Shifting

how all of a sudden everything changed

one day, a couple of weeks ago, suddenly everything changed. my world turned upside down.

i didn’t like living in the city. the ground underneath my feet is hard, not soft and mossy. artificially created stone and concrete are everywhere. both sides of the street are always full of parked cars. there’s dog poo everywhere and you have to pay attention all the time to not step into some. the green you see has to fight for its life.

i need green, i need forest, i need birds chirping, soft ground underneath my feet. i need the sound of a small creek running somewhere close. but trees, especially trees, i need over my head. i am a forest being.

i grew up in berlin, very close to the grunewald, in the 1970s and 80s. the grunewald and the green district of zehlendorf were my homegrounds. lots of green and trees, but still, the feeling of city prevailed. then we moved to munich. both big cities, both a lot of cars, noise, people, dog poo. when i was eighteen i moved out, to a small city in franconia, germany. apart from the boutique walkable city center, almost everything was already suburbs and then forest, fields, lakes.

city for me is concrete, pavement, streets, buildings, here and there a planted tree. but the overall ”gestalt”, the whole that i perceive is the body of the city as a coherent system. when i see trees they are planted in a row, frontyards fenced in with random plants, sometimes cared for, mostly not really. the ”green” in between the lines of traffic turns yellow and brown very quickly after a couple of spring weeks, and often it’s full of garbage. the soil of foot- and bike paths through curated parks is condensed to a point where seemingly no being can live in it anymore, dense and hard as the concrete a few meters away. it all feels like a cage, somewhat untrue, numb, numbing.

but i am bright awake. since childhood i was interested in druidry and forestry. mushrooms, animals, herb lore, witchy stuff. while becoming a participatory organisational developer and executive consultant, i always pursued a druid path, celebrating moon and sun seasonal holy days, researching nature based religions, studying herbs and learning about landscape mythology. in recent years i understood more and more that we will not consult the planet to health and restoration, we will not technify ourselves to health and restoration, the revolution will not be computer screened. as long as we do not literally care by hand for the very soil we walk and live on, we will be separated from the connection to the life around us.

so i started to shift, less ”consulting projects”, more focus on deep participatory change, less ”jobs”, more longterm friendship based client relationships, more focus on sustainability, restorative practice and meaningful conversations. next to working less, i started to sign up for vegetable gardening, soil lore and urban rewilding courses. the more i focussed on soil and soul, the more i became aware of the life around me. my perception started to shift as well.

since 2018 i live in a co-administrated house that could be described as owning itself without private ownership or investor. we live here with 22 grown ups and 12 children, in the city of berlin. in 2019 we unsealed the backyard and planted greens. in the summer of 2021 a long-eared owl nested in the three across the yard and a fox family in the hedges across the street. last autumn i saw a falcon regularly fly across our backyard. rhinoceros beetles larvae live in the compost heap back in the corner.

in the past years i learned about humus, terra preta, clay-humus-complexes, the million and billion organisms that live in a cubic centimeter of soil. about the mushroom mycelia and forest communication in the soil i had learned already decades ago. my knowledge started to be rooted in the ground the more i learned. my practice started to be rooted in the ground with it.

and then, all of a sudden, one day a couple of weeks ago it happened!

and my life and view will never be the same.

i was completely unprepared, i didn’t know it could or would happen. no one warned me, i didn’t practice for it. i think i just slowly started to sink my focus below the concrete, becoming aware of the life below and the incredibly thin surface we sealed the soil with and then - boom.

i don’t live in a city anymore! i live in a forest!

the main ”gestalt”, the ”whole” that i perceived as foreground before shifted from “human built city” to “forest and life” as if someone suddenly switched off a light. i lifted my head to the trees above, i couldn’t believe it. i looked around in awe. all the small isles of front yards, trees along the pavement, refuge islands, parks, backyards, the rose bushes, the herbs, the ivy on the houses belong together, communicate, hold roots below the concrete and - in my new perceiving - pushed the cars and buildings, the traffic lights and the paved ways to the background.

i can’t unsee it.

i somehow suddenly see the real world. the birds are chirping in the forest, the seagulls fly across the channel in the forest, the mice and dragonflies belong. i am not lost. some weird beings have built some beautiful old houses, but mainly quite ugly stuff into the forest and parked a lot of metal along what they call roads. but overall, way in the foreground is life! it speaks to me and i understand it, i am part of it. i can feel the soil underneath the concrete, the roots of the linden tree lift the pavement and road in places, so that they crack. wild herbs grow all over the forest floor. life is not fighting for life, it is just there. we are trying to fight it back, to no avail. i live in a forest!

in august i am going to invite the people who care for soil in my neighborhood to gather and exchange. let’s see how we can shift further, feel the soft and mossy ground underneath our feet, feel protected by the trees above our heads, plant food forests within the city and front yards and have good conversations about soil and community.