The Stories of Everything: A Conversation with Carina Lyall about Hearing the Many Truths [Episode 24]
It was a joy to lean in with the host of the Becoming Nature podcast, Carina Lyall. Our conversation easily flowed between squirrel games (spoiler alert, they want all the walnuts), how certain stories come straight from the Earth, and the relief of physically/mentally de-centering ourselves when we are outside. My favorite part of our conversation was when Carina described storytelling as the “wildest sense of truth-telling.” Even when we don’t know the old stories of the land where we live, we can know the many smaller truths of the beings around us. Sparrow has his truth, Violet her truth, Hawthorn has their truth of what it is like to be in the world. We can practice letting ourselves be opened wide by more truths than answers.
I really appreciated Carina’s thoughtful presence and the way she resists rushing through to simpler answers. Here are some of the highlights from our conversation:
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A closeness stirs in the mornings as Carina and her family watch papa Pheasant and his family from their window. An intimacy is created as they know his routine and he knows theirs.
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Games with squirrels! Carina leaves them spirals of walnuts and chestnuts just to playfully explore what they love the most.
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Some stories were never man-made. Stories that arose directly from the Earth bring forth the “wildest sense of truth-telling… Just as we can’t hurry to tie nature down, we can’t hurry to tie a story down.”
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Carina’s class, ‘How to Become Invisible in a World that Demands to See Everything’ was created through the inquiry of “what might happen if I become part of the land and just shut up for a moment. What else in me or around me would have a chance to speak?”
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Only 2% of the land in Denmark is undomesticated, but even while laying on this domesticated land, acts of wildness are happening everywhere, becoming a great mirror for what wildness we humans might allow within ourselves.
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Carina talks about the tension of needing to always be an expert or have something to say online while also sometimes needing to close her window into the world. She grounds herself with the inquiry of “where can I actually have an impact?”
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“The environment doesn’t need our protection, it needs our right relationship to it.” This quote from Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio seemed to sum everything up for us in the end.
Carina Lyall:
How To Become Invisible in a World That Demands to See Everything - Free Course
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