Wild Ducks, Wild Life

Mallard Pair at the Creek 

 

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with 

your one wild and precious life? 

~Mary Oliver

Like so many of Mary Oliver's stunning verses, this one is overused and has become almost cliché. But it is well earned, for the power in these lines is astonishing. I know because this innocuous seeming string of words was a gift once that in an instant changed the trajectory of my life. Wild and precious. There they were, two of my very favorite words. What potency they carry strung together like they are, and then the single word dangling at the end, like a carrot, like a beautiful pendant, their object, your life. 

I visit the mallards at the creek. I think about Oliver's lines when I read that mallard means wild duck. Which surprises me and makes me chuckle. If ever there was wildlife that seems less than wild, it might be mallards. But never mind, because there is that word again. I think about the stack of books by my bed, more than half of which carry the word wild in their title. The one on my shelf also with wild in the title that started it all, that got me to swim with wild dolphins. I think about wild woman, the name Clarissa Pinkola Estés has given to the wild feminine, the archetypal, instinctual, divine feminine nature, the birthright of not only women, but every person. Jay Griffith's Wild, which both inspires me and makes me more than a little uncomfortable. Also the audio course I just signed up for with Mirabai Starr, Taking Refuge in the Wild Heart.  

Despite beliefs to the contrary, wild is not wicked or sinful. It is simply that it is not tamed or domesticated; it is natural, as it is, as it is meant to be. Wild has its own mind and will. It is true to its dharma, lets its life unfold as to its own innate design. It does not fold itself up like a pretzel and stuff itself into a box many sizes too small, from which it manages to live its life; also from which it is near impossible to extricate itself. Even when that is what its heart most longs to do. You pick up Estés again and again; you pick up Jay Griffiths. Without realizing it you collect books with wild printed boldly on their spines. You sign up for audio courses you might never listen to. You make it into neither of the books on the nightstand titled Wild Writing. Or is it Writing Wild? It is hours before dawn and dark and I cannot remember which it is. I only know how intoxicating those two words are together. Writing. Wild. And that I want that. Both to receive and to give. 

I think about unwilding. A word that does not exist but should. It should roll easily off the tongues of all of us who have been its casualties. Nature has been unwilded. I have been unwilded. Most women have been unwilded. Or maybe dewilded. Except that makes me think too much of deflowered. Though here I am surprised~ the second definition of deflowered in Mirriam-Webster, after the obvious, is "to take away the prime beauty of." Wow. Domesticated says it, though not specifically enough because it doesn't speak directly to what has been stolen, or at the very least, shrunk, made small; our basic aliveness, our innateness, our fabulous, fierce, passionate, creative, powerful is-ness. Though rewilding is a word, but is related only to plant and non-human animal species; "the planned reintroduction of a plant or animal species into a habitat from which it has disappeared...  in an effort to restore the health of an ecosystem." The idea is right, the scope limited.

It began innocently, like Mary Oliver's words, like so many things that alter the ground beneath you. A book found where I am not supposed to be. An all-night flight with nothing to do but smell the plumeria around my neck, wipe away tears that won't stop, and read. Page by page it begins to come alive in me, a glow, a knowing, a recognition, flutters of a wholly impossible out-of-this-world dream seeded against the quiet drone of the engines, planted in darkness while the ocean sleeps below. Over the next five years, more books, nighttime dreams, synchronicities feed and water it until also in darkness it sprouts and grows, timidly at first, a treasured secret, a delicate seedling, but then it breaks wildly out into the light. On its own it is everywhere, it cannot not be, like the morning glory vine ushering forth, growing up and over and around, its tendrils twisting everywhere, its gorgeous blue blossoms rising up, opening sweetly, meeting the world.  

In spite of the fear that had grown exponentially over the years until it was a silent tether that kept me small and close and folded in on myself, a part of me begins to make plans. No matter that I am terrified of the breaking of hard and fast norms, of the conversation, of the ocean, of drowning, of ecstasy, of the unknown, of meeting myself. Especially that, especially the meeting myself part, the wild self that I know is there, that I have touched if only on the rare occasion, but who in spite of everything remarkably refuses to be forgotten. Because between you and me, I'm afraid of what she might want and what it might cost but also the great, the heavy expense of living any longer not having had those things, the freedom, the authenticity, the autonomy, the spontaneity, the wings, the wildness, the joy. 

It is she who will fly alone across the country, alone in a tiny plane to a tiny island to a tiny boat, jump from the back of that boat heart in hand into the vastness of the clear, gorgeous turquoise ocean. Who will for days bliss out while swimming eye to eye, belly to belly, heart to heart with wild dolphins in their wild home; then will rock to sleep radiant, exhausted, each night in the arms of the wild ocean, on our one home, our one wild, precious, beautiful, earth. The long, on-going, circuitous, sometimes difficult, often grief-filled, the now-and-then exhilarating process of restoration, of rewilding having begun. In the wild.

~💗~