The Role of Nature in Childhood and How It Shapes Soul and Psyche

Tomás Pinkson, Ph.d.

I remember the very first time I walked into a garden. I was under three years old. I lived with my parents in Manhattan at the time, and we had come out to the country in upstate New York for several weeks of vacation. This was my first sojourn out of the city environment, where the only nature I was regularly exposed to was the vacant lot next to our apartment house. Being a city boy, I had never seen a garden before, so when my mother took me outdoors on the day of our arrival, I was thrilled with the excitement of new adventure--new sights to see, smells to smell, places to explore and new experiences to encounter. Of course I had no clue what to expect, I was just open and ready to go.

I don't remember anything about the walk to the garden, I just remember being in it. It is one of my earliest memories and I cherish it to this day. It was a moment of epiphany: a doorway opening into a totally new and unexpected realm that totally transformed my understanding of reality. What took place in that little country garden so altered my notion of how things work, that it remains in my mind today as a reference anchor, a centering point on my life-navagational compass that orients me toward the miracles of nature and my need to be in intimate touch with its' gifts on a regular basis--both for my joy, and for my very survival.

So what shocking, mind-blowing event took place there in that rich black earth amidst rows of tasseling corn, juicy red tomatoes, thick yellow squash, bright green pods of string beans and peas, there with worms crawling through clods of dirt, insects buzzing and the warm sunlight dancing lazily in the hot and humid August sun? Well, let me tell you. My mother took me right out into the center of that lush and lively hotbed of growth, bent down to the ground and pulled up a brilliant orange carrot. My eyes must have grown large with surprise. I don't recall if I had any memory of a carrot before that time, but I didn't have much time to think about it, because my mother immediately brushed the dirt off the carrot, dipped it into a bucket of water to clean it of any remaining particles, then stuck it in her mouth and took a bite. What??!! Huh??!! Yowie-zowie! You mean to say stuff comes out of the earth and you can eat it!

I was transfixed. This was a totally new ball game for me. My only relationship with food up to this point was that it came out of our kitchen cabinet and refrigerator. Obviously that was the source of food, our one and only kitchen.

But no, something new and revolutionary was afoot. The next thing I knew, my mother stood up and handed the carrot to me. "Here, take a bite", she said. I hesitated at first, this was new territory for me. But it was my mother giving it to me and she had done it first, so it must be OK. I looked at the shinny carrot, put it up to my mouth and took a bite. A burst of energy exploded in my mouth!

Fantastic! It was true. I could eat right out of the earth. Food actually came from the dirt.

This was unbelievable. A miracle. I was born again. I'd seen the light. Right relationship with the powers below us meant something to eat.

It was fun to go out and harvest the bounty that grew up from fertile darkness. It was an exciting adventure worthy of a young child's curiosity and desire to explore the world around him. A few days later my mother took me out into the garden of wonders and showed me how to draw a two inch deep row in the dirt. The row went on for the length of the garden. Then she picked up a small package, opened it up and shook out small bits of something I had never seen before. She bent over the row and started dropping the small bits of matter into the furrow. She handed me some bits and motioned me to follow her example. "These are corn kernels Tommy. They will grow into corn that we can eat for dinner". It sounded pretty strange to me, but I did follow her example, after all, hadn't I already been shocked at what could happen in this new territory where amazing things happened?

I watched her walk over to the hose, hand it to me with instructions to hold it tight, while she walked over to the spigot and turned it on. The next thing I knew, water came rushing out and she hurried over to take hold giving me my first lesson in watering. "This will make the plants grow", my mother told me. It sounded like magic to me, but I believed her.

I loved it. Action, power, fun, and contributing to something the adults valued. It was my very first job. I came out to the garden every day of our vacation. I couldn't wait to pick more vegetables, and of course, to do my job. It took a week or so, of me mostly enjoying the rush of power that I could turn in any direction I wanted--ah, what control,what delight to see the effects of the sparkling, gurgling liquid make its mark in dirt, bush, and plant, before I noticed that in fact the plants really did seem to be getting bigger.

The real kicker came when one day when we entered the garden, I noticed small, little green shoots sticking up in the rows where we had placed the corn seed. This was really too much. I don't know what I expected, perhaps fully grown pieces of corn such as I had seen on my dinner plate,or noticed growing on the mature stalks in a nearby corner of the garden. But no, this was something different. It was little bitsy, flimsy pieces of green leaf coming up from an invisible underground where I couldn't see. I watched in amazement as each day the flimsy shoots grew taller and thicker, reaching upwards toward the blue sky just like their brothers and sisters around them.

We didn't get to stay around long enough to see the corn actually grow to full height, but one day back in the city my mother served us a dinner that included shinny cobs of rich golden corn. "These are from the garden Tommy, the seeds we planted. They are full-grown corn now and we can eat them!" she said excitedly. I was beside myself. Holding my cob and munching down in to its juicy kernels was a double delight, a delicious taste treat and another lesson in what is possible through right relationship with the mysterious growth force of invisible powers that seemed to live in the land beneath our feet.

Today as I write these words almost half a century has passed since my initial garden experience. I live on the outskirts of a major west coast metropolitan area, but you know what my favorite way of waking up is in the summer and fall? I go outside to the large garden my wife Andrea and I have filling up a good portion of our back yard. And I just graze. I pick off a snatch of parsley, a juicy tomato,some luscious strawberries, then a bosk pear, or a golden apple, perhaps a plumb, or if one is ready, I pull off a cob of corn, sit down on the warm earth, pull off its husks, and sink my teeth into its full, ripe kernels feeling the juice squirt into my mouth and the invisible power of Mother Earth thrills me once again just as it did years before in my childhood.

Andrea and I raised our two daughters with gardens, for she too had enjoyed the childhood delights of eating right from the earth. We wanted our girls to know how life worked--how the great growth- power of the tierra can sustain you if you treat her right: with love, respect,nurturance and stewardship. We wanted them to learn about patience, about faith and trust, about sacred mystery. We wanted them to learn about tending to the earth and her great fecundity and the rewards that could come from doing so.

A few years after my initial garden epiphany my father, Fred, died of complications from a heart ravaged by rheumatic fever as a boy, and my mother, Ruth, moved with my younger sister and I to Southern California. The time was 1949 and L.A. was soft breezes, clean air, and weather warm enough to play outside all year long for a boy wounded by loss and aching with grief. There were swaying palm trees, amazing flowers blossoming all year round, and right in the middle of our backyard in the house we shared with my grandparents, a huge avocado tree. Every morning my grand-father would take me out back and with a long stick pick off some avocados. When he brought them down, my job was to gather them up and bring them in the house. I loved it. Once again I got to gather the bounty of the giving earth and revel in its delights.

Another highlight of our three years in the southland was a trip we took to Yosemite Valley. It was my first experience with really big mountains and wild animals. The immensity and grandeur of the granite peaks rising upwards as if into the very heavens itself, inspired a sense of excitement and adventure that opened a doorway to a path that I am still walking today.

At Yosemite I got to see animals that I had only known about in picture books. A deer ate out of my hand, a bear that I am glad didn't, raided our tent in the middle of the night. This was real, wild animals, intimate and up close. I was thrilled. Nature was alive, and here in Yosemite it was huge-- trees and rocks bigger than houses. My little soul soared at the sights and spectacles and my heart raced at the prospects of what other amazing creatures and miracles of nature were "out there" in the unknown reaches of the wilderness.

The evening sky was an adventure as well. I didn't recall ever seeing stars back in the city, but here they were alive as pulsating points of light that sparkled and danced across a sea of pitch black. They seemed to be winking at me, and I joyously winked back. Maybe my daddy was up there in that great immensity winking at me too.

The majesty of Yosemite breathed new life into me. Somehow the power of it's life gave of itself to mine. It spoke an ancient tongue that touched my psyche. It's spirit touched deep into my soul and fed and nurtured a part of me that had shut down in despair. The aliveness embraced me with a force that spoke to the very cells of dormant memories-- "The universe of possibilities is far vaster and greater then any puny human perspective. Take it in. Enjoy it little one. Drink in great draughts of its breath. It will grow you to the heights of your being."

Of course I didn't get those words then as a child, or maybe I did, in body, feelings and spirit, through a language they knew and remembered from an ancient past. The words come now as an adult as I look backwards into the past. From this perspective, sitting on the hill of fifty one years, I see how these early nature experiences of childhood, in garden and wilderness, awakened a sense of awe that shines like a beacon before me, guiding me ever onwards to explore it's mysteries and enjoy it's regenerative powers.

One manifestation of this is that in the early 1970's I developed a wilderness treatment program for working with drug abusers in these very same mountains I first saw as a young child. Out of this work grew a quest for vision retreat that I have been doing now for twenty four years. It is a meditative sojourn for those seeking solitude with the forces of the natural world, seen and unseen, fasting and praying, entering deeper into realms of vision and awareness wherein all of creation is dancing in unity, wonder and beauty.

On my most recent quest I ended up in a cave overlooking a magnificent valley. I looked around for any signs of recent inhabitants and finding none, asked permission to spend the time of retreat within it's womb. I waited for a response, and after awhile, felt the OK to enter as a warm feeling of "yes" in my solar plexus. The width of the cave was about ten feet across, plenty of room to spread out in, but the roof was only two and a half foot high at its apex, and tapered off to just a few inches high at the lower end. I could just manage to put down my sleeping bag and settle in all stretched out in the womb of what felt like the Great Mother. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a huge coyote, so big that at first I thought it was a wolf, but alas, they are long gone from these mountains. The coyote was scampering up the steep slope of the mountain behind me. It must have felt my gaze upon it, for suddenly it stopped, turned around and looked directly back at me.

Our eyes locked, and for a few glorious moments of time we were as one, an invisible line of communication and spirit connecting us with a dim past when we both spoke the same language. In that instant my body and all its senses lit up like a light bulb on a Christmas tree, filled with ecstatic exhilaration. I poured out my love to that four-legged relative and gave thanks for the gift of its being and the grace of such an exciting encounter.

Later in the cave I wrote this poem by the illumination of my flashlight.

It takes awhile to sink back into the Earth while you are still alive.
For Children and Wisdom Elders it is much easier.
They are closer.

For most of us it takes some time of being still in nature
exfoliating
layers of social conditioning and identities
before our senses and spirit awaken anew.

Shedding the skin of contracted sensorium,
imprisoned within a chattering mind separated from
the ebb and flow of creation.

Patience and breathing, relaxing and opening,
blending with all, reawakening awe.
Seeing, hearing, feeling, sensing, listening--to wind, body, rock, bird cry, silence, intuition, fantasy, imagination, dreams, grass growing.

It takes awhile. The armor needs to drop away.
The body as energy field needs to emerge,
re-sensitized to ancient birthright of oneness with Nature-
within ,without, and in between.

Yes,it takes awhile to release the hurrying, the doings,
the making things happen.
Intention. Attention. Awareness.
Staying with it long enough for the egg to hatch,
the flower to bloom.

A treasure chest of wonder and beauty,
mystery and power,
grace and wisdom.
Jewels of Creation.
Awaiting us All.

The time in the mountains over the past quarter of a century-- peaks climbed, snow fields crossed, rivers run, cold nights endured, blazing days of blasting sun, communion with deer and bear, coyote and red-tailed hawk; the time grazing in the garden-- pulling weeds, mulching, composting, watering, fertilizing, practicing vigilance for the arrival of threatening life-forms, celebrating the fruits of fertilization and growth fulfilled, have synergized a clear, crystallization of meaning about what constitutes being alive as a "real man" in this day and age of chaos, uncertainty, and confusion.

Owning and honoring our heritage as men involves integrating our deepest nature and the wisdom of millions of year s of evolution. In our ancient memories, genetically-encoded bits of repeated and repeated and repeated through the eons experience of being out on the hunt--we took life in order for the life of our tribal band to continue. We also stood up and defended our tribe from the attack of large carnivores and other two-leggeds who would do us harm. In this taking of the life of others, and the recognition of the precariousness of our lives, I believe we came to the realization that the mysterious substance of being alive was a sacred gift that could be gone in an instant. Just we we hunted, we were also hunted by forces larger and more powerful than us. So there was a respect for this force of mystery and whenever we took a life, which included everything in nature, because then we still knew that everything was alive, we needed to give something back so the sacred reciprocity of the balance of it all could be maintained.

The Huichol People of Mexico, an indigenous group of Uto-Azteca speaking peoples who still carry on their shamanic ways, a bridge from the Paleolithic past, with whom I have studied since 1981, have a word called "iyari" . It means "heart-memory". I believe that deep in the souls and psyche of men there is the iyari of remembering our "contract with the mystery"-- to respect and honor life, all life.

In the old days we prayed for the life of those we took in the hunt. We celebrated their spirits and wished them well on their journey to the spirit world. We asked for their help and gave gifts of appreciation in exchange. There was a balance between taking and giving, an ecology of souls so to speak. We knew that to take without giving would upset the delicate balance of life. So we reached into the deeper recesses of our psyche and came forth with song and dance, chant and movement, carefully created objects of bone and sinew, stick, leaf, feather and fur. We gave them away to the world of Spirits, with great thankfulness for the gifts bestowed.

The heart memory of what Professor of Philosophy Joseph Epes Brown calls "sacred reciprocity" is still there, it is just buried under the detritus of citified life. It is still there under the tons of concrete, the tie and coat, the steel boxes we ride in and fly through the air in. We still remember deep inside our body mind that being a man is about defending life, protecting it, and doing whatever it takes to keep it alive and moving forward in a good way that helps flowers to blossom and fruit to ripen on the vine.

Our inner wisdom, when really listened to, knows that our strength, intelligence and creativity as men is to take responsibility for protecting life. Ours is to steward life, especially those weaker or less fortunate than us. Today this equates to being a heart-warrior for social justice, supporting human dignity, and working for environmental healing. Today it means using our nature-given creativity, along with intuition and courage, and the cerebral gifts of cognition, imagination, inspiration and intelligence, to create ways of living that promote sustainability for, as the Lakotah People say when in ceremony, "Oh Mitakuye Oyasin"--all our relations. Today it means breaking through conditioned patterns of competition, alienation and estrangement from other men to bond once again in cooperative, supportive relationships, in partnership with each other and the Great Mystery that births mountains and flowers and fruit trees and babies, and, makes them all grow.

At least that's what being a man is to me. That is what the wind tells me, the Great Mother Earth, the sea, the waves, clouds, tree, stone, bird and beast. "Be strong enough to be gentle. Be strong enough to be tender. Be strong enough to show up, to care, to give it your best shot for the distance, the whole nine yards. Be strong enough to surrender to that which is greater than you. Be strong enough to serve the Higher Will, be a channel for it into this Middle World connecting the above with the below. Be strong enough to love unconditionally, and be strong enough to be humble and know that without the Great Mystery you are weak and nothing. Like a flute which is naught but a hollow piece of wood without the breath blowing through to bring in the gift of music. Be strong enough to be receptive to the new, to accept truth when you are wrong, to be soft and vulnerable when that is what is called for in order that life be served. Be strong enough to accept your weaknesses and fears, and to ask for help when you need it.

Yes, it's a tough go, to overcome the imprisonment of societal- mass media conditioning in the opposite direction of which I speak. But the rewards of the struggle to do so are worth it. Being authentic with our deepest male integrity--the urge to care for, love, respect and celebrate life, with joy and delight, freeing our spirits to blend with the waves,cycles and rhythms of Tao, what else could bring us greater delight?

Paying attention to the laws of what works in nature, mentoring and passing on hard-earned seeds of wisdom from our falls, wounds,scrapes, bruises and broken hearts, passing it on with loving care to the next generation--this is what the Mother Earth calls out for from her Grandsons of the Flesh that she births, nurtures and receives home again when our life-walk is completed.

It's tough, believe me, I know. How easy it is to get caught up in the struggle to survive, to "bring home the bacon", to make ends meet. Given the pressures we face daily from a society that has lost its way in materiality, greed, and an economic system that puts profits over people and the environment, its a wonder we are not all lost all the time. Just the other day I was driving to work, late because I stayed home a few minutes long for precious time to reflect and write. I was pushing the car and I was pushing me, pushing whomever or whatever got in my way so I could get to my office on time and not keep the scheduled client waiting. "If only I catch all the lights, if only I don't get stuck behind some yoyo out doing a Sunday afternoon cruise in the middle of the week." Well of course, you know this is all a great setup to get stuck in, and I did. Right up to the stop light I couldn't get through before it turned bright red, due of course to the person in front of me going "too slow". Damn.

Then it happened. A gift of grace. One that broke me out of my asleep, driven state and reminded me of who I am, what I am, and why I am here. I wrote a poem about it to help me remember. I want to stay on a path that honors my heritage as a man. The world cries out for it. My soul cries out for it. May it be so.

Waiting at a red light on East Blithdale

Waiting for the light to change,
yellow and red leaves swirling on city street.
Shimmering rays of sunshine illuminating their lively dance.

Stopped in tracks of myopic vision,
predicated on self-involvement--
mechanical man obsessed in thinking,
suddenly set free by "acts of nature",
an intelligence of trans-human dimension
breaking set to larger perception.

Thank you dancing leaves, winds of life,
for reminding me of vaster realms
wherein creativity and inspiration
are communion companions" for
enlivened quality of being with ,
and enjoying--
sacred right now.