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Chapter 3: Gathering

Writer's picture: Matthew J. CampMatthew J. Camp

It’s hard to build a campfire without being outdoors. The type of fire I talk about in this book, which can be a powerful teacher, is created step by step outside. Being outside awakens our senses instantly. As we move through natural space, our sense of vision expands beyond man-made walls or electronic screens. In Wild Earth, we practiced owl eyes to awaken and expand our vision. We reached our arms as wide as they could go, wiggled our fingertips, and used our peripheral vision to see if we could notice the wiggles. Noticing how wide our field of vision is can be a first step in actually using that surprisingly wide field of vision. Maybe this is a way to see the forest and the trees.

When outdoors, our non-looking senses also come online. In stillness, we can note the array of sounds nearby, like our breathing, or sounds far off, like distant traffic or an airplane. Our range of hearing expands, and we develop owl ears, if you will. The stillness really is key—after sitting outside for about fifteen minutes, birds you didn’t see fly away start to return to their branches. When being still long enough in the woods, we can hear an approaching wind. Like a sailor, we can use our cheeks to discern its direction, which is very helpful in determining where to build a fire. We can also feel more outside. Many of us note how eating outside seems more elevated, more enjoyable than eating inside. Our hands are exquisite sensory devices and can reach to feel how wet or dry a stick is. We may even be able to smell how damp it is.

After noting all of this activity, maybe our inner voice—the chatter—starts to slow down, and the language of the woods starts to speak. A world before and beyond words starts to emerge as we feel textures of leaves, some soft, some crisp. We feel how some sticks bend and others snap. We note the different species of Standing People, some more fire resistant than others. Awakened senses guide us to the huge variety of fire-building materials like branches, leaves, pine cones, bark, and reeds, and we can experience their specific properties that are useful for fire-building. Our senses tune us into the fire-building context: How dry is the ground? How strong is the wind? How much daylight is left to gather materials? Maybe this prelingual world is a return to very early childhood or a return to the world our ancestors inhabited and thrived in before words were used to label and categorize. Time in the woods allows us a chance to experience what emerges in the silence.

When meditating, I notice a big difference between being indoors versus outdoors. Outside, there are more and varied sounds. Instead of hearing just a whirring refrigerator, I hear breezes through crowns of gently rocking trees, birds singing and sometimes even whooshing by, cars traveling and honking, and planes soaring. I see a lot more movement too. Even dewy grass on a quiet morning evolves as sunlight refracts tiny rainbows dancing on beads of water on each blade of green grass.

I call this chapter “Be Outside (Now),” a play on Ram Das’s Be Here Now. His book title and command is at the heart of mindfulness, particularly the Buddhist tradition that Das follows. It is easier said than done. Being here now during all the “nows” throughout life is hard, which is why I offer the less demanding practice of being outside now. So, take a break from this book and step outside. See what happens, smell what happens, listen to what happens, breathe what happens.

Okay, welcome back. Perhaps with or without irony, words matter in paving our path to the prelingual world. After a few years of mindfulness practice, I landed on three similar words to help me be (here, now). It started when I learned about a mindful-grounded therapist, Karen Miscall, who has a practice called What’s True Now? Asking this question allows me to return to the present. It allows me to shed fears and anxieties about the future and doubts about the past. My personal spin on this question came to me in an unexpected and hilarious way. There was a TV show in the 1970s called What’s Happening!! in which three affable young men—Raj, Rerun, and Dwayne—got into silly misunderstandings and resolved them over the next twenty-three minutes. The show’s introduction featured the three guys bouncing a basketball down the street accompanied by a manic clarinet brought to you by Henry Mancini. The show ran from 1976 to 1979, and as a kid, I watched reruns.

At some point in meditation, maybe while staring into a campfire or at a blade of grass, I remembered that the show had a sequel in the 1990s, when Raj, Rerun, and Dwayne were grown up, called, in the most Zen way possible, What’s Happening Now!! As if the first show, What’s Happening!!, wasn’t grounded enough in the present, the show producers added Now!! in a perhaps unintentionally Ram Dasian way to unsubtly drive home the point that we’re talking about right here, right now. This question of What’s Happening Now!! became exceedingly important to me, motivating me to pull myself into the present and not get lost in the past or future. Even deep into meditation, remembering the guys and Mancini’s music brings a smile to my face and adds much levity to the sometimes stern work of mindfulness.

I remember how Robin Wall Kimmerer wrote about humans remembering their true nature. In Buddhism, we’re called to remember our true Buddha nature. In Pali, a language important to Buddhists, the word for mindfulness, sati, means remembering. Maybe the next sitcom sequel will be when the guys are old and gray, struggling a little to remember What’s Happening Now, Right at This Very Moment!!

Coming into or back to the present isn’t an intellectual exercise. It must be felt. The breath is the ever-ready tool to help us get back into the present. Each exhale releases what’s in the past, and each inhale pulls in the true present with all of its imperfections. In my yoga teacher training, I learned that when we inhale, our diaphragm engages and allows the lungs to expand, creating a vacuum and equalizing pressure with the outside air. When we exhale, our diaphragm relaxes and pushes air back out. One time, while I was meditating outside, it dawned on me how breathing is simultaneously automatic and voluntary. While the heartbeat is automatic and something like typing is voluntary, breathing is situated right in between. This thought/feeling came to me while hearing cricket chirps. Maybe their music was automatic, powered by some instinct evolved over millions of years, a direct result of the forces of their environment but also controllable. Have you ever noticed that you’ll hear a cricket stop chirping as you approach it?

When I’m meditating, something special happens when I sit for twenty or twenty-five minutes. I become very still and start to notice the buzzing electricity circulating through my body and mind becoming still. I start to feel connected to what’s happening in and around me. Practicing nonjudgment for the birds and falling leaves makes it easier to nonjudgmentally observe my thoughts. I also notice my inhales and exhales. They’re natural—like the birds, crickets, and wind—so why would I judge them? My thoughts naturally rise and fall too, so why would I judge them? In mindfulness traditions, we hear a lot about the hyperactive mind with metaphors like the puppy brain. We also hear a lot about the primitive forces that drive us, like the lizard brain steering fight or flight, as if those are our only two ways of being. Which one is it? I’m not sure which metaphor is most helpful, but I have felt at least these two types of animals running around my head, which brings to mind Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield’s observation:


What do we see when we look at the mind? Constant change. In the traditional scriptures the untrained and un-concentrated mind is referred to as a mad monkey. As we look for ourselves, we see that it is like a circus or a zoo in there. The parrot, the sloth, the mouse, the tiger, the bear, and the silent owl are all represented.


So rather than being a lion tamer or a zookeeper, I try to recall another more tender metaphor: Thich Nhat Hanh’s idea of treating my mind-body as a baby to be cared for and loved. Most of us have a natural affinity and affection for animals and babies, so why wouldn’t we treat ourselves with the same loving attention? Thich Nhat Hanh says:


When suffering comes up, we have to be present for it. We shouldn’t run away from it or cover it up with consumption, distraction, or diversion. We should simply recognize it and embrace it, like a mother lovingly embracing a crying baby in her arms. The mother is mindfulness, and the crying baby is suffering. The mother has the energy of gentleness and love. When the baby is embraced by the mother, it feels comforted and immediately suffers less, even though the mother does not yet know exactly what the problem is. Just the fact that the mother is embracing the baby is enough to help the baby suffer less. We don’t need to know where the suffering is coming from. We just need to embrace it, and that already brings some relief. As our suffering begins to calm down, we know we will get through it.


Growing up, I was very socially anxious. Bonding and connecting with people didn’t happen easily. I probably added to my own suffering because when I began to feel a little bit of discomfort, I turned inward instead of outward. Over time, with a twist of lingual irony, I cultivated an outsider personality in which I relished being different from the mainstream, as if I had some special dark knowledge and kinship with other misunderstood geniuses. It became second nature for me to judge other people, casting aspersions and putting myself on a pedestal, even though I was insecure about my own imperfections. Imagine running or biking in Central Park and, instead of focusing on the fresh air and the trees overhead, being annoyed by fellow runners and bikers, judging their imperfect form or their getting in my way. However, as I started meditating about once a year through my twenties and then consistently starting in my midthirties, I found that meditating turned my insides out. I noticed that during the twenty- to twenty-five-minute sessions, the boundaries between my highly curated internal mind and the actual more-than-me outside world dissipated. I guess I became an inside-outsider.

As I hear, feel, and see each breeze, I start to notice and feel how a falling leaf creates its own breeze, how it falls to the ground and slowly decomposes, adding nourishment to the next generation—exactly what my body will do when it dies. After some practice, my being became so still and at peace with what’s happening now that I could be okay with it. I was surprised to not even react to bugs landing on me but rather to notice their tiny steps walking around on my skin with a tingling sensation. With the exception of some mosquitos, they never literally got under my skin. They were just going from point A to point B and maybe were even curious about what I was. I am a big therapy proponent, but I feel like I’ve learned more from those bugs than from months of therapy sessions. Cultivating nonreactivity freed me from being Mr. Internal. Thank you, bugs.

I think Western thought has created dichotomies that don’t serve us well, like mind or body dualism or the notion that nature or the environment is something out there. This belies the fact that we are in and of the world. I’m always perplexed when I see a study summed up in a newspaper concluding that “exercise is good for the brain.” I want to rewrite the headline and say, “This Just In: Brain Now Part of Body.” I always feel good when I hike in the woods. It’s hard to stay angry in nature. A larger-than-me world is above and below me, and looking at ancient rocks simultaneously eroding and growing makes me laugh about the trivial discomforts I experience. I feel relaxed knowing that I, and all of humanity, will be just a thin sedimentary layer of color among those rocks. When I’m outside, I often think, “Ah, this was the missing ingredient that I needed.” And then, after more time outside, I wonder if we’re a function of nature or its progeny, or if maybe I was the missing ingredient. This realization came to me once while camping on top of Slide Mountain in the Catskills. My hiking partner and I got a late start and set up in the dark, relying on flashlights and the light of the sun on the opposite side of Earth reflecting off of the moon. I thought, “Isn’t it amazing that our eyes have adapted to see so well in the low light of the moon, as if it were some manmade light?” A few minutes later, I realized that it was the other way around—the moon has always been, and our eyes are the way they are because of the moon. Our beings are a function of our surroundings.

Why do we feel so alive outside? For the same reason we are a civilization with so many discontents: being outdoors helps us remember who we really are. Flipping this around, I think we’re a species with homesickness. Our true home is out of doors with the sky as our ceiling, the earth as our floor, and the moon as our night-light. We’re of and among myriad interdependent beings, each one a teacher and a classmate.

How does an advocate who likely spends much of their time indoors (and in front of a computer) be outside now? Certainly spending time out of doors and engaging the senses deepen and expand our connection to the more-than-just-human world and can make us more empathetic to the health and well-being of forests and the animals who inhabit them (remembering that much of North America was once uninterrupted forest, so humans, even Indigenous people who have lived here for something like forty thousand years, are the relative newcomers). This empathy is necessary in advocating with—not just for—beings with less political capital. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz emphasizes the need for teachers to love their students: With love as the basis for teachers’ instruction, teachers are less likely to pass on harmful racial stereotypes and can open up to the present and feel the needs of their students, not just pass on the conformist demands of a flawed society. Teachers and advocates who love rely less on scripts and more on what emerges in the moment. This creates space for those who are reluctant to speak up, bringing their inside voices out.

Recently, I worked with a professional lobbyist on an advocacy plan for how to turn a bill into a law. The first step in their plan was to do an “environmental scan” to get a sense of who was doing what—what legislation was already circulating, which interest groups were supporting or opposing it, and what had been said about it in the press. To do an environmental scan is to be outside now. In addition to this, I think that an advocacy organization or person can rely on their bodily senses to be part of this environmental scan: Listening is key. Know who’s saying what and how they’re saying it. Reading political quotes online is one thing, but it is no substitute for being present at a state senate committee meeting and hearing the tone and tenor of the speaker or the volume of their opposition’s grumblings. These meetings are open to the public and often streamable online. It’s pretty amazing to go to an event and read about it later. Every journalist has a different perspective, seeing and hearing different things, so reading about it the next day is like a Rashomon or five blind men and an elephant experience.

Listening well leads to a greater depth of power for grassroots advocates and privileged leaders alike. At Wild Earth, we practiced deep listening, which is listening to understand, not necessarily to respond. In one exercise, we paired up with a classmate and walked through the woods. (To get a bit reductive for a second: Moving while talking fires the brain’s mirror neurons, which correlates to empathy because you’re seeing the same things at the same time.) During this walk, we were encouraged to share a simple story about someone we care about. The listener wouldn’t interrupt; they’d use their third eye to visualize the speaker’s story. At the end of the story, the listener would pause intentionally to allow the story to sink in. The listener would then repeat a synopsis of what they heard, to acknowledge and affirm what the speaker said. The onus of accountability was on the listener to pay close attention. My classmate Diana told me how her eight-year-old son loved being outside. I can still see him emerging from the woods with a handful of colorful leaves. This practice is powerful in creating space for less-heard voices to be and feel heard. While listening in this way, power-holding people, including well-intentioned ones, can attend to what’s happening now rather than jumping in to solve problems with a script full of familiar solutions that usually end up reinforcing the status quo.

Leaders who listen will have more powerful organizations. Robert Greenleaf worked at the AT&T corporation for years, helping imbue Buddhist ideas into a quintessential Western corporation. I first heard about Robert Greenleaf’s servant leadership model from my aunt Sister Paulette LoMonaco, who ran the 1,600-person social service nonprofit Good Shepherd Services for nearly fifty years. My aunt had been in New York politics for decades, going toe-to-toe with five mayors. But growing up, I didn’t realize the clout she had because she was so humble about it. In 2019, I read a New York Times interview with her entitled “Why a New York Nun Fought the Power” where she praised Greenleaf in response to the question “What corner-office advice would you give to other leaders?” Greenleaf argued that leaders who are servants use listening to build strength in others. In his 1970 essay “The Servant as Leader,” he says:


One must not be afraid of a little silence. Some may find silence awkward or oppressive. But a relaxed approach to dialogue will include the welcoming of some silence. It is often a devastating question to ask oneself, but it is sometimes important to ask it—‘In saying what I have in mind will I really improve upon the silence?’


Advocates at all levels of an organization can create space for their co-advocates to open up by asking questions. Brian Grazer, coauthor of A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life, rose to the highest echelons of Hollywood filmmaking by asking questions. His insatiable curiosity and intentional practice of asking questions of leaders and employees alike helped him understand the world. Much of this was by necessity, as his preference for verbal discussion was due to his dyslexia. Brian started interviewing people at the top of their field when he was an unfamous college student. He was dogged and eventually interviewed notable figures including Fidel Castro and Edward Teller. Not only did Brian learn how they navigated their worlds, but when he became a leader, his questions helped his staff understand their own perspectives. In interactions similar to those of a therapist and patient, Brian created opportunities for clients to land on their own revelations and helped them build their strengths à la Robert Greenleaf.

Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz shared with me that one of the most powerful things advocates can do is not to empower the less powerful, which implies that the dominant group might opt to reach out to a weaker party, possibly with strings attached; rather, advocates can “create spaces for people to realize their own power.” To me, this latter approach suggests that everyone is naturally capable and powerful. Even indoors, using our spaces differently can be expansive and liberating. As a university administrator, I try to offer expansive spaces by booking rooms for students to come together to share ideas. The power of a dedicated room (with Wi-Fi, seats, a bathroom nearby, and maybe even some food) is not to be underestimated in cultivating a sense of community and recalibrating students’ relationships with administrators, teachers, and teaching spaces. A survey that asks open-ended what and why questions can also provide space for students to feel heard. Briefing advocates on issues and offering prompts to write to legislators is another way to help people realize their own efficacy and create a sense of partnership.

To me, the difference between empowerment and creating space for others to realize their own power is analogous to how two familiar yet very different questions operate. First, you may often hear people, including teachers, ask the question “does that make sense?” after sharing some information. Although not intentionally malicious, the question isn’t really an honest one. It’s asked only to affirm what the speaker has said so they can move on. Anyone answering anything other than “yes” would be suggesting that the speaker is not making sense, which is nonsensical. This veneer of buy-in is unidirectionally steered from the speaker to the listener, dragging them along. A more authentic and power-creating question is “what do you think about that?” It’s open-ended and thus provides the listener with real time and space to explore their own thoughts and share a response to what was spoken.

Many of the classrooms in which I took classes on the Columbia University main campus are still locked in the 1890s industrial model of education, including large lecture halls in which chairs are literally bolted to the ground. This is the “piggy bank” model of education that Paulo Freire described in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, in which the student is an “empty vessel” for the teacher to fill with information and rules. When I sit in those kinds of seats, I feel like a horse with blinders on. So whenever I hold an advocacy workshop, even if it has to be in a room with fixed seats, I encourage people to turn and chat, to greet the person sitting next to them. This gets a buzzing energy going and diffuses power away from the almighty professor on high. Expanding lines of sight and offering physical movement can precede a more equitable environment. Our civilizational field of view has narrowed to a few square inches of an LCD screen, compressing and narrowing ourselves. Being outside, and being bigger inside, can feel freeing.

In exploring space in politics, I’ve put a spin on the old maxim that “all politics is local”: All politics is spatial. This is because every square foot in America is represented by about a dozen representatives, all of who work for you. Most citizens can elect the following: a school board member, a town council member, a mayor, a sheriff, a county freeholder, a county executive, a state house member, a state senator, a governor, an attorney general, a public advocate, a House representative, two US senators, and the president. That’s fifteen representatives. You are their boss. Our system is one of majority rule, minority rights, so your voice must be registered by these officials even if you didn’t vote for them. Know who they are: Look them up, sign up for their mailing lists, and show up to events. Let them know who you are: Reach out to them regularly via phone, mail, and electronic media. I sometimes say that 90 percent of advocacy is just showing up. When you might have only a few minutes—or seconds—to meet a busy elected official, it’s good to not leave showing up to chance. Rather, incorporate a dose of intentionality: Showing up on time is late, showing up early is on time. Holding ourselves accountable is the first step in holding our elected representatives accountable. As in mindfulness, advocates benefit from discipline—maybe not full-on aestheticism but a middle way that allows for both ease and effort. Effort is easier when it’s practiced a lot.

Being out of doors and outside of yourself is good for those in the political world. I remember Chris Matthews in his book Hardball saying that successful politicians are those who “look good in the sun.” It might also be true that those who are okay with their own emotions and okay with turning their insides out will also connect with others and therefore be successful in politics. Stacy Abrams is an example of a brilliant politician who, by her own admission, is better at strategy than with the hugging and glad-handing necessary in politics. She’s an insider, and that’s okay. A successful politician will harness their internal fortitude and be vulnerable enough to have their missteps and misspeaking come into the light of day. Joe Biden comes to mind. He frequently states that “all politics is personal” and is known for emotionally sharing personal stories, including the family tragedies he’s experienced. A stutterer from a young age, Biden worked to overcome his disability. However, he is still prone to misspeaking, and that only builds his everyman image, which is reality. And he’s not afraid to be out in the sun, wearing aviator sunglasses and licking an ice cream cone.


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© 2024 Matthew J. Camp, RYT, PhD. 

Artwork by Adam Robert Dickerson

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