The Galápagos changed me. What started out as a photographic expedition to a place of unique flora and fauna became in the end a deeply spiritual journey. Expecting unusual photography I found in addition a glimpse of man’s roots as part and parcel of nature in what theologian Robert Keck calls an “Emerging Deep Value” of the sort that an erstwhile friend and I shared as a "Big Piece of Fish" Experience. Whatever it is called, these terms embrace the wonder and awe at finding ourselves at one with the world around us – some singular vision or event that at least momentarily heals the rift between ourselves and the nature on which we’ve so thoroughly turned our backs. With open heart, soul, and senses one can perceive in the Galápagos’ flow of life and their rhythms of sea and wind, the interaction of man and all other living flora and fauna in a primordial interchange.
Animals living in the wild, as well as so-called “primitive man,” are intimately attuned to every subtlety in their surroundings and all sources of energy contained therein. I am not suggesting the “noble savage,” a concept long outdated and discredited. Rather, increasingly we recognize that humans who live in constant close contact with their natural environment are aware of subtleties that elude the rest of us. As mankind has gone about “civilizing” themselves, we have lost those connections to our environment, lost the ability to read the wind and the sea, to communicate to other animals through the force of spirit. Modern man is greatly impoverished as a result, and we have put ourselves, and our world, into grave danger through our separation of soul from nature. It is unfortunate that we have been taught to believe only the evidence that appears before our eyes – the world is full of larger truths.
Though our travels between and, to a lesser extent on, the islands were burdened by technological trappings, the Galápagos offer one an almost unparalleled opportunity to apprehend in microcosm the full circle of life with man as a single part, no more and no less important than the places held by all other living organisms. Thus, the islands can evoke in those whose entire perceptive powers, not only the traditional five senses, but hearts, souls, and spirits, are open, a renewal of bonds in what are truly singular connections. The spirits, familiars, and ghosts that urbanized, educated, humans scoff at as primitive superstition are real and perceptible to many who live closer to the earth than do we. Do they form a web of connectivity that is the basis of self perception as well as Weltanschauung? Perhaps these supernatural beings are simply personification of very real natural connections that most of us have lost the ability to see.
Man is decidedly not superimposed on the rest of nature, although through ingrained human arrogance, modern man has elevated himself to a position of “special creation,” a viewpoint that has broken man’s bonds with his world and his compatriots and has also broken faith with the creative force.. It will take nothing more than a leap of faith, as someone recently reminded me, to look beyond ten millennia of increasing separation. Places like the Galápagos (and there remain precious few of them) can prompt us to take our focus off ourselves and our patriarchal point of view and shift us to a time when feminine values governed mankind’s connections. Only in allowing ourselves to be nurtured by nature (how close those two words!) and to extend a nurturing spirit back in turn, can we hope to heal the rifts that divide us all, to become whole once again, as were our ancient ancestors, at-one with ourselves and the world.
There is much that I personally have done wrong for which I know of no way to atone. The same holds true of all other individuals and for mankind in general. Instead of exculpating ourselves on the one hand and engaging in self-flagellation on the other, let us dry our tears, forget a past that cannot be changed, and move ahead, hopefully on ever so slightly more enlightened steps. It took time to get where we are and it will take time to get to where we should be. Let us not turn our backs on the healing process, let us take sure steps in the right direction.
Lying on the deck of the Samba on the last night of the voyage, the group of us experienced an incredible connectedness as we gazed up at the inky sky festooned with billions of stars, seemingly so close that we could reach up and pluck one down. Aside from a faint mast-head light, there was not a man-made light source to be seen. Simultaneously, the darkness and the light were equally profound. Though I, along with some of my companions, have gazed up at such skies from mountaintop, desert, and savanna, I don’t think that any of us had ever before experienced the night sky in quite the way we did that night under the equator. For me it was an epiphany. I knew it at the time, but didn’t know just how profound it was going to prove to be.
I found part of the difficulty in synthesizing what the Galápagos meant to me represented in the length of time it took me to put together the dual presentations of web presence and slide/dissolve show. Usually, following a lengthy shoot, I have images edited and presentations conceptualized in a week or two. Not so with the Galápagos. At this writing I’ve been back almost three months and everything that the Galápagos meant and did to me is just beginning to sink in.
So, dear reader, follow your path keeping heart, soul, and senses open to the ebb and flow of life, the rhythms, the interactions between all other creatures, listening for what they can teach us. Mankind may be a few million years old, but we have much to learn. The Galápagos Islands are a good place to start.
| Namasté | |
John
| Photo Gallery 1 | Photo Gallery 2 | Photo Gallery 3 |