Understanding one's own connection to nature

I realized this a few days ago in the forest. The image is from a winter search and no, that tree isn’t growing out of my backpack. The search a few days ago was a different one, it’s monsoon time, looking for sign of a leopard called Muniya. I’ll be doing it again in a few hours. There’s been no trace of the leopardess and her cub for quite a while. I know I will find leeches, or better put, they will find me. I probably won’t notice until my blood drops onto the earth.

Losing myself on the trail actually means finding something else. It’s always there but reconnecting to it in a way that is most natural is simply within the process of being in nature. There’s no mystery to that. It’s within all of us so thus, within nature.

While looking for leopard tracks, many other stories of wild animals and habitat unfold in front of one’s senses. Recognizing them at different levels depends on one’s state of mind at the time. The more distraction, the less recognition. The clearer the mind, the more the stories become apparent. The motivation to protect nature can in fact be a distraction if one is not careful. So, walking into the forest after getting news (again) of a leopard skin seizure, there has to be a stoic approach. Being conscious of one’s own breathing, where feet are placed, making sure that seeing and listening is for what is happening around your being and not dictated to by the fresh image of the leopard skin.

Then, if there are fresh pug marks, or other sign of the leopard, the focus shifts to the living, way beyond that image of death, there should be joy in that although it’s usually more relief.

One’s own understanding of nature, of the life and death nature of nature, of where nature sits in your own being, all come together as a find in the deep search.

That’s a lot of nature in one sentence but then it is a connection between the ‘one’ (individual) and the ‘your’ (true self), it’s nature letting you find who you really are. I think that’s natural.

I thank those who have been to the Blood of the Leopard at Mission Leopard at wildleopard.net which has pivoted into our main platform now - I’ll have my own integration going deeper with that platform here at this one, my Substack called The Leopard.

That’s a lot of leopards in one sentence.

Blood of the Leopard has not been easy to put together. It’s living and it’s growing. The subject matter is confronting because it needs to be. There needs to be much greater truth about what is really happening. With truth can come care, we protect what we care about - as long as we truly do care.

That’s a lot of care in one sentence. But that’s what we need.

If one’s own connection to nature is at a deep enough state then that care will be natural. The leopard, in many ways a metaphor for nature, is now at a stage where there is dependence on that care. The deep search for that isn’t actually that difficult.

Just go for a walk in the forest…