Hope Beneath Our Feet_ Restoring Our Place in the Natural World - Martin Keogh [63]
But something else was growing as the women planted those trees. Not only the trees were taking root. The women and the girls began to see that they could change their land for the benefit of everyone. They saw that they were making a difference.
They looked at themselves and at each other with a new sense of respect and confidence. They started to trust their own wisdom, recognizing it to be just as important as that of the men. They saw that they deserved to be treated with equality and dignity. But of course these changes were not well received by everybody. The president arrested Wangari many times. For almost thirty years, she was ridiculed and even physically threatened for planting ideas of equality and democracy in people’s heads, especially in women’s. But she never gave up. She found the strength to continue, along with thousands of women and girls, who were blossoming right along with the trees. Thirty million trees were planted in Africa, one tree at a time, transforming landscapes—both the external one and the internal one of the people. Women planted trees, and in return the trees planted wisdom, hope, and strength in their hearts.
The woman is planting a tree in the world
On her knees, like someone in prayer,
Among the remains of the many trees
That the storm has broken down.
She must try again, perhaps one at last
Will be left to grow in peace.
–Halldis Moren Vesaas
Chameli Ardagh is one of the world’s leading pioneers on contemporary feminine spirituality. She is the director, founder, and senior teacher with the Awakening Women Institute. She is the initiator of a global network of women’s groups, a sought-after workshop leader, the author of two books and a series of DVDs on feminine empowerment and spirituality, a trained actress, and a psychotherapist. She delivers public talks, seminars, and trainings to women internationally and is dedicated to assisting women to awaken and to live more empowered and joy-filled lives. Visit www.awakeningwomen.com for more information.
The Healing Power of Nature
DIANE ACKERMAN
When summer blows through the willows, I love to ramble in an open field near my house, where Queen Anne’s lace flutters like doilies beside purple coneflowers. Although I’ve never harvested the carrot-like roots of Queen Anne’s lace, I have taken essence of coneflower (echinacea) as a tonic to keep colds at bay. Many people practice such homeopathy—swallowing minute amounts of herbs as curatives for an assortment of ills—and in a sense that’s what most of us do, psychologically, when we go out into nature. We drink briefly from its miracle waters. We inoculate ourselves against the aridity of a routine workaday life.
Wild is what we call it, a word tottering between fear and praise. Wild ideas are alluring, impulsive, unpredictable, ideas with wings and hooves. Being with wild animals—whether they’re squirrels in the backyard, or heavily antlered elk in Yellowstone—reminds us of our own wildness, thrills the animal part of us that loves the feel of sunlight and the succulence of fresh water, is alert to danger and soothed by the familiar sounds of family and herd. It’s sad that we don’t respect the struggles and talents of other animals, but I’m more concerned about the price we pay for that haughtiness. We’ve evolved to live tribally in a kingdom of neighbors, human neighbors and animal neighbors.
When we spend most of our lives indoors, what becomes of our own wilderness? Safe and dry in our homes, clean and well lit, at arm’s length from the weedy chaos outside, no longer prey to weather and wild, we can lose our inner compass. A few years ago, for instance, I broke a bone in my foot. And it took a year and a half, four months in a wheelchair, and, finally, a bone graft and titanium screw to heal. For an