“Anyone Can Hear The Water Speak”
A Call to Awakening the Intuitive Self
by Bill Chisholm

As we sat together in the sterile hallway of the Federal Courthouse in Las Vegas, outside Judge Hang ‘em High Lloyd George’s courtroom, Western Shoshone spiritual elder, Corbin Harney, said, “The water spoke to me.” We were sitting five feet apart on a bench, looking straight ahead, waiting our turn to testify on behalf of our friend, anti-nuclear weapons activist, Rick Springer. Corbin then said, “The water told me, ‘In a short time you will see me, I will look like water and feel like water, only I won’t be the same.’” After a few moments, he concluded, “Anyone can hear the water speak if they will only listen.”

Corbin’s words sunk deep into my consciousness. In my journey through life, I have played many roles, among them wilderness survival instructor, wild-lands firefighter, and yoga instructor. I have spent a good deal of time alone in Nature contemplating the deeper meaning of life. Though I have a degree in business and could have found a niche in the modern consumer oriented world, I found I experienced myself at a far higher level when I was down to a minimum of comforts in the wilds. Free of comforts I found an edge I had not experienced anywhere else. Though I hadn’t heard it articulated in such a way, I sensed what Corbin was talking about: alone in the wild, if you quiet your noisy mind, open your eyes, and your ears, the wild has much to say. The wind, the trees, the clouds, the wildlife, and yes, the water all have a voice. I observed that even more during my years doing damage assessment for the, now inept, Federal Emergency Management Agency. If we’d learn to listen to the water we might not suffer so much flood damage.

The sad truth is: people don’t listen. They have insulated themselves from Nature and from each other with technology, stuff, and information shuffling jobs. They like to think technology has advanced them as individuals and as a culture, but in truth, it has deafened them, made them weak, more dependent. After the powerful tsunami hit southern Asia wiping out large areas, destroying homes and communities and killing thousands of people, it was expected there would be a large loss of wildlife. As the reports started coming in there was not the wildlife loss expected. There were in fact stories of animals of many species who sensed something was going to happen and headed to the safety of higher ground. That same thing was true of some indigenous folks, people who lived simply and more attuned to their surroundings; they sensed something was going to happen and got themselves out of harms way. “Anyone can hear the water speak if they will only listen.”

My late wife, Kathy, and I had been on trial in Beatty, Nevada for blocking traffic or trespassing at the Nevada Test Site. After the post Easter trial, we decided to take a little journey into Death Valley. On the way in, a white Chevy Blazer with all the windows mirrored, except the windshield, passed us coming the other direction, went a short distance, turned around, came back, and passed us again. They then pulled off at a rest area, as did we. When we continued, so did they. There were a couple of routes to choose; we looked at the map and took the right hand fork in the road. First, I noticed what we call “ducks” (stacked rocks) or trail markers near the side of the road, but not right next to it. These trail markers made no sense. Thoughts of the Chevy Blazer stuck in the back of my mind, but I wasn’t really thinking about it as we started into Death Valley. Shortly at a road cut we saw walking towards us along the side of the road a coyote. El Coyote’ happens to be one of my medicines, in fact my main one. As we approached, the coyote kept its pace and looked right at me as we pulled alongside. I would glance at him in the rearview mirror. He would be stopped looking back at me. When I stopped, he would start walking away again. This happened at least three times. I finally listened. I told Kathy we needed to turn around and get out of there; she’d been experiencing the same “unease” I had. After we turned around and headed back through the cut, the coyote disappeared into the brush. We got up on top and shortly started experiencing problems with our car. I’m not sure what we avoided that day by heeding the call of that coyote, but I know it saved us from something bad; perhaps it saved our lives. In that case, we listened with our eyes and to our own inner voices. Since we are mostly water, perhaps it was the water speaking in us.

Modern man has lost touch; lost their ability to listen with more than their ears, to see with more than their eyes, and often are distracted from the reality around them. Much of it has to do with technology, the speed of life, the noise, the disconnectedness. Very few inputs come from Nature. More and more and at an earlier and earlier age, inputs come from TV, iPods, cell phones computers, DVDs, and video games. A great deal of time is spent insulated from the world in cars, homes, factories, or offices. People don’t get outside- outside; when they do go out, their technology goes with them. People are going faster and faster and in the process see less and less of the world around them. Very often when they are outside, they stay hooked to somewhere else via cell phones or satellite TVs. Too often they aren’t where they are and not with the people they are physically with. Baba Ram Dass must be wondering, whatever happened to Be Here Now. Folks are missing the cues, the clues. Something happens and they aren’t prepared because they aren’t paying attention. You can’t last long in the wilds or anywhere else if you don’t pay attention to the world around you.

Poet/philosopher, Robert Bly, in his book The Sibling Society, talks about the importance playing in Nature has in the development of children’s brains. The observation of Nature helps us develop our curiosity, play creatively, grow from the inside out, and connect to Nature. Many of today’s young grow from the outside in via a technological environment that feeds information to them. Bly says this hampers maturity, keeps society in a state of perpetual adolescence well into people’s thirties. People are robbed of their real childhoods: that opportunity to play in Nature, and use their imagination. It is imagination that gives us the ability to respond to disasters and changing circumstances. That perfect plastic product thing in toys took away our opportunity to imagine: to make a toy out of a piece of wood, a rock, some string and some spools. Not too long ago people knew how to do many things, they had many skills, they knew how the systems and the tools they used worked. They could build or fix them. Modern man has become reliant on the system for toys, food, houses, and answers. There is a belief that things will fill the holes in life, give popularity, and self-esteem. In reality, “stuff” diminishes self-worth. A society of perpetual discontent, a world of “I want, I want, give me, give me” has been created. It is the marketing man’s dream: a culture never satisfied, never connected to anything, desiring newer and newer gadgets that isolate them more and more from each other and Nature.

“Anyone can hear the water speak if they will only sit and listen.” We can’t even hear the people we are with. Just look around; if you see three people together, particularly people under 30, often two of them are talking on their cell phones. They are oblivious to their companions and to the world around them. When not on cell phones, people are listening to iPods, playing video games or watching TV: all inputs coming from outside. There are so many senseless noises and flashing images going on most folks never have a quiet moment to ponder, to use their minds, to listen to what Nature is trying to say.

How then does Nature compete for attention? She has to speak louder and louder. You’d think people might pay attention when they can no longer see the mountains or the stars, when the air stinks so bad they can hardly breathe. The sad truth: most folks don’t even look towards the mountains unless they want to recreate. They really don’t experience the mountain because they have too much with them: cell phones, iPods, snowmobiles, four wheelers. They are going too fast; they are too focused on their fun. Caught in the noise and the speed they miss the world around them, its smells, its sounds. They are so caught up in the world of man they miss the warnings, fail to see much less read the signs and sense the stillness for its tension. Then boom they are surprised by an avalanche, a flood, a fire, an earthquake, a tsunami.

We have forsaken many of the incredible tools of our own minds and bodies for the mediocrity of things. The more technology we take on, the more we lose our own abilities, the more impact we have on the Natural world. We are becoming mono-talented. We don’t know how to do real things: raise our food, make things we need, provide for our water and shelter. It is all marketed to us. All that stuff we are made to want more and more of, takes huge amounts of natural resources and energy to mine, mill, manufacture, transport, and sell to us. It is an interesting cycle to ponder. All that technology we have come to rely on, to respond to like Pavlov’s dogs, weakens us. The over consumption of things and technologies with its lusty demand for resources and energy is pushing the limits of the Natural order of things Rather than becoming more self-reliant, we are becoming more vulnerable.

It is not that technology is necessarily bad; it is how we let it control us that should concern us. Technology takes away knowledge, skill, and action. Whenever something separates us from the ability to raise food, or clothe and shelter us, then it becomes a liability. Whenever the technology or stuff becomes more of a liability than an asset, then it is time to step back, take a look, and assess its real value. What are its real costs across the board, socially, culturally, spiritually, environmentally and economically? If it is creating more problems than it is solving, it is something we can do without.

Our economy, our lifestyle, is based on a false economic model, a model that doesn’t account for all the costs of doing business. Cheap energy is not without costs in terms of other species, natural resources, pollution, and lives. What I call “steroid economics” (more and big is better, growth is good) has made us neither wealthier and wiser nor stronger and more secure in the truest sense. A dangerous triangle of related circumstances is coming together that will change the way we do things forever. On one side is the fact that oil and natural gas production are peaking, and other resources including clean water are becoming scarcer. On the second side demand for diminishing resources is rising as population increases and more countries such as China, India, and Chile strive for the same materialistic lifestyle. The capping issue of this triangle is climate change. We can no longer hide the costs in cooked books, creative bookkeeping. Our foundation is made of sand. It is washing away. All we have become reliant on (our economy, our technology, our entertainment) is in for a drastic change. We are ill prepared. We have become too soft, too reliant on unsustainable systems, too “dumbed down”.

Most folks when they hear the news that the “king has no clothes”, that the “gig is up”, do one of two things: flight or fight, our native instincts for survival. The thing in this case is there is no place to flee to. The flight option becomes denial, which doesn’t save your “arse”, but only puts off acknowledgement of the predicament. The other thing is to fight. To fight is far better than sticking your head in the sand. Now this looks bigger than a David and Goliath fight and it is. Those who could and should be helping, our supposed leaders, aren’t. They often have too much invested in the problem. So it boils down to us, as individuals. We are the ones that control the consumer side of the equation. We can either remain “dumbed down” or we can lighten up and become enlightened. We can quit wasting energy, and quit buying stuff we don’t need, stuff that only exacerbates the problem. We can learn new skills that make us more self-reliant: plant a garden, simplify your life, get hand tools, park your car, take a walk, install a clothes-line. We can start quieting our minds and begin to listen to the water. “Anyone can hear the water speak if they will only sit and listen.”

Methanomics
Investing in Problems not Solutions
by Bill Chisholm

I graduated with a degree in business administration in 1970. It is the most embarrassing aspect of my life. I say that for two reasons, the first is that the marketing classes were courses in psychological warfare, getting people to buy things they didn't want or need by playing on their insecurities. The second reason had to do with the linear economic models that we were taught. Value was only placed on natural resources after they were mined, milled, manufactured and sold, the money taken to the bank. There was no responsibility or accountability for either the resource or the waste produced.

I learned real economics shortly after I graduated while fighting a 20,000 acre timber fire in the state of Washington. After the fire was out and while patrolling the line, I happened into a little valley with an intact eco-system. Seedlings coming up through the decaying matter of fallen snags, surrounded by all stages of growth to mature trees and to the dying snags that were providing shelter for wildlife, before returning to the Earth to provide nutrients for future seedlings. I learned more real life economics in five minutes than I did in all my college economics courses.

Later in my activism and politics I kept coming up against the growth for growth’s sake mind set. I called that kind of economics “steroid economics”. Yes, there was some short-term economic growth and benefit to some, but it was usually accompanied by negative impacts, as with steroids in the body. Beyond that, in my undergraduate days, I never heard the term “externalities,” a term that signifies the modern economic rationale for not taking responsibility for all the costs, all the impacts of one’s economic activity. It’s a way to justify passing those costs on to someone else: the taxpayers, future generations. I learned the term from an economics professor who was involved in a study of the economic impacts of industrial dairying. He used the term when I questioned him about the adverse environmental, health and quality of life impacts that came with these livestock concentration camps. “Oh, you want me to include the externalities?” he said. But what kind of spread sheet do you have if you don’t include all the assets and all the liabilities? You can make anything look good if you avoid the negatives.

Today we have for the most part moved beyond steroid economics to what I call “methanomics”. As with methamphetamines, there is the illusion of a high followed by destructive impacts. The true believers who see growth as good are blind to the negatives - in fact they don't do the math or the spread sheets necessary to get the full picture. Now, with the reality of what I call the triangle of doom—a triangle pointing down with diminishing natural resources on one side, climate change and adverse environmental impacts on the other, capped off with a burgeoning human population that is exacerbating the impacts—we have to look at growth with a keener eye, ask the next obvious question “If this, then what?”. Is what we are doing an investment in solutions, taking into account those things the good ol’ boys like to call externalities or are we investing in problems?

A great example was the joy expressed by the local newspaper and the chamber of commerce with the announcement that a travel trailer manufacturer was moving into the area. Travel trailers and the fuel guzzling vehicles it takes to pull them is contraindicated if we are to reduce greenhouse gases and slow or stop the climate change process. I told the editor that if the company was manufacturing passenger rail cars for mass transit, then there might be something to celebrate. We can’t keep doing that: investing in problems, not solutions.

The old economic model I studied in college, with its lack of accountability for either the resources or waste, while it has been the foundation for the mess we are in now, didn’t seem to be quite as serious then, with four billion less people on the planet at the time and not as much awareness about the impacts of our actions as there is now. Our prevailing economic model is probably the biggest obstacle to our solving the climate change and other environmental impact issues. A pseudo solution, such as ethanol production, is truly a methanomic activity, since its production takes farm land out of food production to grow vehicle fuel, thus escalating the costs of many basic food items. It is less energy efficient and is still polluting. The fact is, we can’t keep doing what we are doing, wasting and consuming resources like there is no tomorrow and taking no responsibility for the impacts or consequences.

It all ties back into Einstein’s admonishment that, “We cannot solve our problems at the same level of thinking at which we created them.” Methanomics ,plain and simple, is an example of the kind of thinking that is responsible for the problems we are faced with and more of that same flawed thinking is only going to make matters worse.

One thing I’ve learned along the way is that it is easy to identify problems, but you are not contributing much unless you offer solutions. Green buildings come to mind - they minimize energy and other resource use. Local food distribution networks shorten the transport impacts and increase community relationships between growers and consumers. Energy efficiency and conservation measures not only have positive energy and environmental impacts they also impact one’s personal economic situation. Growing gardens not only feed the body, but help reconnect us to the wonders of Nature. Mass transit can clean up the air, reduce fossil fuel consumption decrease human isolation, and it can help to build community. There are alternatives to the methanomic model. We just need to think things through, do a full spread sheet, see what creates solutions and what creates problems and invest our time, energy and resources accordingly.

A Different Yardstick
A More Earthy Measure of Success
Fall 2007
by Bill Chisholm

For the past 25 years I’ve measured my success in the world with the planting of garlic. The challenges of getting the garlic in the ground before the cold of late fall have been many and varied, including time away working disasters, political campaigns, caring for loved ones, chasing down nuclear waste trucks, public hearings, demonstrations, ranch work and other distractions. But, I always got it in. Getting it in early gives it a chance to get established. The earlier I get it in, the better the odds it will get a timely mulch, as opposed to the rushed haphazard mulch to beat a cold snap.

The planting of the garlic is more than a gardening thing. It has been something that connects me to the seasons. It has been a soul redeemer when I’ve grieved the loss of a love or a loved one. It is a meditation, some times much more conscious than at other times, but always a way to focus on something besides myself or the events of the world. In some ways, this year was not much different from the others, and yet this year there seemed to me to be a deeper meaning to the planting of the garlic.

The past several months I’ve been extremely busy, with carpentry work, ranch work, my activism including doing some seminars on climate change/energy and how to assess both the global and personal aspects of those issues. I’ve been doing a great deal of reading, studying and thinking about the state of my state, the state of the nation and the state of the world. Perhaps it was this that made this year’s planting of the garlic more meaningful. In many ways the planting of garlic is a declaration of hope and belief in the future, despite the overwhelming evidence that the future is very precarious.

Indian Summer didn’t come in a big block this year. It came in spurts, so I took advantage of one of the spurts to prepare the beds, and then the next day after a hard day’s work, a short nap and renewed vigor, I split apart the cloves, scraped a trench and planted the garlic. It felt extra good, a simple task. As I was leaving the garden I was thinking about the satisfaction that I felt and I thought of what Al Gore said upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, about climate change being “a moral, a spiritual” issue. I thought about how the context in which we live our lives has contributed to climate change. I used no fossil fuels in turning the garlic beds; I used a wheel barrow to haul my mule’s manure and compost to the garden.

I continued thinking about what it is that has us so sped up, that our consumption of material things and some obscure definition of wealth and success has disconnected us from the Earth, our home. That evening I read the following quote in the Sunbeams section of The Sun, and thought it very relevant. "Story by Jung of a conversation with a chief of the Pueblo Indians: Jung asked the chief's opinion of the white man and was told it was not a high one. White people, said Ochwiay Biano, seem always upset, always restlessly looking for something, with the result that their faces are covered with wrinkles. He added that white men must be crazy because they think with their heads, and it is well-known that only crazy people do that. Jung asked in surprise how the Indian thought, to which Ochwiay Biano replied that naturally he thought with his heart." Laurenas van der Post.

We are cajoled over and over by the marketing men and women that if we are to be successful we must have the most and the latest of everything. This seems to tie into what Ochwiay Biano was talking about. It is a head thing, this need to be cool, to be “in”. It really makes no sense. It is destroying the environment and leaving us broke. Why are people so easily influenced to participate in this destructive behavior? Now I know from my marketing classes in college, that it is easy to play on people’s insecurities, their need to feel beautiful or handsome, or popular. What then are the forces that make us feel “less than” and thus susceptible to this man-made yardstick of success?

There seem to be a few easily definable social influences that create the kind of yardsticks that can make one feel out of it, not “in”. Beauty is constantly being defined and re-defined to keep one off balance. Trends are set, fashions created and changed again and again. Money has been used as a yardstick, but how does it work when some folks are paid millions of dollars to act or play a game, when others labor to provide food and make nothing? These are all external yardsticks and the pursuit of things to fulfill that criteria of material success takes a huge amount of resources to create and a huge amount of energy to create and transport. They also take a huge amount of space to store or to dispose of when they are no longer in vogue or the newness has worn off.

There is more to the story about why we are made to feel less than whole, less than connected even among our species. One group wanting the resources of another must demean or disenfranchise the other in order to justify their taking. This can cut along racial, ethnic, religious, sexual or even species differences, but it doesn’t answer the why of it. How did we get to this point of justification? Perhaps the key to this lack of self-esteem, this disconnect of head and heart and home (Earth) came at least on the part of Western man from religion and the idea that we are all sinners, or that one group is the “chosen people of God”.

The one thing that marketing and religions have in common is the need to define our attitudes in the head and not the heart, externally rather than internally. A lot of things make less sense when viewed from the heart instead of the head. I remember once sitting and listening to Corbin Harney, a Western Shoshone spiritual elder. English was his second language and as I listened, I moved between my heart and my head. When I listened with my heart, he made total sense. When I listened with my head, I couldn’t always follow his train of thought.

It is not just our relationship to the Earth in regard to climate change that is “a moral, a spiritual matter.” The relationship we have to ourselves also influences how we act and interact with the world around us and in turn impacts others and this home we share with all other life forms. It is I believe “a moral and a spiritual matter”. Tat Tvam Asi, thou art that, it is all one, it is all connected. Now there’s a different yardstick by which to measure things and one’s actions.

The planting of the garlic was a simple act that connected me to the garlic and to the Earth, to the soil, to the humus, the worms, the shovel and the wheelbarrow, to my mule. That simple act brought forth not only a sense of success and a host of benefits, but a much deeper connection to the world around me. I wrote one of my sisters about the planting of the garlic and this was her reply.

“Your garlic planting is a perfect example of mindful living. I think it was on Sunday's 60 Minutes program that they did a feature on some preacher who makes people believe that they are good, and God loves them, so they should be successful and wealthy. One more twist on that same awful line which feeds the push for more and more consumption. And there are always studies finding that riches and happiness don't go hand-in hand at all. I love the stories about people in Micronesia who live in their boats mostly, and don't even have words for time or want, or even how old they might be. They are healthy, loving, and very good stewards of the earth because they only catch fish when they are hungry, or gather fruit if they come upon it, but don't want to possess anything because it hampers their nomadic way of life. God must really love them a lot. ………..”!

A different yardstick, a different measure of what it means to be successful coming from the heart, will result in a far different outcome from the world that we have created for ourselves and future generations. Perhaps something as simple as planting one’s garlic in the fall.