Physical experiences with the 'otherthanhuman'

Regenerative Culture Spiritual Technology
#1 
last night I stood between two trees, my forearms pressed to their trunks. A squirrel ran down the right tree, over my right arm, hopped onto my right leg, slightly below the knee, then hopped to my left, encircled, relocated to the left tree, scurried upwards until it bumped its nose against my bare arm, craned its head and looked at me for a good ten seconds, carefully climbed over my arm and continued scurrying upwards.

I laughed for a really long time after that.

 A few weeks ago I viewed 13 osprey circling in the sky. 6 directly above me and 7 less than a quarter mile to the north of that cluster. only the one lowest and closest to me sounded its call.

and i smiled for a long time after that.

anyone else?

#2

Funnily enough, a collared dove followed me closely for a good half mile today. Fluttering from tree to lamppost to tree to keep up with me. I don’t know what it wanted. It sorta reassured me that curiosity isn’t an exclusively human characteristic.

#3

I dreamed last night about these horrible trout that were jumping out of the water onto the land and they wouldn’t leave me alone. There was something very wrong with them and I found them disgusting. I also dreamed that a squirrel was licking my ear, and I think I dreamed that a bear was annoying me as well. Come to think of it I have lots of dreams about demented animals that are acting bizzare and attaching themselves to me and generally trying to “get me” and they just want to play but I find them threatening and gross.

#4

Yes, slumberland seems like, or I found it to be, or I consider it to be [never quite certain which one it is] a fickle and goofy realm.

Maybe if you were to cease viewing these creatures as entities of wrong they’d stop looming and change their ‘disgusting’ ways. It is possible, dreams being akin to stories and stories containing all sorts of foolish events like loathsome warty frogs tranforming into princes with a royal peck to their slimy amphibious domes.

Not to try and shift the blame from things that exist only in your mind to you.

I’ve always been confused by finger pointing. ‘I’m inferior? Huh?’
There. Now you know something useless about me.

and I’ve decided to keep things like this to myself. After all, it’s only the loony who admits to seeing the unicorn.

#5

i just dug up this old thread and feel like reviving it.

out of the blue, nuthatches keep showing up near me lately, a lot. in the woods, out & about, even outside my kitchen window, looking in and talking a lot.

so i thought about what they might want to show me. they operate upside down from what the other birds do, hopping down the tree instead of up and seeing what hides in a whole different set of cracks.

i shared my thoughts with my son. at 4, he’s starting to notice that some of the ways we (the two of us) do things seem different from the way he sees others around us live. well, it works for the nuthatch! when we talk about messages animals give us, he seems to accept and trust it.

thanks nuthatch.

#6

Yes indeed. As my spouses and my relationship had broken down, I headed up to Northern Ontario for a short spell to clear my head(the wilderness up there, by the way is breathtaking). At any rate, I found a secluded spot to make as my camp by an old dead oak tree(very unusual to find one of these so far north). After sitting for a few minutes, I heard a flutter of wings, looked up and saw a ‘crone’ of an old crow, quite tattered looking, with what appeared to be a younger crow, that to me looked like her helper/guardian, sitting in this dead old tree, looking intently down at me.
At this point, my mental state was quite open to anything, and being ‘up north’ just amplified this state. This same crone of a crow, who looked like some grandmother of all crows started making some very unusual vocalizations, while directly looking at me( very unusual Corvid behavior).
It was almost, but not quite, like I could understand what she was saying…I strained to understand…this lasted less than a minute by watch reckoning, but seemed much longer, and sort of out of sync with normal time.
The message and meaning I got out of this is deeply personal, and between me and that grandmother crow, but has remained part of me for all these years. I have hence adopted Crow as part of MY animal hierarchy.
Like all human/animal experiences hard to impart to others…
Live Primitive in Peace.
Alex

#7

Here’s an old post of mine on USENET.

I've never really thought about my spirituality before, and may just be imagining things since I've been reading so much about these things recently. The other day, I went hiking into the woods just before dusk seeking out a spiritual experience of some sort. Of course I wasn't sure what, or if anything would happen.

I often go hiking, but with friends. They’re into the Sierra Club style
hikes that a guy I just recently met likes to call “cattle drives.” I
decided to go alone and at my own pace this time.

About an hour into the woods I follow a small creek off the trail. I
find a comfortable looking rock and decide it looks like a nice place to
sit and meditate. I hear something large moving in the bushes to my
left, but don’t see anything. I hear voices coming from the direction
of the trail, which is still visible from where I was at, but again,
don’t see anything. I’m beginning to wonder if my expectations are
playing tricks on my senses.

As I’m sitting there wondering if what I was hearing was a trick of my
senses, a honey bee begins flying around me and eventually lands on the
back of my hand and I suddenly recall all my past experiences with bees.

As a child I’d often sit and watch bees. Most kids were afraid of
getting stung, I found them peaceful and comforting. One day some of
the kids in the neighborhood and I got into a fight with this other kid.
I joked that I would send the bees after him, coincidentally the next
day we found out he was stung three times. We all thought it was kind
of spooky.

A few months ago I was at the farmer’s market and buying some honey.
The man selling the honey, out of nowhere, suggested I become a
beekeeper. I asked him why. He wasn’t exactly sure himself, only that
he thought I looked like I’d make a good beekeeper. He suggested I find
some books in the library and look into it. Maybe I will.

I remember all this and think it very strange. The bee takes off from
my hand, and I get up and walk home.

–Locke

I did read up on beekeeping, but wasn’t able to get started. My living situation doesn’t really allow for it. I live in a triplex and keeping bees around would probably scare my neighbors. Lately though, I’ve been considering going through with it anyways. I figure I could carve a small hive out of a dead yucca stalk and if I keep it out of the way it won’t bother the neighbors too much. That will at least give me a little experience before I’m able to move to a better location.

#8

Wow! Thanks for sharing that.

It has inspired me to make a short list of my closest other-than-human intimates (based on experiences):

snakes
grasshoppers
fish
wolves
ducks
rocks
dead trees
ladybugs

#9

“The First Frost” of the year rolled into the neighborhood I live in which lies somewhere in the Cascades or NE portland area. I think this frost means a grip of things such as ripened mountain ash and oregon grape berries. Sweet!

#10

And, I must say that I had the darndest time time finding a home for that post. I even thought about created a new thread called, FIRST FROST.

p.s. Oh, yes, and I did ‘touch’ the frost. Also, did anybody else in the neighborhood or anywhere else for that matter experience “the first frost” today (10-31-2007 “halloween”).

#11

A few months ago, ai was on a soulsearch hike and decided that ai’d say skrew you to the human trails. Ai was a bit stupid about it and lost my bearings, so ai thought to pray for guidance. As ai finished ai noticed two ravens circling together, starting from behind me to the right and just kept going. Being that ravens are very important to me and not that common, ai decided to follow them. Sure enough, before losing sight of them, ai found a major deer trail that led directly back to the edge of the wild land (a barbedwire fence). ¡Thanks ravens!

#12

How about Phenology (Natural Observations) in Seasonal/Bioregion Strategies?

#13

Thanks, I remembered that thread and looked everywhere for it but couldn’t find it (ha ha, I quess I didn’t look EVERYWHERE). Anyway, I’ve decided not to move it 'cause frost counts as ‘otherthanhuman’ or at least to me it does. I’ll definately remember the location of that thread now however.

#14

To tell the truth, one thing I don’t like about the organization of the message boards is how much searching/scanning for topics you have to do, and how much “remembering” (“dang nabbit, now where did I read that post last week, and what was that thread called??!?”), as well as how easy it is to create a topic for something that already exists (on the same, or a different, board). I wish there were ways to add tags to posts (wiki-style) so that you could pull up a bunch of posts from different topics, all dealing with the same subject.

Oh well, that’s what a search function is for, I suppose…

I digress.
Back to your regularly scheduled topic!

#15

Yeah I don’t use the board anymore tbh, I just use RSS feeds…

#16

(Me too, unless I’m looking for something that I read, or looking for an appropriate topic to post in.)