I also don't easily remember facts as I did for tests in school. Decades later, I now remember and value experience, bodily felt sense experience and the ideas and words that come to me during experiences.
Last Friday night's experience is what prompted the in-the-night pressure referenced above. The evening's experience is for me what's most important to share for it was:
Otherworldly
Magical
Exquisite
Filled with wonder and amazement.
Magical
Exquisite
Filled with wonder and amazement.
These simple words came as I sat outside Chattanooga on a pontoon boat at the mouth of a cave on Nickajack Lake. This was the 2nd year I had won the evening's event at the Sandhill Crane Festival's silent auction. The first year I spent much of the time behind my camera recording. I was determined to win one more trip so I could experience more fully the thousands of bats flying above us from the mouth of the cave.
This particular cave is home to over 100,000 endangered gray bats. (This is a fact meant to stir wonder not fear.) This years official count isn't in but last year TN Wildlife Resources (TWRA) staff counted over 130,000 gray bats. It's called a migratory cave because pregnant mothers have their babies here. Gray bats travel up to 20 miles a night eating insects. They weigh only 7-9 grams yet they relieve the Chattanooga area of 110 tons of bugs yearly that otherwise would be eating crops and foliage and 'bugging' people. These facts are from "Bats of the Us and Canada) by Harvey, Altenbach and Best.) Of course Round-Up manufacturer Monsanto and pharmaceutical-hosptical industries treating possible Round-up related diseases may not care. This is not a fact just my personal opinion for which they could sue or harass me. That fear aside Friday night for me was filled with
Wonder
Amazement
and
Irritation.
Irritation?
I would be dishonest to omit the irritating aspect of the evening.
As we neared the cave, I saw several canoes clustered around the gate at the cave's mouth. The cave was closed by TVA in 1981 to protect the bats.
My heart sank seeing other people. Chris our TWRA guide anchored the boat in the same place as last year and acknowledged the people. Initially all I could acknowledge internally was my disappointment. As a couple of boaters began asking Chris about the bats, I thought 'This isn't so bad. These people are getting information they wouldn't normally have if Chris weren't here.'
I had to hand it to these people for being out on the lake in the first place. At least they weren't in a temperature-controlled hotel room watching tv nor had they succumbed to the fear of bats perpetuated by myth and movies. (Before the trip, a handful of folks asked if wasn't afraid of being bitten or getting rabies. I'm not and here's another fact I've read: You've a greater chance of being struck by lightning than contracting rabies from a bat.)
I thought of how I prefer bats to people although these people weren't so bad until the wait began. In the boat nearest us an exchange was overheard regarding Logan's vs. Sizzler. Internally I gasped and cringed. When I eat meat, I ensure it's locally raised or not from a corporate chain.
None too soon, a bat arrived. A scout flew around and around before flying away. Within moments the stream began as someone in a canoe commented on how great the Nashville Zoo is which somehow led into a discussion of Disney World and how an employee dressed as Cinderella had something happen to the back of her dress.
At this point I wanted to scream, "We are witness to something so much fucking better than Disney. THIS is the REAL thing. This is where Disney got his inspiration!"
Cinderella's dress actually got me closer to the front of our boat where I could block out distractions and witness the wondrous force of Nature flowing above me from the cave.
Here's 8 seconds of that wonder.
Since that magical evening, I've pondered why it is that people talk about random, unrelated things midst nature and art. (Recently at Cheekwood's Light exhibit two women standing before a stunning piece went on and on about their knitting group.) Is silence so uncomfortable? Are some people walking about unaware they're having OBE's (out-of-body experiences)? I'm not judging. I've been there and done that and still do at times.
Do bats especially stir discomfort because they've been associated with the dark, mystery, the unknown and thus fear? I get that too.
Many of the same entities, forces and powers in the form of religion, corporations, advertising, science, academia and authority (today selling us things) have conspired over the ages in getting us to look outside ourselves for just about everything.
To viscerally feel a sense of wonder and awe requires at least for me that I be inside myself.
Which takes me back to what was going on inside me last Friday evening. Here I sit a week later aware a Disney dress malfunction caused me to have an address malfunction. I could have addressed my desire for a few moments of quiet and didn't. Silence for some stirs discomfort. Speaking does for me. And in this way I am connected to my Disney-discussing, Sizzler-visiting, fellow humans in the canoes. Not being silent on the inside, kept me from listening to what I might say to these fellow adventurers.
So as I listen in this moment, what do I want to share with you?
Oftentimes people who have out-of-body experiences resulting from trauma or nearly dying return filled with greater enthusiasm for being alive and life on Earth. I left Nickajack Cave Friday night my enthusiasm for Nature and living refueled. I want to share that enthusiasm and the wonder I felt. I want to stir wonder in the masses so humanity returns to find and feel the wonderousness of Nature and Mother Earth. I don't want to scare folks into not using Round-up. I want them to find their way through wonder.
Being mesmerized by Earth would halt so many of today's ills including much of the use of Round-up and many pharmaceutical pills. I mean that. That is part of the Shift I imagine. If it can happen in me, it can happen in many. I imagine Wonder Waking Us Up.
To get the wonder flowing here's one more little clip of the bats as darkness fell. Wherever you are I hope tonight you will look into the sky and feel the wonder. I am. I will.
-Dawn, The Good News Muse, 21 June 2013
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