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Hello, Subscriber First Name, The tale of Dianne Whelan and her incredible 15,534-mile trek across Canada—hiking, biking, paddling, snowshoeing and skiing—from the Atlantic to the Pacific and north to the Arctic, as told in a recent piece in the NY Times, stole my heart, not just for the epic nature of the journey but for her lens on the world. Her “ecological pilgrimage” is a story about reconnection. She relays the words of an Indigenous elder, Danny Paul, who told her “we’re kind of like trees. On the surface, every tree looks like it stands alone. Beneath the surface all the trees in a forest are connected.” Her journey found her connected—to life, to the water, to the wisdom of elders. She and I share this truth. There is a way out of the profound suffering we are experiencing as individuals and as a culture, and from the devastation we are unleashing on the planet. That way is through reconnection. To the natural world. To the other species with whom we share this planet. To our neighbors, friends, and families. To our own hearts. In the same way the forest offers lessons, water shows us just how interconnected we are—despite our strident (and deluded) proclamations of independence. Dianne’s words had me recalling some of my own lessons and writings on interdependence, shared below. I wish for deeper, more authentic connections for us all. With water love, Wendy
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The pain in our psyches, between individuals, within communities, across continents reflects a deep forgetting. Despite our vehement claims of self-sufficiency, independence, individuality, the workings of the planet remind us of a very different truth. We are inherently interdependent—with each other, our fellow sentient beings, the elements, the movements of the cosmos.
Each water molecule comprising the powerful ribbon of a waterfall carries its own story. One may have pelted to the ground in a ball of hail, somewhere deep in the Andes. There it seeped around vegetation, and then topsoil and mineral soil, somehow avoiding evapotranspiration, ultimately percolating through the unsaturated vadose zone and arriving at the water table to declare a slowly moving flow path in an ancient groundwater aquifer a transient but multigenerational home. Until—someday, someway—it was released in the hyporheic zone of a river, taken seaward and discharged in a torrent of coffee brown river water to the awaiting currents of the Pacific Ocean. It may have danced a seemingly endless dance of evaporation and precipitation and oceanic transport, intermittently and alternatively taking in and discharging heat and energy, flitting between states—once a solid, once a liquid, once a vapor—as the mood fits, as I might change outfits. Finally, it may have left the oceanic cycle, ventured to the terrasphere, and fallen from a deep, roilingly black cloud to be captured by the lush canopy perched on the cliff above. Another molecule will have taken an entirely different route to arrive simultaneously with this water-of-the-Andes, both landing concurrently in the forest in some synchronistically-determined squall. Is this not similar to the intricately interwoven webs of love and movement and energy and people and places and things that we term “life”?
As we begin reconnecting following the Great Pause, I invite you to consider how you might re-envision your web of connections. Are you cultivating and nurturing healthy interdependent relationships with the people in your life, the other beings on this planet, the world around you? Are you soaking it in? Pausing to watch the butterflies? Listening with (and to) your heart? Our deep healing requires us to open our hearts, offer compassion, recognize ourselves in the other, honor our interdependence. To be like water.
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Potentiality. 48’’ x 72”x 2.5. Acrylic and mixed media on gallery-wrapped canvas. [Sold] ▽ ▽ ▽ “Water symbolizes the whole of potentiality: it is fons et origo, the source of all possible existence.” — Mircea Eliade If you allow for it, the process of painting offers myriad lessons: humility, patience, equanimity, faith, a higher vision, willingness, and commitment. As with all things—work, relationships, gardens, adventures, you name it—it’s only by staying through the moments of doubt that you arrive to receive the beauty that is so clearly always there. The scale of this piece and what it required from me was humbling; completing it felt correspondingly triumphant. [See more artwork here.]
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If you feel so inspired, I’d love to hear from you with feedback about the newsletter and what it brings up for you, your own water wisdom, and any other thoughts you’d like to share.
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