Kindling the Native Spirit: Sacred Practices for Everyday Life - Denise Linn 2015

The Call of the Wild
The Call: Remembering Who You Are

Rush-hour traffic noise has replaced early morning birdsong. Streetlights have replaced the stars. The flicker of television sets has replaced the tribal campfire. This diminishment of direct experiences of the wild is especially evident in today’s children who have constrained lives with little or no intimate connection to the natural cycles of life. They are lost in a sea of video games, cell phones, texting, and e-mail. The baby boomers are probably one of the last generations to have spent their childhood hours playing hide-and-seek in the woods, exploring creek beds, scrambling up trees, and sledding down hills.

The latest research declares that when children have direct experiences with nature, they reap profound benefits. Researchers cite less anxiety and depression, less prevalence of ADHD, higher levels of creativity, improved self-esteem, enhanced brain development, and a sense of connection to the community and the world around them. This gives credence to the belief that within our ancestral coding is a memory of—perhaps, even a yearning for—the sounds, colors, textures, and smells of the pines in the mountains, the high grasses on the savanna, the verdant green of a rain forest, and the vast expanse of the desert.

One of the most powerful ways to move into harmony with your life is to spend time in nature. This dramatically increases your instinctual reaction to people and situations. However, it’s not enough to take a stroll in the woods. While you are in the wilderness, imagine that you are dissolving into the environment around you. Additionally, visualize energy tendrils from the earth reaching up inside of you to activate your inner wilderness. Answering the call of the wild means that more and more, you trust your gut. Even if someone says the right words and even if (on the surface) everything looks good . . . if it doesn’t feel right, step away. Don’t always believe what you see and hear. Believe what you feel and know. The soul loves the truth, and it’s easier to discover the truth when the instinctive, wild place within you has been activated.

When you answer the call of the wild, you recognize that you are not separate from the wild and uninhabited places on our planet, and your intuition and instinctual reaction to life increase.