The Power of Place: How Nature Reveals Spiritual Truth

Power of Place 1

Running Head: THE POWER OF PLACE

The Power of Place: How Nature Reveals Spiritual Truth

Jane Tanner

IPP5030T Planetary Psychology

JohnF.KennedyUniversity

Summer 2009

“The earth is a living, conscious being. In company with cultures of many different times and

places, we name these things as sacred: air, fire, water, and earth…To call these things sacred is to

say that they have a value beyond their usefulness for human ends, that they become the

standards by which our acts, our economics, our laws, and our purposes must be judged…

All people, all living things are sacred. No one of us stands higher or lower than any other…

Only in freedom can that fifth sacred thing we call spirit flourish in its full diversity…To

honor the sacred is to make love possible.” (Starhawk 1993, Declaration page.)

Forward

From the very first Planetary Psychology class, it occurred to me that here too was a call towards a different kind of consciousness. Half-way though the course, I thought that perhaps this call would be answered in the form of eco-psychology. Perhaps eco-psychology presented a means of reconnection to the natural world - not from the “untainted” worldview of pre-industrialization and human kinds’ collective past of developmental infancy and childhood, but from a more evolved “post adolescence.”If we could expand awareness just a bit further – enough to get past that stage of rebellious independence at any cost, mixed up with the need to conform and consume. If we could only expunge the reckless abandon that takes needless risk, our self soothing platitudes that inform us of our invincibility; ignoring the ruins from our games and competition adding up to“number one” - most often not caring how others have fared or how the spoils of depleted soils, ruined waterways, melting polar ice caps and thinning ozone layers and more would affect all. My first “simplistic” take on things was that all that was needed was an awareness of the power of personal and collective transformation in order to bring about the healing of human kinds’ immaturity from our age of mal-adjusted adolescence. But this view does not take into account the perspective ofmother earth that has nurtured us, bringing us through the ages, often forfeiting what she herself needed in order to give us the best of what she had of herself.Through the introduction to terrapsychology, I now realize that to truly understand what we have done, it is important to hear the voice of the world herself. I have come to realize that the power of place has within it the light of mature wisdom that illuminates our own personal truths, even as we arrive at the cusp of our own potential “adulthood.”That which we have come from - used and abused also holds the secret to our own unfolding. Without this source of wisdom and guidance, we are somehow reduced, limiting our ability to solve the problems of awareness that waver between fear and aliveness. Through the spiritual pull of synchronicity, I believe we are drawnto certain places and people that hold the potential for our own healing, and in turn, we are called to heal. The land becomes our mirror, our teacher, our tormentor, our solace – speaking to us in the old way, asking to be heard.

While I knew that the following personal story held a link to the land, and I was aware of some “coincidental” incidents that seemed to form a theme providing metaphors that reflected my own personal journey, I never tied these events to “universal” and historical patterns before now. In reviewing these events through the analysis of terrapsychology, the last pieces of the puzzle have finally fallen into place. Rather than viewing these events as occurring in a “back-drop” of natural setting, I have now come to realize that the land drew the people that it most hoped could heal old wounds. That in fact, it was the land that sought out the players: expressing itself in action and metaphor through hilly terrain, one-way roads marked “private,” land-slides, hill erosion, flooding, misplaced fences, trees, dreams, hawks, deer, Native Americans, misplaced gates, and the grist-mill that may have started it all. What follows is my own personal experience with “the power of place” and how it contributed to a heightened spiritual understanding.

Introduction

When Ed drove us down the narrow road in the ReliezValley area of Lafayette, I was thinking “no way.” The road was too narrow and the houses had a haphazard, forgotten look about them as they sporadically appeared first on the right, then eventually on the left, while narrow offshoots of the road we were on spawned tentacles of blacktop that spiraled straight up steep hills, among huge oaks and leaf strewn ground. House numbers, in no special order, were stuck to posts at the beginning of each fork in the road, while the PRIVATE ROAD sign almost obscured the name of the road that we were on. The name of the road was Manzanita, named for an evergreen tree-like shrub…characterized by smooth, orange or red bark and stiff twisting branches (Answers.com, p. 1). As we continued down the road, scanning the sloped hill below and the oak studded trees above, I didn’t see a single berried manzanita.

After some difficulty, we finally found the house and drove down the long sloping driveway. The house was in a pretty French country style with its high peaked roof line - a surprising architectural twist in this rural setting. I glanced at the house and went straight for the edge of the driveway, which overlooked a dramatic creek side setting. The house was built into the side of a gently sloping hill that stopped at a flat expanse of yard. One of the biggest, most beautiful oak trees that I had ever seen lined the edge of the creek. Its canopy reached out towards the back of the house, covering the expanse of yard effortlessly with majestic limbs that were as big as large tree trunks. At the driveway level, I could look into the upper branches and see playful squirrels and vocal birds – an intricate web of life and leaf. Until that moment, I was unaware that it was possible to fall in love with a tree. Even the simple name for it didn’t do this wise presence justice. I then turned to look at the front yard, which sloped up to meet the base of yet another oak, smaller in size, but no less grand – her branches reaching out towards her backyard partner with only the house in between to intercede. The way that I saw it then, was not as an interruption of a relationship, but a protective embrace of what had only so recently been built there. I presumptively assumed that nothing bad could ever happen in such a tranquil, peaceful setting. Just as the sirens called to Odysseus, the house was mine before I ever entered through the front door.

As I entered the house, I was struck by the amount of light streaming through numerous expansive windows, reflecting off the newly finished maple floors. The second impression was a feeling of being in a tree house, with the green glow of leaves peering curiously into every window. I walked through the entry into a large formal dining room which looked out over the backyard from its second story vantage point and there was that majestic tree again. I was mesmerized by the beauty of being able to see the intricacies of lichen growing along graceful branches, sculpturally perfect, and as I stood there admiring the shape of limb and leaf, a hawk landed right in front of me. It felt like an invitation…an invitation and also a challenge: “Are you up for this?” Always an optimist when it comes to challenges, I turned to my fiancé and replied: “I think the perfect spot to be married is under this tree.”

Neighborhood and Surrounds

While drawn to the beauty of the setting: the quiet country lane, the connecting open space, the animal life - lulled us into thinking that we were a million miles from the busy intersecting freeways and the chaos of suburban sprawl. We felt that this would be the perfect place to begin a new life as a family. My two daughters from my prior marriage were eight and fourteen at the time. One of the criteria had included a home in a good school district balanced by a desire on my part to maintain a semblance of diversity. Since the two concepts have yet to co-exist in our state, I settled on the “least snobby” of the best school districts and the lowest possible commute miles to and from our jobs.

After moving in we began to feel a little like we were living in the “Twi-light Zone.”It felt like the episode where a family wakes up to find that the rest of their neighbors had disappeared overnight. We took long walks and went hiking in the open space, but never ran into anyone. If our moving van never aroused curiosity, surely an outdoor wedding with 65 guests should have tempted someone to peek over a fence. But it was as if the houses ensconced on their large lots, came with a buffer zone of isolationism bent on the idea of self preservation through disconnection – Perhaps a legacy of declaring “PRIVATE” had manifested this result. As beautiful as the area was, clearly few had the inclination to receive joy through contact with it. The people passed by in their cars never once returning a friendly wave.

Having explored the main road, feeling the blank stare of mute houses, my husband and I ventured up a few of the narrow winding roads that seemed to disappear in the hills above us. We came upon our first evidence of a neighbor. A little girl was playing in the driveway. Feeling encouraged by the presence of an actual person and even better, she looked to be about my younger daughter’s age, I introduced myself. It turned out that Kate and my daughter were in the same class at school. As we chatted, her mother came out and we were pleased to experience out first greeting of welcome. As it turned out, Dana, (Kate’s mom) and her family would become our good friends, providing a wealth of information about the neighborhood. Dana had grown up in this house on the hill, having purchased it from her parents and remodeled it for her own family.

When we commented on the reclusive nature of the other neighbors, she mentioned that the neighborhood had always been like that as far back as she could remember. She warned us about “Freddy” the man that lived near the entrance toManzanita Road. He had once struck her grandfather for trespassing on his property. Because he owned the two lots that bisected the paved road, he felt that the easement running through it made a mockery of his property rights, and as such, found every opportunity to create conflict with the surrounding neighbors. Dana and her husband were both geologists and had a penchant for gardening, a love of animals (countless numbers of cats, a dog or two, and even kept their own chickens). As we later found out, Dana possessed the singular ability to walk the fine line of neutrality in a complex web of hostility and conflict embedded in the foundation of neighborhood relations. Watching her mother create enemies all around her while she was young, she had made the conscious decision to be the “peace-maker” in her family.

We finally met the neighbors across the street, when they paid us a visit to gain support for a petition that they were filing with the city against their next door neighbor over a new house that they wanted to build on their three acres of property. The objection of the neighbor had something to do with a drainage system that they felt was inadequate. We then met the neighbors to our right when they came over during a rainstorm to complain that the rain water from our house was threatening to overflow the septic system in their backyard. I introduced myself and offered coffee, which was declined, and then tried as tactfully as possible to explain that we were on the downhill side of their home and that as far as I knew, water didn’t naturally flow up hill. Finally, we met our neighbors to the left of us, whose home while parallel to ours, but faced the reverse direction. The entryway to their property faced a small cul-de-sac below, which was accessed by another PRIVATE ROAD directly off of a main thoroughfare. Their rear facing fence fronted Manzanita Road, and sported a “friendship gate” (installed by the prior owner). The giant oak tree in their backyard softened the harsh look of the solid redwood fence. The spur road below them provided access to two other homes besides theirs. And as we later learned was the original route of access to our lower yard as well. Our lot was actually an L shaped lot, rather than the neat rectangular shape that had been defined by a deer fence running down the middle of our two properties.

When we finally had the chance to meet them, we were pleased to find that we had very friendly next door neighbors. Our daughters were close to the same age; Paul was an infectious disease physician andhis wife was a veterinarian. We were invited for dinner and found that we shared a love of hiking and skiing and my husband, an orthodontist, had professed that his own choice of profession was tied for many years with an equal desire to pursue veterinarian medicine. We were then informed of the fact that our other next door neighbor with the septic problem was an emergency room doctor and the neighbor below us was a pathologist. I remember joking that in case of a natural disaster, we would be covered on all fronts. I thought it an odd coincidence that every immediate neighbor was associated with the healthcare field.Now I wonder at the appropriate choice of specialists that Manzanita invited into its midst. Several years later, I would mark off an ironic passage in The Careless Society:

The medical profession has long understood that its interventions have the potential to hurt as well

as to help. The Hippocratic oath…concludes with the primary mandate, “This above all else, do no

harm.” This harmful capacity of medicine is recognized in what current medical language calls

iatrogenic disease –- doctor-created maladies…The ethic assumes a good doctor…always asks:

“Will this initiative help more than hurt? (McKnight 1995, p. 101)

Towards the end of the evening we mentioned our plans to get married in the back yard and asked if it would be alright to have guests come through their lower gate, as parking was scarce and the upper access did not provide a stairway to our lower backyard. Diane, Paul’s wife, quickly responded, “I don’t see why not, after all it’s yours.” Her husband quickly shot her a dark look and responded “She means that there is a drainage easement running alongside the creek where we all need to allow access.” For some reason, the strange interaction stuck with me, almost a portent of events to come. After that friendly dinner, we found that our overtures of friendship incited little response.

Terrain and Geography

Our new home had been built as an “in-fill” project, financed by a group of speculators and included the contractor that did the work, a real estate agent, and a private investor. The home was built on an acre of land on the downhill side of Manzanita Road. It was built into the hillside, as an “upside-down” house, with the main rooms at entry level and the bedrooms all downstairs. The generous backyard sloped down into flat terrain that led down to Lafayette Creek, where evidence of underground pipe was partially visible. The creek dried up to a trickle in the summer and fall, but could climb pretty high in the creek bed during the rainy season. According to the Lafayette Historical Society: “Drought in the summer and flood in the winter often plagued the farmers. Lafayette Creek raged out of control in 1910, [spilling] over its banks…Today much of the creek is contained by underground water pipes” (p.3). Underneath the large oak canopy, the creek was lined with poison oak and blackberry brambles. I nicknamed the side of our house “deer highway,” as families of deer made their way between the creek and hills above us. A magnificent stag often rested in the shade beneath the oak. Prior to our ownership, the land had represented one third of the prior parcel, and had later been subdivided.

Before regular homes were built in this section of Lafayette, it had been used for recreational purposes, with small cabins providing respite for people wanting to escape city life in the 1920’s. At that time, the creek ran more consistently and attracted recreational activity. There is little evidence of what the land was used for prior to that. The animal life that was still very evident included deer, coyote, raccoons, squirrels, and quail. Much to my dismay, it also was home to tarantula, wolf spiders and snakes.