NATURE'S WISDOM MAGAZINE PROUDLY WELCOMES NEW COLUMNIST
JESSE WOLF HARDIN

Re-Enchantment
An Interview With Jesse Wolf Hardin

DJ: To begin with, you write a lot about “home.” Could you define that for us?

JH: Home is the heart, in deep relationship with the land. And it is the place that calls us most insistently, instructs us loudest and best. The place we inevitably miss when we leave, partner to our pain, and reason for our joy. Home is not only where you want to live, but how you want to live. To "lose our place" is to lose our way home.
Let me put it this way: the source of all psychological, social and environmental dis-ease is our illusion of separateness. And the first step in mending that artificial schism, that deep wound, is to try to bring ourselves back home to the real and magical world... to a place of engagement with our authentic beings, in the vital present moment.

DJ: I’d like you to address your notion of reinhabiting one’s body. What are you saying?

JH: Your door to the entire world is located where your feeling body touches the giving ground. Your bare feet, your rear end, the few square inches of absolute contact is the point of connectivity between yourself and millions of years of organic process. And the way to fully experience that connection is by disengaging our mental tape loops, our voice tracks, the constant commentary that keeps us perpetually anticipating the future or criticizing our self about the past rather than tasting the muffin we’re eating right now. Then we can experience the world around us— as well as within us— like the awakened, hungering, feeling, responding, caring creature selves we really are.

DJ: How does one reconnect?

JH: Reach out to what is real— a leaf, a chair, a friend— emissaries of the present glad to reconnect us to the now. If something exists for the senses, it exists in present time. Waking up from a nightmare of past events and far away places, peer into the graduations of black in the unlit bedroom, focus on the pressure of covers against skin, or give yourself over to identifying any smells making their way to you through the darkness. Try showers hotter and colder than you think you can stand, focus on the lover you're with until there are no others. And if all else fails, there's nothing like a loud boom, the sudden screeching of brakes to bring us back into bodies ready to run or have fun! Awakened, and reconnected, everything becomes possible. Remaking our lives, building community, inspiring change, furthering love.

DJ: Let’s talk about your place.

JH: The Sanctuary is a restored riparian wilderness, an eighty acre inholding surrounded by millions of acres of Aldo Leopold's Gila forest, in mountains that were one of the last refuges for free Apaches including Victorio and Geronimo. This particular bend in the river is place of power, and served the Mogollon pithouse dwellers as a site for ritual and worship for tens of thousands of years. Since the willows and cottonwood trees filled back in, we've seen the return of herons and ducks, owls and eagles, deer and elk, lion and bear. It’s now an Animá wilderness learning center, as well as a women’s sanctuary, in keeping with its ancient purpose.

DJ: This may seem strange, but when I was walking down the canyon, before I came up here to do this interview, the one thing that was missing was a lover. Had I been here with a human lover, we would have had no choice but to make love.

JH: Of course! Everywhere we look we see an eroticized natural world both consuming itself, and making love to itself, through its constituent parts. Pollen laden flowers pierced by wild bees. The mating calls of the sex-addled elk. Insect orgies and intertwining grape vines. We're drawn to participate in this lusting and cuddling, inspired to add our own variations of partnering and pairing. There exists what Terry Tempest Williams and I call an "erotics of place," the charged field we evolved from, and that we subconsciously long to penetrate again. The rational mind really only serves this work to the degree that it functions as an honest translator to us as communicants, restorationists, healers, poem creators and prayer reciters. And especially, as praise givers.

DJ: It’s like Meister Eckhart said, if the only prayer you say in your life is “thank you,” that would be sufficient.

JH: Words too easily become a substitute for emotion and experience. When it comes to language, It fills only these few redeeming roles: Giving thanks. Giving warnings. Creating odes to the beloved. And directing people's attention back to what's real and wordless.

DJ: You say that all the earth is equally sacred, but that we still need to access special "place of power.” What does that mean?

JH: All of the Earth is sacred, with an accessible spirit and persona, and every place offers the same essential body of wisdom. But there have always been locations with a special ambiance, such as the confluences of rivers and lonely mountain peaks, landmarks where the energy seems more palpable. Where our feelings, fears and hopes are reflected back to us. And where the lessons are harder to avoid. This canyon, the Animá Center is like that, which is why it was a place of ceremony for the Sweet Medicine People for so very many generations. These are places that need to be protected from encroachment, commercialization or misuse. At the same time, we must be careful not to miss out on the magic of the familiar and mundane in our lives, the miracle of outlaw dandelions pushing their sunny little heads up through the cracks in the pavement, and the living character of our neighborhood park. These all are sources of uncorrupted information, triggering our intuitive wisdom.

DJ: I've come to realize that there is no such thing as anything separate from land.

JH: There’s no such thing as separate. That’s the whole point. Every problem in the world, every social dis-ease, every environmental imbalance, every screwed up personal problem is because we’re somehow able to imagine separation between our mind and our heart, between our mind and our body, between our body and this place, between our selves and our loved ones, our selves and our community. There is no original evil, only original imagined separation. The cure for that is love, vision, service. The way to manifest that love is through the courageous embodiment of our decisive responsible selves. Our natural selves, in partnership with what's natural in this world.

DJ: When you say there’s no separation, do you mean that everything is good? Do you mean that chainsaws and global corporations are. . . .

JH: I mean there is no separation between the physical and energetic bodies of the Earth destroyers and the Earth defenders, though we might sometimes wish there were! We will all be rejoined in fact, stirred and folded back into the great Gaian soup. Likewise the metals in the chain saw will in time corrode back into seams of earthen ore, and even that abomination called plastic will break back down into native sediments and organic gases. That doesn't make the callous developer or arrogant geneticist any less accountable. But responsibility comes from the awareness of interdependency. In the long run, we'll need to make the corporate polluter and de-forester aware of their place in the web, and the results of their acts.

DJ: People come to you for counsel and quests.

JH: Quests for a deeper experiencing of life and truth. For clarity, in order to make important and powerful decisions. For deepened ways of being and doing. Whatever their perspective, spirituality or practice, they can benefit from taking focused time to ritually engage their authentic selves, the inspirited Earth, and the source of inspiration by whatever name. And those that can’t make it here, study with us or ask for counsel via email. Out of this intentional experience comes a deeper recognition and acceptance of who they really are, their real feelings and useful intuition. If people can capture that here, hold on to that and take it with them, then the right path will be obvious and their choices clear. What we teach is sentience, awareness, interconnection, response-ability, and finding and serving one’s most meaningful purpose... and that each person manifests that conviction in their own personal and magical ways.

DJ: What about hope?

JH: The Earth changes, political trends, environmental destruction, physical and emotional illness... there is much to worry about, and so much to try to remedy or improve. The trick is to expect nothing, while always hoping for miracles. And to recognize reasons for hope in ourselves, as in everywhere we look.
I find hope in the unflagging compassion of those who share this project with me. In the faces of little children, the angst and anger of troubled teens, and the determination of Zapatista women. In the efforts of Indian traditionalists, spiritual activists and environmental ethicists. In small presses and compassionate publications like this one. In urban gardens, and herbicide-resistant weeds. I find hope in the insistence of my Animá students, and the concern of our resident interns. In my dear apprentices, and the possibility of a renewed lineage of protection and sacrament. The only thing in the world that's truly hopeless, is the person that hopes less. This is what keeps me speaking at conferences, and spending so many hours of my fleeting life putting it all to paper. The essential quest is to re-become who we really are, opposing the destruction and lies, embracing the natural and inspirited world, actively healing and bettering, working and playing as if life itself depended on it. Enchanted, and dedicated to re-enchanting the world. Once we do that, there will be no more quandaries, no more need to "process," no confusion about wrong or right, or wondering if we're on our path of heart. We'll feel, we'll care, we'll respond. We'll express this wholeness in acts of beauty. We'll give everything to our selves and the world we are an inseparable part of, fulfilling our most meaningful purpose.... and that, indeed, will be enough.