Felt Knowledge

My father has always been a naturalist, never an environmentalist. He believes in the cycles of nature, in the inadequacy of our “green” movements, in the inevitable—natural, even—effects of man on nature. He only cuts felled wood or dead trees, but he believes he has a right cut the live ones if he wants to. The difference is that he doesn’t want to. He has a need to name, know, and understand them; to conquer them through labels and learns their secrets. He has taught me to learn their secrets too. I can still feel his warm hand around mine, his gentle voice pointing out trees and rocks. Even now his love of nature is let loose in the wild abandon of a child. He scrambles over rocks, holds sticks into the water to watch to the flow, taunts my sister into crossing the rapids on a narrow log, and lifts his face to the sky with a gentle smile—one I know is mirrored on my own face. He loves this place. He introduced me to it when I was seven years old, taught me to love it and appreciate it. But he also taught me to understand it, to give things names, to know why nature works as it does. I take a picture of him, sitting atop a sixteen foot boulder, the sun filtering through the trees behind him. He smiles and the memories are crowded out by the sensation, by the felt knowledge of Dad, this force, this being that is so much a part of myself.
-from The Wild Forest: A Story of Lost and Found