Remembering Death, Remembering Trust:

Excerpts from the book, Awake in the Wild,
by Mark Coleman

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off you like falling leaves.

---John Muir, Nature Writings

Alone in a field or at the seashore…we feel closer to the mystery of life and death…Nature seems to want us to remember death.
---James Hillman, Talking on the Water

“In the natural world, death is apparent everywhere--- from the fading spring flowers, to the scorched fields of dry and shriveled grasses in late summer, to the chestnut leaves curling and falling in autumn. And then there’s the long, dormant winter, nature’s version of fallow death…Nature also reminds us of the inherent beauty of death…All living creatures must eventually yield to the call of death, from the insect that lives one brief day to the towering sequoia tree that lives for several millennia…The more we remove ourselves from nature, the more we hide from death in our industrialized, postmodern culture. We rarely come into close contact with human remains; our dead are hidden away in morgues and funeral homes. Our culture tends to view death as inherently unfair, as if something went wrong, and the media often presents death as an abnormality that isn’t part of everyday experience. As a people, we harbor an underlying hope that if we can live better or take more precautions, get faster medical attention or eat the perfect foods, we can somehow avoid dying. Keeping ourselves apart from the natural cycle of life can negatively impact our experience of life itself. The more we fear death, the more we hold back from living fully. When we turn a blind eye to aging, decay, and death, we are shocked and devastated when it happens to those around us, and we become ill-prepared for the inevitable ending of our own lives….” Mark Coleman goes on to say that of course not all cultures avoid death as much as ours; remembering death’s inevitability in the ways that certain cultures do reminds us to make the most of our lives now and not to postpone anything. He points out that we all can foster our own remembrance of death in our personal lives, just as we are doing in honoring Trusty.

Coleman continues: “Contemplation of death does not mean a negation of life. Monks and nuns in southeast Asia undertake the contemplation of death to relinquish attachment to the body, to remember that this physical form is not ultimately who we are. Yet this same contemplation raises our awareness of how rare and precious life really is. From that place, we can live with respect and care for the body, while at the same time remembering that it too will pass away. Each of us will someday return to the elements from which we came.”

Farewell Trust, until we meet again!