Hancock County’s naturalist philosopher considers whether the built environment can have a life of its own.

- by James Inabinet, PhD.

If one could find “itness” in a forest and in a field, could one find it in the heart of the French Quarter in New Orleans? 

- by James Inabinet

Hancock County’s naturalist and philosopher takes a look at the different stages of the creative process, from experience to expression.
 
- by James Inabinet
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Local naturalist and philosopher James Inabinet explores the inspiration nature’s glories bring to our everyday lives and to our art.
 
by James Inabinet, PhD.

Inspired by the writings of an extraordinary 12th century abbess, Hildegard Von Bingen,  our local philosopher and naturalist celebrates the spring season. 

- by James Inabinet, PhD

The author takes the time to study his world in a way few of us do – slowly, deliberately, one vignette at a time. Today he considers goldenrod, both as part of something greater and as a world unto itself.
 
- by James Inabinet

The author contemplates the meaning of the year gone by in a unique way that allows his mind to open to the new year’s possibilities.
 
- by James Inabinet

We tend to think of the world as made up of two separate spheres – man-made and natural. But is that reality, or merely our perception?  Our own Hancock County philosopher weighs in. 
 
– by James Inabinet

Is the forest in a constant state of change? Or is it resolutely unchanging? The author looks at both sides of the debate, with the help from all his senses and guidance from several Greek philosophers.
 
- by James Inabinet

Humans today do not have a place in wild nature. To re-establish that connection takes purposeful observation and the will to wait. That place will become evident - in time.

by James Inabinet

The author attempts to connect to his identity as an organism in the universe by viewing the world through the eyes of other creatures.

 - Story by James Inabinet

Three days fasting in the woods helps the author reckon with a difficult year and find his authentic self.

- Story by James Inabinet

Our own Hancock County philosopher and naturalist looks back on a youthful epiphany that changed the course of his life. 

- Story by James Inabinet, PhD

Exploring unmanaged natural areas rather than the groomed trails of "nature centers" requires the explorer to pay attention to his surroundings.

-story and photos by James Inabinet
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By establishing an emotional connection, the land and the home can – and perhaps should – become not just a location, but a member of the family.
 
- Story by James Inabinet

Like the wind, passion can be soothing and persuasive - or relentless and destructive.

- Story by James Inabinet
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Is time linear, the way most of us in the modern world experience it, or is it cyclical, the way our ancestors existed in it? 

- Story by James Inabinet, Ph.D.
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Before linear time, for nearly the entire expanse of human experience, there was cyclical time too, rhythmic time. Cyclical time was the lived experience of the masses even up to now. For the all-too-many living on the margins of poverty, no clock rules their existence. They are the “shiftless.” There are no shifts to work, no shifts that follow the hands of a clock.
 
Outside of the world of money and work and clocks, the natural sense of time on Earth as directly experienced right now is less linear and more cyclical – the seasons, the daily cycle, the phases of the moon.
 
Rhythmic time speaks of an eternal order, the light and dark of the seasons, the growth and decay of all things coming into being, to do and go, only to come again. Watching a river flow, unchanging through its continued change, enables an idea of timelessness, of an eternal time that can be experienced by simply being outside, a part of the changing reality and eternity of a single day.
 
Linear time is connected to the past, to memory; we experience it by looking back. By contrast, rhythmic time is the eternal now, always in front of us, right now. It speaks of what was, but in its recurrent reality, now, a story told by the rising sun each dawn.

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A day begins in the dead of night from which daylight inexorably bursts forth as Apollo’s chariot completes its round. At night, stillness reigns. Little moves. What does move can only be heard – now.
 
Sight is useless in the dim moonlight of a crescent moon. With straining ears, the night sojourner faintly hears the far off frogs in the pond and the leaf-rustling of an armadillo across the way digging up a worm or grub, rooting more like a pig than a pig itself. There he leaves a cone-shaped, ankle-breaking hole.
 
Unmoving stillness is what midnight looks like; silence is its roar in a sleeping world. Yet one never fully feels alone in the night forest, and to be sure, not all of the forest is sleeping. The night sojourner ever feels like she’s being stared at: the watchful owl on the limb, the fearful golden mouse on the trail edge, the thousands of wolf spiders scurrying along the ground against the lumbering giant’s footfall.
 
One is never alone in a forest.
 
Finally a faint eastern glow begins to push back the shadows. The world is coming to life.
 
Morning looks like the morning glory, blooming to meet the sunlight of day. Morning sounds like the cardinals in the fetterbush thicket–tick-tick-tick-tick-tick–picking off the leaf-eating caterpillars. Morning sounds like the buzzing solitary bee that visits the meadowbeauty at the forest edge.
 
The sunlight traces paths a hundred-fold through the morning mist, seeking, it seems, any path to bring light to the forest floor. As the day progresses, the flurry of activity slowly ceases until only the occasional bird or the occasional bee remains. The sun finds a more direct route to the ground now. There is less forest to obstruct its path from overhead.

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As the day wanes, the pace quickens again as the animals almost frantically search for their supper. The morning glories are now long closed up in preparation for the sleep of night. As night falls, the stillness that reigned the night before resumes.
 
The regnant shadows cloak what in the light of day was a mere pine stump. Now in the shadows it is a hunched over, wooly monster, created in the mind’s eye of fantasy and memory. A day is felt more than seen, and in that feeling one becomes a participant, a co-creator, in the wonders of place, space, and time.

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Australian Aborigines are co-creators in this way. In his daily experience, Big Bill Neidjiee sings his world into being in the dreaming (as recorded by T. C. McCluhan).

I feel it with my body, with my blood.
Feeling all these trees, all this country ...
When this wind blows you can feel it.
Same for country ... you feel it.
You can look, but feeling ...
 That make you.

The author marvels at nature's most powerful and breathtaking spectacle: a summer thunderstorm.

- story by James Inabinet, PhD 

​I listen for a while to forest sounds. I always begin mindfulness practice this way. I hear a cardinal to the north; cicadas are loud, primarily east; squawking jays fly over chasing a single crow caw west.

There’s silence for a while, and then more birds, a squirrel maybe. I’m not sure; it was a single squeak. I imagine I hear a faint sound of thunder.

​Unsure, I listen closely for a while, more birds, the squirrel – it was definitely a squirrel. I hear thunder again, definitely thunder. There’s a storm to the southeast. I ignore it and begin my meditation. Thinking of nothing, I float inward.

After a while, I have no way of knowing how long, I am pulled back into the world by thunder. Looking southeast, I see dark instead of blue through the canopy. The storm is almost here. I decide to sit it out. It approaches quickly now; shifting winds animate tree tops. I settle firmly onto my pad, a kind of bracing. I look up and am ready.

Eyes closed, I focus on sounds and feelings, to hear the music of this place, bathed by rain, buffeted by wind–a flash of light, a huge raindrop–to see every flash, hear every thunder, smell the ozone, the cleansed air. There is magic in experiencing a storm. I am excited! The storm is almost here; it’s nearly dark.

The wind blows violently through the trees; falling pine needles prick my bare arms and back. The wind blows harder still, the thunder louder, flashes of light! Rain is falling, amazingly cold and hard – harder still! A flash of light north; wind blows wet hair; rain pricks skin. Thunder! The lightning is closer now. As air becomes water I close my eyes. Soaked through, I am getting chilled.
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I open my eyes again to watch the lightning. I have to look down to see flashes; the rain makes looking up painful. I focus on the time between flash and sound. Twelve seconds for that one; ten for the next, then twelve, then five! I’m cold now – stuck here – what was I thinking?

I continue focusing on flash and thunder to forget about cold and rain. Maybe there’s medicine in this; I recommit. The air is charged; my stomach sinks like I’m on a roller coaster. I’m frightened – no, not frightened; maybe it’s alert, very alert, engaged, as storm and I become one.

A lightning bolt crashes very close. I didn’t count the time. Now I’m frightened. I focus again on the thunder; if there’s medicine it must be there, not in the rain. The storm begins to wane.

​Lightning flashes are farther north and east now. Soon there are no sounds at all except distant thunder and water drops from trees. I am uncomfortable and that’s good; I want to feel it.

Soon I head for home, exhausted, although I cannot figure out why. I just blithely walk through the webs.
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At home I reflect and feel I’m at a beginning. I am alive! The gift of thunder, its medicine, must be the gift of life for to hear thunder means to have survived lightning.

​Today, as every day, I received a gift of life. It starts now and I mean to live it in a manner that recognizes the relationship between life and death, between thunder and lightning, and to a death that will eventually overtake me.

We never seem to think about life as precious gift so concerned we are with the “ten-thousand things of the world,” and so we take it for granted, and move through our life paths unconsciously, frittering that precious life away. Thunder teaches life. Thoreau says it, too, in Walden:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

​I did not wish to live what was not life, [but] to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

The author takes time to study the quietness of the forest and the unique qualities of its inhabitants.
- story by James Inabinet, PhD

Winged blue jays were doing bird-things: eating muscadine berries, building nests in early spring, picking aphids off of stems, and singing songs.  Wiggling earthworms were doing earthworm things: tunneling just below the surface of the ground, eating leaves, feeding armadillos, squirming when encountering ants or sunlight. 

Hopping frogs were doing frog things: sitting on lily pads, hunting insects, swimming, calling for a mate, and feeding snakes.  Crawling fence lizards were doing lizard things: running over the ground, hunting, slipping tongues in and out of their mouths, performing push-ups to show off blue underbellies, feeding birds, digging under leaf mats, and remaining motionless when the shadow of a bird passes over.  ​

​Rooted red maples were doing maple things: limbs reaching toward the sun, growing tall in moist bottomlands, flowering and seeding in mid-winter, and feeding squirrels.
 
The initial goal of the investigations was simply to make careful and detailed observations of anything that captured my interest. 
 
In the goldenrod field, for instance, I sought the unique character of goldenrod so as to understand its process of becoming, to understand how it became what it is.  Not a form frozen in time, goldenrod grows and becomes, changing every day.  Through detailed observations I noted how goldenrod expressed itself: basal rosette of fuzzy green leaves, long straight stems, robust yellow fall flowers. 
 
In the beginning, all goldenrods looked the same.  Over time, the more I looked, the more I began to notice variations.  I noticed that goldenrods in the field were usually small in stature, but large in flower while those in the forest tended to be large in stature and small in flower. 
 
Further investigations revealed individual differences.  No two goldenrods were alike.  I was eventually able to detect particulars for each one, a unique and individual character–though detecting that individual character was often difficult.
 

After many forays watching animals, I noticed that after an organism’s needs were met, she would often sit idly, perhaps resting in a protected nook.  A coyote near the bayou with a rabbit once panted under the low-lying limbs of wax myrtles. 
 
A frog-fed copperhead curled up on the creek bank in the shade of titi limbs.  Satiated towhees sat on limbs, either singing or resting quietly.  A finch left a bush half-full of berries and never returned - unless she slipped in and out without my noticing. 
 
It seemed that nearly all of the organisms I chose for careful study rested when not hunting or hiding or escaping.  With no dire call to incessantly hunt and store food, enough seemed to be enough.
 
In these ways and myriad others, I noticed that the characteristics of each organism amalgamated into a unique expression.
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​Deathcaps of the forest floor displayed a unique sense of fungusness unlike that of puffballs.  The squirrels of the canopy displayed a unique sense of squirrelness, an identity unexpressed by any other organism.  Water oaks displayed a sense of oakness unique to their kind, an expression that I became so familiar with that I could eventually distinguish water oaks from others by gazing at twilight silhouettes from far away.
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I called each organism’s manner of being its identity.  Each organism in the forest possessed a unique identity, unique as species, unique as individuals.  The primary inclination of each individual seemed to be to express its unique identity as individual in its forest home. 
 
I longed to find out what humanness must be like in my forest home.  I longed to find out my identity, to find out what Jamesness must be like if it were to be fully realized.

Our Hancock County philosopher observes the natural world around him acting in harmony and wonders where humans fit in.

- Story by James Inabinet, PhD

Minutes passed. My eyes remained closed as I felt a simple joy at being here, now. My wandering mind soon fell onto why it felt so good and it occurred to me (as it has before) that it might be the interlacing harmony of it all.

A palpable harmony, a felt one, I have quite often found myself to be ensconced here in my forest home within a panoply of seamless fits, a place where everything seemed “just so.” Homes and niches interpenetrate and overlap homes and niches–and I am a part of it!

I have surmised that every constituent being, by simply following their desires to be, by just being and doing according to true natures, contributes to and creates this harmony.
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Oak trees are being oak. Driven by a desire to be oak (no more-no less) they surge with hormones and produce flowers that become acorns, food for squirrels, birds, and weevils–and budding oak trees.

Weevils are being weevil. Driven by a similar desire, they drill into acorns where eggs are laid that hatch into acorn-eating weevil grubs. Shiny green tiger beetles, driven by a desire to be and do tiger beetle, are running about–fast–on the forest floor to catch and eat small insects, notably acorn weevils.

Lizards are there too, among the beetles, prompted by desire to just be lizard. Some are flashing blue underbellies while others flash ruddy neck extensions, even as tiny flying moths are snatched up and devoured.

Bees, driven by a desire to be bee, can be heard buzzing about (a totally bee behavior), checking-in on coreopsis flowers over there, wild plum flowers over here, and huckleberry flowers over there.

Sitting on a mat of leaves, I leaned against a water oak to gaze. A barely visible dogwood bloomed through intervening foliage. I listened to the gentle breeze in the canopy and scanned.

A low-flying pine warbler, lured by desire to be warbler, flitted from limb to limb. She was singing a distinctive “warbling cheep” while jerking her head about rapidly, side-to-side, up-then down, jerky–nothing smooth about it.

​To the west about a hundred feet away a male swallowtail, driven by desire, perhaps by the proximal scent of a potential mate, flew haphazardly but quickly from left to right and out of sight, two hundred feet in a matter of seconds.
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In the face of a desire to be and the apparent harmony within my forest home, I wondered about humans. I wondered about human-in-harmony, about what it might be like for a human being to live in harmony with the forest in the same way an oak or a warbler or a fence lizard lives in harmony.

What would that be like? What would it feel like for a human in service to a potential “human niche” to perform a “human function” that creates it?

Ecologically, an organism performing its function in an ecosystem is performing its niche. Niche is kind of like a “job” in the ecosystem, both the place and the functioning, inseparably, together, including associates, i.e., oaks and weevils and squirrels and warblers.

Squirrels perform a squirrel function by gathering acorns, ripping pine cones apart, running along limbs, hiding from the cooper’s hawk behind a pine trunk. By performing these functions, a squirrel niche is performed.

​How does the squirrel know what to do? She follows instinct for sure, but what is that like? I surmise that niching behaviors are prompted by a desire to be and become, whatever kind of organism is in question. Squirrels, driven by the instinctual desire to BE squirrel, perform niching behaviors and squirrel niches spontaneously spring into being.
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This brings us back to humans and niche. In a forest ecosystem, what might a human function be? Along the lines of squirrel function and niche, this must be a performance of human function that brings about a human niche.

How would a human know what to do? Is it just instinct? In its performance, would human niching harmonize with the functioning of other beings of a forest like squirrel functioning does? What would such a human niche look like, be like? More importantly perhaps, what would it feel like?

​These questions haunt me.