Menu

About Seeing, Part 3

December 20, 2004 By Uncategorized

…most of us live as if we are seperate from nature. Whereas a deer is fully in its body, we have retreated into our minds. By thinking, we have set up parameters that divide the universe into things that can be categorized, and we call that understanding. This gives us a sense of power and control. We look at a forest and say, “That’s a white pine. That’s a white oak. Over there is a sugar maple,” and we think we know the forest. But we have no real contact with those trees. We miss the details – the subtle curves of the branches, changes in the texture and colour of the bark as the light fades or the wind blowing on the dying leaves. We do not embrace the forest with our whole being; instead we label it with our minds…

…Our security does not lie in the control we have over nature, but rather in the quality of attention we bring to our lives. If we care about our relationship with nature or our relationship with other human beings, that caring demands our attention. Caring is attention. When we really care about another person, we want that person’s needs to be met. We are present and attentive. That person’s needs are our needs. We pay attention to them. There is then the possibility of sensitivity, initimacy, communication, and harmony. The tracker in the forest is in love with his or her surroundings. In nature, we are open to a larger perspective of self. We learn to walk carefully on this planet. We learn to see it.”

— from Tracking and the Art of Seeing by Paul Rezendes pp. 21-23 passim

When I was in university, I researched and wrote a paper on the James Bay Cree and their efforts to negotiate a deal with the governments of Canada and Quebec in the eraly 1970s. The deal, which became the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement was negotiated between communities of largely traditional indigenous peoples and two levels of Canadian government, with a very sophisticated industrial utility, Hydro Quebec, watching in the wings.

In the paper, after doing scads of archival research at McGill University, my co-author Gary Heuval and I discovered that the Cree negotiators, all of whom were hunters, had actually viewed the entire exercise as a hunt for unfamiliar game in strange territory. To prepare, they readied themselves as they would have for a hunt, including consulting with the community about its needs, dreaming the territory, equipping themselves with the right tools and becoming familiar with this prey they were seeking. By adopting a traditional approach, they were able to negotiate a treaty and bring home what the community was requesting, as if they had spent a winter out on the land dreaming up moose and fish, and harvesting enough to support everyone.

This is what seeing is. As Rezendes points out, seeing is a process of becoming unified with one’s environment so that you understand yourself as a part of it, rather than as an aloof observer. Becoming wholly integrated with your environment means that you can begin to dream the opportunities that are inherent in it, much as a traditional hunter dreams about the place where he or she will meet the deer that will become food. Only with the utmost care and attention, does seeing, in this deep sense, result in this integration.

As Rezendes says in this interview:

“It has more to do with stillness than with movement. It is about slowing down and blending in. It is the ability to melt into the forest,” he says. Tracking allows people to drop their everyday personae, until the forest no longer realizes that you’re there. When you become the forest, when you’re silent inwardly and outwardly, the forest starts to wake up, to move. “It’s amazing what can happen,” says Paul. “And we become more sensitive to what usually goes unnoticed. This kind of intimacy then naturally begins to manifest in our everyday life. By seeing, feeling, and following without threatening or disturbing, we discover that everything we encounter is what we’re looking for.”

We can find that field of practice in the forest or in the office. Organizations are nature too, as are the environments in which organizations operate. But to bring this capacity of deep seeing to those settings, we need the same degree of care and attention as the tracker does: we need to be able to “become sensitive to what usually goes unnoticed.” Simply running numbers, doing surveys and conducting consultations will not make clear the opportunities that are inherent in the chaos of the present. We must practice a little deeper, take all the information and sit with it until the future emerges into our sight, like a deer track in the jumble of forest litter.