Andrew
Clover
I meet a beast at a stream (Prologue)
Now that the whole trip’s done – the storm-tossed Atlantic crossing; the week
groaning on that foul floor in Haiti; the moments of pain, the moments too of real
joy – it seems obvious: I started out trying to find a way to save the planet; I ended
up learning how to be happy, how to cope. Example…
**
March, 2023, high up in Colombian jungle, I was trekking back to the Jaguar Plantation, where we’d been planting trees, hoping to tempt the jaguar, back to her former lands. (We hadn’t seen the jaguar, but we sensed she was out there somewhere, thinking, I’ll come back, when there’s more shade).
It was early evening, I was tip-toeing along a high wall.
To the left, flowed a small canal; to the right, a steep drop fell to the jungle. I was just thinking, Is this safe?, when, going round a huge fallen tree, clutching a handy root, I saw a large white and brown furred creature, crouching at the stream.
All previous week, I’d been planting Sangregado
trees. Any tree is great. (A tree will never make a phone call on a train, or send you an e-mail marked URGENT so you’re forced to ignore it. With an unfussy quiet, trees breathe in carbon, breathing out oxygen - the spirit of life). And the Sangregado is especially magic. Like the Silver Birch, it’s a pioneer tree. In its shade, other plants sprout, bugs buzz - the soil bounds back to life. Sangregado means ‘blood of the cattle’ because, if cut, it bleeds red resin – as if passing cattle have cut themselves, or the tree itself were weeping red tears.
The previous week I’d planted two hundred of them,
which felt great. While planting, you get a work-out
of arms, back, and legs.
Digging into the soil, you release mycobacterium vaccae which stimulates serotonin, and soothes anxiety. But the uplift I’d received from the work was deeper than that, far deeper.
For the last year, I’d been studying the Kogis, the secretive people who lived in that area. The Kogis say contentment comes from consciousness of ‘unified thought’ - the spirit that drives the bird through the air, or the sap from the tree. In the last week, I’d spent a day carrying water up the mountain to the trees. While watering them, I’d had a sense of the trees’ gratitude for the water.
That had already fostered a profound sense of peace.
**
And then, that weekend, a terrifying, then remarkable, then sublime series of events had occurred, which involved me hiking towards the Lost City of the Kogis,
which had felt such a privilege. As Alan Ereira writes,
Most indigenous people wanted what the white man could offer – but the Kogi are different. They chose to stay separate.
After getting totally lost, I’d reached a Kogi village, where a Mama, a Kogi shaman, explained three key beliefs…
1) They call The Lost City teijuna, the origin place.
2) Everything has spirit, including the planet itself, whose spirit they see a real being, who they call The Mother, who – they say - if you help her, and give her gifts, will help you in return. And that’s what seemed to have happened.
3) By meditating deeply, you can access aluna – the world of spirit, and ideas – and thus can achieve deep change.
Did I manage?
**
Here’s a picture of me, shortly after the meditation finished. I’d invite readers to have a first try at accessing aluna themselves – at accessing their imaginations.Can you sense how I’m feeling in the picture – like a man who’s been on a massive journey, one driven by concern for the world itself, as well as my place in it - who’s just had a great weight lifted from his shoulders?
The visit to the Lost City had felt like the culmination of everything.
It made sense of the wild call that had made me want to come in the first place. It also made sense of all the things I’d been learning from the trees. The Kogis speak of Mashila, the original tree – an idea similar to the Kabbalistic one of The World Tree. When you start to look, it’s extraordinary how many cultures speak of the sacredness of trees, and how you can be transformed, by meditating on them. I realised the ideas I’d learned, though often strange, coincided exactly with what the Kogis believe. I realised they’d lead to a deep sense of safety, and nurture, and purpose, and even love.
Having reached the journey’s final destination, I was also keenly aware that this very
moment had been born in aluna. It had been dreamed up, imagined into action…