Sacred Tabernacles [part 2 of 9]: Portages of Our Pilgrimage
by Jennifer Sabatier
Portages As Way Through
The metaphor of portals as an entry point or passage way from where we are now to a healthier more balanced relationship with nature is hopeful but an ambiguous image. The word portage seems more appropriate and grounds this metaphor in this place of uncertainty where we stand now.
Portage is a noun and a verb that embodies both an act and a path forward. To portage is to labor or carry “boats or goods overland from one body of water to another or around an obstacle (such as rapids)” (Portage, nd, np). Portage is also a geographic location and route for the transport of boats and goods over land, and is often the connection between two bodies of water (Portage, nd).
In the current crisis of global proportion, we are portaging only what is essential and still useful from the old paradigm through this liminal space to a new body of uncharted waters that is not yet visible. Many of the layered portages that lead to ancient wisdom have been abandoned or dismembered as a result of the industrial age, our desecration of the planet, and our neglected relationship with the earth.
In the context of the fragmentation of humanity, the demands of modern culture have disabled our vision and memory of these openings into the natural world. However, finding one opening into nature inevitably leads us to another threshold. Once we connect with our longing, perhaps we enter a park, garden, or atrium, we pass through the doorways of remembering and rediscovering our relationship with Mother Nature and ourselves. These linking portages lead us to subliminal, remote, mystical landscapes--a beach, mountain, or river--offering respite from the chaos and commotion of modern existence. Some of these passageways are difficult places to traverse, particularly emotionally, as we come into knowing our part in the desecration of the planet.
Conservationist, writer, and speaker, Sigurd Olson wrote on the topic of portages in his effort to protect and preserve their natural state. Portages, in Olson’s writing, serve as passages between the alluring lakes of the Boundary Waters in Minnesota. In his 1936 essay, The Romance of Portages, Olson reminds us of our ancestral wisdom and the landscape entrusted to us when he suggests that we need
“a new conception and appreciation of the meaning of portages. If we look at them in the light of old associations and as monuments to the days of the past, we see more than a carry between two lakes, a place of work or rest. We see them as the ancient wilderness roads of a race, relics of an adventurous past, rarities which in our time are becoming exceedingly precious. Seen through the eyes of people who know these things and understand the intangible values of atmosphere, ... These portage trails of ours are part and parcel of a priceless spiritual heritage, the old wilderness” (Olson, 1936).
Olson describes these passages between lakes as either a place of rest from the monotony of the canoe or a place of difficult terrain that requires effort and endurance to reach the blissful sounds of the rushing water on the other side.
We are already feeling ourselves thrust into a difficult portage that is not of our choosing. The Coronavirus pandemic is a difficult portage with fear at both ends that we have been forced to traverse with masks, gloves, and sanitizing cleansers. We shop, socialize, and work (if we are lucky enough to still have a job) differently through this strange, liminal passageway. The end of this journey and its outcomes are uncertain. What is certain is that we are feeling a desire to connect more than ever. Our basic human needs are surfacing. Our cessation of travel and consumption has in some parts of the world also allowed clean waters and clear skies to surface too. Nature is our travel companion through this portage.
This is one of many of the metaphorical portages of our journey back into the natural world. The sacredness and the desecration of nature are the portages into the mythic wild that may lead us back to ourselves and nature at the expense of convenience and consumption.
Some modern people, who have tired of trying to fill the void between ourselves and the natural world with purchases and pills, seek rather to be in gratitude and reciprocity. Bill Plotkin, in his book Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche, refers to the “[s]o many messages … trying to sell us something of questionable usefulness while ruthlessly pandering to our vanity, insecurity, or unhappiness -- new toys, fashion, entertainment, or insurance against the inevitabilities of life” (2003, p. 159). Plotkin points out that only a few ask the bigger questions in search of “the hidden treasure, the spring bubbling in the desert, the song of the world” (p. 159). The addiction to consumption begins to heal when we can stop the mind chatter to hear our own inner voice and peer into that bubbling spring within each of us.
Meditation as a Portage
Perhaps our first portage of our own choosing might begin by turning inward. Journeying the passageway of our inner landscape is a sacred act of presence. Beginning with an attitude of reverence, we might first make an offering of ourselves to ourselves with the acknowledgment of our own nature.
Meditation is a portage to quiet the noise of our own mind, to connect to our inner landscape. Meditation, which may lead to a profound state of presence and often stillness, is one method toward reverence and connection with self and nature (Plotkin, 2003). Eager students spend great effort and time to quiet the mind, connect to the earth that holds us, and feel the umbilical attachment to Earth.
In our longing to be closer to Mother Earth, we make room for new opportunities to connect with nature. RMaya Briel, an energy worker, earth healer, and pipe carrier in Earth Tribe, teaches ancient wisdom from Native American and Toltec traditions. Recently, RMaya led a small group on a barefoot silent meditation walk along the Cypress Creek Conservancy in Wimberley, Texas.
Before we embarked to soak up our sun ray and feel the unique vibrations of trees, RMaya demonstrated with two cups and water how Mother Earth is always unconditionally holding us. The bottom cup, filled half-way with water, represents Mother Earth, and the second cup with its bottom cut out represents all beings, including human beings. As the second cup is placed inside the water-filled cup, the understanding how fully our Mother holds us is clear. We need only to surrender to Her pull, to Her gravity, to know it. Our connection with Gaia is a holding of our entire being that extends upward along the outside of our physical body, as we float in Her water (R. Briel, personal communication, July 17, 2019). Mother Earth’s generous and merciful foundation holds us, waits for us to remember our connection, so that we will step through any one of the many doorways into the natural world to claim our place among the rest of nature.
