by Deb Matlock
“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” — John Archibald Wheeler
I have been sitting with something lately…for about a year, truthfully. Something I feel in my body before I can find words for it: a kind of collective holding of breath, a tightening, a weariness that seems woven into the air we are all breathing together right now. Perhaps you feel it too.
The political landscape in our country and around the world feels, at times, almost unbearable. Systems of care and connection, to each other, to the earth, to our shared future, seem fragile in ways they have not felt before, or at least not in my lifetime. And I find myself, again and again, being called back to the question that has shaped so much of my life and work:
What does the wild world have to say about this? And are we listening?
I believe, deeply, practically, spiritually, that our connection to the more-than-human world is not separate from the work of navigating these times. I believe it is central to it.
When the World Feels Too Big
When things feel overwhelming, and they do, they genuinely do, I notice I have two choices. I can spiral further into the noise, or I can step outside. Not to escape or to pretend all is well, but to remember.
Several years ago, during another time of great personal and collective upheaval, I found myself sitting by a small creek near my home in Colorado. I was not there to fix anything. I was not there with a plan. I simply sat, and I let the water be water, and the cottonwoods be cottonwoods, and the chickadees do their chickadee work. And something in me slowly exhaled.
What I received in that sitting was not a solution. What I received was perspective. Continuity. A reminder that the world is far larger and older and more resilient than the particular crisis of this moment. And from that larger ground, I could actually think. I could actually feel. I could actually begin to ask what my gifts were, and how they were needed.
This is what the more-than-human world offers us. Not escape from reality, but a more complete version of it.
Communicating with the More-Than-Human World
One of the things I return to again and again in my work is this: the wild world is not silent, passive scenery. The wild world is not merely a backdrop for our human dramas.
The more-than-human world is a living community of communicating beings, and we are part of that community whether we remember it or not.
A crow changes her call when a hawk appears overhead. A cottonwood releases seeds in response to wind and temperature and time. The soil beneath our feet is alive with microbial conversation. The moon pulls the tides and the fluids in our bodies. Wild nature is always in conversation, with herself, with us, with the great mystery, and when we slow down enough to participate in that conversation, something profound becomes available.
For me, this is what deep and sacred nature connection practice is really about. Not novelty. Not magic tricks. But the deep, disciplined, humble practice of opening ourselves to relationship. Of asking: What are you noticing? What do you know? What do you need me to understand?
And then, this is the hard part, listening. Really listening.
In times of political and global unrest, this listening is not a luxury. It is, I would argue, one of the most important things we can do. Because the more-than-human world has navigated disruption, adaptation, and transformation for far longer than we have. The wild world knows things about resilience that we desperately need to remember.
What Resistance Can Look Like
When we talk about resistance in times like these, we often think of marches, of votes, of letters written and phone calls made. And these things matter enormously. We must be active members in our democracy.
But I also want to name something else. Something that happens when a person sits with a tree, or watches a hawk on a thermal, or tends a garden with full presence and gratitude. Something that happens when we choose, deliberately, consciously, to inhabit our relationship with wild nature even when the news cycle is screaming.
This, too, is resistance.
It is resistance because it interrupts the machinery of disconnection that underlies so much of what is causing harm in our world right now. We live in a culture that profits from our separation, from each other, from our bodies, from the living world around us. A culture that tells us the natural world is a resource to extract, not a community to belong to. Every time we step out of that story, even for an hour, even for a walk with the dog through the neighborhood with our full attention on what is alive around us, we are refusing something. We are saying: this is not all there is. I belong to something larger.
Wild nature does not care who is in the White House. The seasons will turn regardless. The geese will migrate. The aspens will go gold. The snow will come, and the snow will melt. There is an incredible comfort in this, not because these things aren’t affected by our collective choices (they very much are), but because they remind us of the longer arc. They hold us in time differently.
When I am most connected to wild nature, I am most able to do the hard work. When I have walked in the foothills and let the wind clear me out a little, I come back to my desk, to my community, to the work with something replenished. I am not fighting from a place of pure depletion. I am fighting from a place of belonging. A deep and wild belonging.
Culture Creation in the Cracks
Here is what I love about the people I have the privilege of walking alongside in this work: they are creating culture. They are not necessarily doing this in loud ways. But in the ways that culture actually gets made, through practice, through relationship, through what we choose to pay attention to and what we pass on to the people who come after us.
Every time we teach a child to notice the insects in the garden, or invite a program participant to feel the difference in the soil after rain, to pause and really look at a hawk circling overhead, we are making culture. Every time we gather people outside and invite them to let the wild world speak to them, through art, through movement, through sacred sitting, through the wild page of a nature journal, we are making culture.
This is how the world changes. Not only through legislation (though we need that too). But through the slow, stubborn, joyful work of helping people remember who they are. Which is: animals. Which is: creatures of this earth. Which is: members of a community that includes far more than humans.
Wild nature and creativity, as I have written before, may well be one and the same. Both are expressions of the life force moving through us. Both are ways we participate in the great cosmic dance that the more-than-human world has been dancing since long before we arrived.
In times like these, that dance is an act of love. And love, I have come to believe, is the most powerful form of resistance there is.
Some Wild Questions to Sit With
As you move through these tender, difficult, extraordinary times, I invite you to consider:
Where and how does wild nature reach you? What living beings are part of your daily landscape, even in small ways?
What would it mean to turn toward the more-than-human world not only for comfort, but for counsel? To ask the creek or the hawk or the wind what they notice?
How might your own creative expression be a form of connection to wild nature, to your community, to the culture you are helping to create?
What would it look like to tend your wild soul not as a luxury, but as an essential act of care, for yourself, and for the world?
These are wild questions worth carrying. I am carrying them with you.
Deb Matlock grew up in the mountains of Colorado and is deeply committed to nurturing the connection between people, animals, earth, and spirit. She has spent twenty-five years working as a professional environmental and humane educator and naturalist. Additionally, Deb offers nature-based spiritual guidance, nature connection trainings for practitioners, animal communication, nature connection workshops, and retreats through her business, Wild Rhythms. She is passionate about helping people find connection and deep spiritual meaning in their lives and in the places where they live. Deb holds a Master of Arts in Environmental Education from Prescott College and is pursuing her doctoral degree in environmental studies at Antioch University New England.
Interested in exploring sacred connection to earth, animals, and spirit? Join the Wild Rhythms Facebook group.