Finding the Wild Within

i dedicate this blog to my cat Raizin- lost in the New Mexico desert this September

I have wanted to express my feelings about humanity and wildness for a while.  I feel that my cat Raizin taught me a lot about retaining a core of wildness within the domesticated world.   My intention is to use her story to illustrate my feelings about wildness.

When I moved out of the city (having been for most of my life a city dweller)  it was really only to suburbia- but I was so accustomed to urbia that it seemed wild to me.  Through the year of my transition period out of the city, I watched myself become more and more connected with the earth.  I felt at this time that my cat Raizin was a leader and a teacher.  Her wild, wise intelligence helped light the path for my transformation.

In the city she had always hunted, fought raccoons, and generally been a cat.  But once in the country I was able to watch her transform, to connect with her true cat nature in a way that had not been possible in the city.  A new movement of farmers dedicated to raising animals free range, such as Joel Salatin, remark that it is important to let each animal live their animal essence to the fullest.  I like to refer to my cats as free range kitties, as a nod to this concept.  Though of course, I am not raising them to be eaten.

For animal and human, the city erects many barriers to true contact with the earth.  Electromagnetic fields falsely connect with our own electrical/ magnetic systems in our bodies, preventing us from connecting as we should with the earth.  Concrete, shoes, cars, clothes, all prevent us from touching the earth regularly, even daily.  The speed of life in the city also hampers us from that contact that is so natural and so necessary.  Over and over the city assaults us, molding and forming us as creatures apart from the earth.

Once out of the city, Raizin seized the opportunity to rewild herself with vigor.  When I first moved into my new house in the suburbian/country, I loved to watch my cats exploring the new territory.  They hunted gophers, of which there were plenty, but at first succeeded only in catching the youngest, smallest specimens, which they would leave as a treat for me on the front porch.  Not sure if there were predators that hunted cats, I kept them in at night.  Eventually, I began leaving all my windows and doors open throughout the summer, allowing the cats to come and go as they pleased.  It turned out there were no significant predators of cats in that area.

I also started feeding them some raw food mixed in with their regular food.  Raizin and her sister cat Bella had a gopher hunting extravaganza that first spring and were bringing back 3-4 baby gophers every day.  The cats became more and more skilled in their cat-ness.  At some point they started bringing all sizes of gophers, and mice, too, and at some point Raizin began to heartily devour them- entire- on my living room floor.  (I had no screens on my windows to moderate incoming cats).  At first she would leave part of the animal uneaten, but she worked up to where she would eat the entire thing, leaving only a small bit of innards, and sometimes a head.  I started feeding Raizin raw chunks of meat to which she responded with relish.

She also involved her sister cat in the hunting process.  I often observed a neat team of cats herding gophers, trotting one after the other (one carrying the prey), bringing mice into the house to play with together, etc.  The pinnacle was when my other cat, Bella, began to take the mice they had caught together and eat them herself.  She was learning wildness from watching the behavior of Raizin.  (Bella is a very domesticated cat in most regards, so this was a fascinating shift of behaviour for her.)

It’s hard to express the beauty and subtlety of the transformation I saw in Raizin.  One friend of mine said, “she’s like a feral cat except she likes people.”  She would roam, night and day, expressing her wild cat nature to perfection, then come inside at random intervals to cuddle in the sweetest, most intimate and trusting ways.  I gave Raizin complete freedom and choice to express herself, to engage with me and with nature whenever and however she preferred.

At the same time I was transforming myself.  I spent hours and hours in the garden, at first obsessed with having it perfectly clean and weeded (ha!  good luck!).  I slowly eased into the rhythm of the garden, allowing flowers to mix with veggies, letting areas be weedy when I just didn’t have the energy to work, and eating the produce of the earth as often as possible.  Eventually I also began to respond to nature as an artist, creating drawings of medicinal herbs, trying to express the energy of the plants.  I reached a point of such utter connectedness that I began to communicate with the plants, understanding their resonances as messages interpretable by me as verbal communications.  (I’ll write about this more in other blogs.)  I became unafraid to walk in my garden barefoot, to wade through the tall grasses in shorts, to emerge from the garden covered in whatever natural matter attached itself to me.  My spirit and my energy began to resonate with the energy and vibrations of the earth, the slower, calmer rates at which we are meant to travel through this reality.

I write this blog because I believe that humans are meant to and need to retain a wild core.  I think that this wild core is one of the hardest things to reinstate for urban dwellers habituated to all that the city provides for us and divides us from.  I believe, and know in my deepest self, that the future of the human race depends on us reclaiming and nurturing that wild core- finding the wild within.  I remember Raizin with love and gratitude for being one of my teachers in this area.

Used to hunting at night, and with a very headstrong will of her own, Raizin did not come in one night about 3 weeks after I moved to New Mexico.  Unfortunately her experience as a wild cat in suburban California left her unprepared for the reality of the New Mexico desert, including coyotes whose songs sometimes sound like they are coming from right outside my front door.  She never returned, and I have not to this day found her body.  Her sister Bella, much more domesticated, comes by the door on an hourly basis and so is easy to catch and bring in before dark.  She survived Raizin.

Rewilding ourselves is a process of slow steps that ease us gently into a whole new world.  I think it’s important, if you have been a city dweller for much of your life, to take it slow when it comes to rewilding.  Nature holds dangers, as much as it holds the promise of nurture or beauty.  It is good to educate yourself as you begin your immersion, and tread with care as you learn the ways of a human connected with nature.

Suggestions for rewilding:

• find a way to garden.  it’s best to find a garden where you can touch the soil with your hands, but if necessary a container or rooftop garden is good too.
• compost
• learn to identify and eat wild foods in your ecosystem.
• learn how to backpack, kayak or canoe and take time  in nature for days at a time.
• if you can, find a place to live where you feel safe leaving your house open at night, where there is nature right outside your door.
• spend time in nature every day.
• walk outside at night- look at the stars, feel the wind, see the moon.
• find a spiritual practice that resonates with you and spend time in nature doing it.
• practice grounding yourself into the earth.
• learn about the medicinal herbs in your area and use them.
• spend time in places where you cannot hear cars, planes, or see evidence of human technology.
• turn off your cell phone and computer whenever you can.

All of this information reflects my path.  Others’ paths are different.  In particular, I favor the idea of getting out of the city entirely, though many people feel for various reasons that they need to remain in the city.  Hopefully there, too, more and more people will learn to connect with the spirit of wildness within.

I offer this in the spirit of love and generosity.  May you find your way to a new, rewilded you.  Namaste.