At this instant, let your instincts feel beyond modernity turbulence. Human skin-deep sensing what we cannot see or quantify. Feel life all around.
The long process of our domestication has been our demise. We forgot. Amnesia of interbeing ever co-creating entangled life—lost memories of our real strength in a harsh and abundant world.
Forgotten languages, soundscapes, textures, and bridges of connection to other beings, different telluric and cosmic knowings.
We forgot the real value of sacred life itself. We became narrower. Alone and afraid. Islands of forgetfulness and isolation, believing fear to be the only lens. And to conquer it the only solution.
Yes, nature is wild and violent. And so are we. Yes, nature is spontaneous and harsh. So are we. But it is also creative, inventive, magical, mysterious, ever-changing, and evolving. If we could listen again to its stories and old wisdom, we would cherish it again.
The wilds are complex multi-dimensional landscapes — no linear maps to cross it, no point A to point B. To cross the wilds, we need feet rooted on the ground, humming, for we are the wild place. We are embedded in it. We are the rocks and the mountains, the wind and the waters — sacred flesh in sacred ground.
I yearn to be wild, and it whispers me back, calling me — echoing the deep past. I sense the hairs in the back of my neck lifting—shivers down my spine. I remember watching and being watched in long silent conversations with other beings. Living the land as a co-created home and not a stranger to be possessed, used, or conquered. Nurturing and caring back for all creation. Playfully and empathically present. Remembering old stories of care and not only destruction. Walking potent and free, keen on what is, in profound and mysterious relation to the land and tending all its inhabitants — living sacredly, intently, actively engaging, and participating in the ever-unfolding creation.
Simply remember.
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[Disclaimer: all these words and weaved concepts are birthed through my lived, biased, and always limited perception of things, not supposing to bring any absolute truth.]
By Sofia Batalha
Mammal, author, woman-mother, question weaver and dismantling global-colonial-technological-capitalism one day at a time. Awkward prose-poet with no grammatical knowledge. Pilgrim through inner and outer landscapes, remembering ancient earth practices, in radical presence, active listening, ecopsychology, art, ecstasy, and writing. Author of seven books, editor of the free online magazine, Wind and Water, Re-member the Bones Podcast, and Beyond the Sea Conversations — all in Portuguese.
More information: sofiabatalha.com
