Spiritual Ecology Origin Story
How did I come to be here from the lens of spiritual ecology?
When you see your reflection, do you see your ancestors?
The collection of physical details arranged to make our physical appearance evolved over millennia to uniquely express our heritage.
What are we but a vast network of relationships between DNA and interactions with our environments at the cellular level? We are emergent systems of inherited traits in a love affair with complex and organic molecular structures growing from the land and dancing with starlight.
I drew my first breath in Albuquerque, New Mexico the first day of summer, June 22, in the northern hemisphere. The oxygen that entered my lungs most likely respired from Pinon and Juniper woodlands that make up that bioregion. The genetics passed to me from my parents — Mom, five generations of Wolford Hawk in Cortez, Colorado, and England before that, and from my Dad, McMillan, a third generation immigrant from Scotland — gave me my light rutty skin tone, curly brown hair, short strong stature, and blue eyes. All genetic characteristics of a people who have evolved in a cloudy northern hemisphere temperate climate — the western isles of ancestral Scotland.
Descendent of people in perpetual search of stability and a better life for their family, our family is more migratory and fluid than we think. Five generations in Colorado, a lot to some, nothing to others…
Each seven years, our bodies regrow themselves, cell by cell. Now, my body is mostly made of the high desert of the Colorado plateau, the land I’ve called home for almost seven years. Part of me is likely still the highlands of Ecuador, where I had moved from… My drinking water makes up most of me, from Hunter Creek in the west elk mountains. Based on how many ingredients are in modern processed foods and widespread persistent chemicals, I’m made up of more places than I can imagine.
As a wilderness guide, I wield language to encourage understanding of ecology as dynamic living systems, a constant unfolding of emergent processes. The moon is a great reminder of this, ever changing in waxing and waning phases. The trees are great teachers, too, as their respiration and sap flows in sync with the rhythm of the seasons. Migratory bird species remind us of the coming of spring, the time for building nests.
“What does it mean to live in alignment with nature?”, as a farmer and ecologist, animals’ instincts are usually great clues if we ever feel lost. Many of us have lost our intuition on how to live in alignment with the rest of nature around us. Often, other animals can help us remember.
Studying spiritual ecology has shaped my life path in search of deeper connection with the Earth, the forests of and mountains where I live, the elk herds, hawks and eagles, wild berries and fungi, and pulse of rising rivers with spring snowmelt. Spiritual ecology has stirred in me a longing for more life, more aliveness, more intimacy with the sun, moon, and stars, and being of service to life and fostering biodiversity. I want to see all of us continue to evolve. I want to see more biodiversity given a chance at life.
“ Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.”-Wendell Berry, excerpt from the Mad Farmer Manifesto
I have given myself to the land as its student and earned its badges of merit. The sun spots on my nose, wind damaged cheeks, varicose veins, and scarred hands give away my years of working the land.
The elk I hunted still lives in my heart. The corn I’ve grown and animals I’ve tended built my muscles and mind… What are we made of but relationships with the places we live, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the intimacy we cultivate with life…
