Feral Friends,

I was almost a teenager when the White Album was released and I recall hearing the singles on local AM radio. And a new invention, the transistor radio, made it possible to listen on the dock whilst fishing for bullheads.

The White Album arrived on the heels of the Beatles’ retreat in India to study Transcendental Meditation (another late 60s hit) and the song While my Guitar Gently Weeps, by George Harrison, reflected his eclectic embrace of eastern philosophies on the eve of the band’s nascent dissolution. 

This may seem an odd thing for a naturalist to dwell on but I do have a point. Even at that tender age — probably the most wild and open time of my life — I wanted to feel, with the wild creatures I counted as best friends, the earth spinning and rounding and the vibrations of frogsong. As I watched the clouds through the canopies of cottonwoods I was convinced I could actually feel it. I didn’t have much luck with girls, but I cherished the persistent scent of pond on my skin and the surprising things I found in my hair and that is probably why. I believed in a world beyond turntables and incense, in the creek behind the drive-in and in the woods that somehow still remained.

Nonetheless, Harrison’s words cut me to the heart the first time I heard them: I look at the world and I notice it’s turning … you know the rest.

Funny I still think of that, and even sang it once to a workshop full of arborists who were more interested in how to spray for beetles. Or Beatles. But here our future lies: to feel connected to all living things and to the planet Herself, to feel the cosmic wind in our faces as we spin and round and ride the big blue ball together, all together, our desires and futures as One. Even chlorophyll spins, powered by the sun, on tiny orbs in everything green. 

And not only do we spin and ride, we swing. The good stuff, the wild music, lands between the beats — in primal moments where we rediscover ourselves as creatures of the Earth. Go barefoot in snow. Wake before Dawn (before the kids or the tweets or the pings) to greet her. Find a wooded ravine to wait for Noon (she comes in crows) or if you can’t get away, let the sparrows dance for you outside your window. As daylight fades, watch a fox or the neighborhood cats pull the rounding Moon and follow the slipping Sun. Listen for an owl and if you don’t hear one, just watch the stars slide through the treetops.

Feel the planet turn. 

— Jack Phillips

_{Photos: top, Wolf Moon (Robert Smith); Bobcat (Felis rufus) tracks and barefoot saunter by Courtney Stormberg. Fremont County, Iowa.}