For the Many Hands and Many Beings
On gratitude as the grounding for our relationship to place
In the Mojave desert, I stop under a scrubby tree, one of the few near the trail. It may be short but it still offers shade, which I am happy to find on a hot June afternoon. After a few moments, feeling cooler, I adjust my pack and sip some water, take up my hiking sticks. Before heading onward, I touch the pine with the full palm of my hand, pause, and say, “Thank you.”
This practice of thanking the trees—for shade; for serving as a seat or backrest; for use as a hat stand—began out of genuine gratitude, but also, at the beginning of one long-distance hike, from a recognition that the trees were active players, not just some passive, inanimate object in the landscape.
In the desert, especially, where you find trees you will find people; the presence of one coordinates the presence of the other. On one long, exposed portion of trail in the Mojave’s Chimney Peak Wilderness (Tübatulabal territory), where not many trees remain now after a fire some years ago, there survives a small grove with a few remarkably tall pines at the corner of a switchback. One can see it for miles, and it’s no surprise to arrive and find half a dozen or more other hikers clustered together in the shadow and trying to cool off.
We can spout platitudes about wilderness trekking as a sport premised upon independence and self-reliance, but underneath those trees, our absolute dependence on the other beings around us comes into sharp relief.
I hear others talk about loneliness on long-distance trails, how there is “no one” around. Such statements always surprise and sadden me. There are always others around, if one learns to recognize them. We are never alone in the world, even when there are no humans in sight. Even when, as in the case of areas we have burned, those who live there are fewer and much altered from their earlier selves. They are there, offering both shade and company.
A few months into the COVID-19 pandemic—as it was becoming clear that this would be a long-haul kind of situation—I queried my (then) partner about saying grace before dinner. It was not a practice we already had. But as the constant messaging of isolation and separation began flooding in, I wanted something to remind us of our interdependence, to mark that our everyday existence was proof in and of itself of how absolutely not alone we were.
I was working on a farm during those early months of staying at home, newly “essential.” Much of my immediate family was, likewise, still at work, behind grocery store deli counters or drive-through windows at fast food joints. The point is old now, but remains salient: the ability for anyone to stay at home or work remotely has been and continues to be based on the labor of those who do not. Every meal we ate, both before the pandemic hit as well as after, was the result of a communal effort.
Much like on the trail, I took our sense of being “completely alone” as an issue of perception. Finding a daily ritual by which we could jointly mark our real connection to others seemed like an effective way to shift that perception. A little awkward at first, we developed a rhythm about it, and eventually landed on some basic wording that roughly forms the basis of what I continue to say at meals now:
“For the many hands and many beings that have made this meal possible, we give thanks. May it nourish our bodies and spirits and connect us more fully to one another.”
I would say my intuition was accurate: even when eating alone, saying these words, and considering the many hands responsible for growing and moving food from a field to my plate, makes me feel more connected, as well as more thankful.
As eating with others happens more often again, I’ve been leaning into the awkwardness of stopping someone from digging into their plate right away, then explaining my newish habit and asking if we might do it. Many people, of course, say grace before meals, especially those in religious communities, but this is less true of most folks I know these days. Yet everyone’s been game, and many are appreciative of the practice. I still don’t always remember to do it. When I realize I’ve forgotten, I try to pause, and do a personal accounting of what’s before me, then offer a silent thanks.
I share these two practices because they seem to me the best first step in responding to a question I raised a few weeks back: “What does right relationship to place mean when one is not a permanent resident?”
I have lots of notes written in various attempts to answer this question, scribbles about the difference between being a tourist vs. a guest, giving back vs. merely consuming, etc. But it struck me that any more complex understanding of one’s role in a place is significantly shaped, first and foremost, by the presence or lack of this attitude: do you understand yourself as interdependent with the others around you, no matter how brief your stay, and do you have gratitude for what you receive from that interconnection? Are you only able to tell a story of yourself as a lone traveler, or can you see the trees supporting your very breath as you walk by them? Do you think their labor worth pausing and appreciating?
I can spin out ideas about how to build community while itinerant, or the responsibilities of the visitor or remote worker, or elaborate whole theories of a place-based ethic. But none of those are really going to land, or have much effect, if they aren’t rooted in this kind of sensibility first. Can you see all the beings around you? And would you, foolish though it may feel or no, stop to offer them thanks?
That pause, that offering of appreciation, is basic. It’s fundamental. And it flies in the face of all the boot-strapping pioneer ideology that props up the dominant conception of what we call the United States, and all the harried individualism of modern capitalism. Whatever we build to replace these social structures, it will need to start here: with a pause to see and to acknowledge, and with offerings of gratitude and grace.
I’m in a new town again. After arriving, before reaching out to some of the human folks I know here, I took a full week just to be—to orient, to see the others around me, especially as spring is unfolding. To walk and look at the lilacs and stare up at the forested hillside, to say hello to the wild turkeys passing through the yard and to the family of deer who come to rest on the grass. To offer appreciation for the rain, in a region sorely feeling the ongoing drought. To remember that, even if I never saw the other people I know here, I wouldn’t be alone.
A full week may sound like a lengthy time for such a pause, but it passed quickly, and by the end I became alarmed that I was now neglecting my human friends, and missing out on the chance to make new ones. Thankfully it didn’t take very long to amend the situation: Sunday found me sitting in a park, munching on apple pastry fresh out of the oven, catching up with friends I hadn’t seen in years. What a moment for feeling warmth and gratitude, for giving thanks once again “for the many hands and many beings.”
I’m sure those notes on a place-based ethic will find their way here soon. Make sure you get those and other future posts by checking out the subscriber link below. And in case you missed the news, you can now read Unsettling and other Substack publications on the app.
Thanks for reading. Until next time,
Meg