being present to place and self. michelle slosser

I wish I could just write out a chapter of the book Dandelion Wine as one of these journal entries, because I think it expresses a lot of what we have been talking about in class. The book, by Ray Bradbury, is about two young brothers growing up in Illinois in the 1920s and a summer they spent, the adventures they had, and the lessons they learned. This particular chapter is near the beginning of the book and sets up the feeling of the rest of the summer with Douglas Spaulding realizing, after becoming “present to place and self,” as Lane’s like to put it, that he is alive. His little brother and he were out with his father in the forest collecting berries one morning, and Doug has an eerie feeling that something is sneaking up on them all morning. Every time the thing gets near, someone speaks and scares it off. After Doug is thoroughly frustrated with his brother for always scaring the thing off, his brother realizes Doug’s moodiness, and tackles him for some fun.

“No! Douglas squeezed his mind shut. No! But suddenly… Yes, it’s all right! Yes! The tangle, the contact of bodies, the falling tumble had not scared off the tidal sea that crashed now, flooding and washing them along the shore of grass deep through the forest. Knuckles struck his mouth. He tasted rusty warm blood, grabbed Tom hard, held him tight, and so in silence they lay, hearts churning, nostrils hissing. And at last, slowly, afraid he would find nothing, Douglas opened one eye.
And everything, absolutely everything, was there.
The world, like a great iris of an even more gigantic eye, which has also just opened and stretched out to encompass everything, stared back at him.
And he knew what it was that had leaped upon him to stay and would not run away now.
I’m alive, he thought.”

Douglas went on a sort of spiritual journey through the forest that morning, looking to every animal and tree and clearing to give him the answer he was seeking. Nature very often gives us our most meaningful thoughts and insights, speaking to us in a wordless language that most of us only amuse ourselves with in trying to put into words. But though I may be far from really understanding, I have definitely grown in peace and appreciation by studying these attempts at explaining the sacredness of nature.