Kin to Everything

The sharp edges of exclusive possession | Universal threads | Non-human activism and boundaries.

Image by Aidan Hodel via Unsplash

“What are you doing in my garden?”

These were the words, sharp at their edges, first said to me.

This phrase is laced with the weight of private property and ownership, borders and boundary lines, gates and cattle grids, nationalism, oppression, colonialism, displacement, dispossession, exclusion, walls, barbed wire, and blood-red signs that read “no entry”.

I was walking towards my meditative sit spot beneath a beech tree near my home, where I try to spend time in contemplation outdoors almost every day. I had brought with me a bird feeder. It was the start of dawn chorus month and I thought I might give a helping hand to those frantically searching for a mate in the early hours or making a much-needed rest stop during their long migrations.

Coming back to the same spot in nature almost every day for the past few months, I developed a deeper connection to the space. I know what birds would be out depending on the type of day, noted their songs, and could see and feel the micro and macro rhythms, melodies, and patterns of movement emanating from the land. I saw my first dragonfly of the year there. Found a crows’ nest atop the pines. I know the rich tapestry of birdsong and how it was different from morning to evening. I know how the blackbirds bully each other in the evenings, and how the woodpigeons seek each others’ comfort as the sun sets.

A lady from the other end of the paddock began walking towards me as I was sitting beneath the beech. Holding my bird feeder filled with seeds in one hand, and as she came near to me, I gave her a soft and polite hello, how are you? What I received in return was a barrage of aggressive accusations, judgment, and harassment, presuming I had no right to be on this land. This land that I grew up on. This land that I call my home. “What are you doing in my garden?”

Often in a moment of palpable exclusion, you feel paralysed. You might not be able to speak up and advocate for yourself as you normally would. It doesn’t matter how much training or how many workshops you’ve done. My throat locked up and my body tensed. In an instant, I felt unmoored and hopeless. It was only after the aggressive interaction happened and upon later reflection that I realised what it was really all about. I later discovered that the lady who had made me feel like I didn’t belong on this land that is my home worked for the National Trust (enough said).

I’d be dishonest if I didn’t tell you about how I cried after this happened. How I poured my heart open for hours. I was more sensitive, easily upset, and dislodged from the rhythms of my day, for days afterward. While I received a lot of kind and supportive messages from friends about the incident, calling this situation out as one wild card of a woman with personal problems—for me, I see a deeper significance and experience this sentiment as a sharpened linguistic weapon. A tool of exclusion.

This mistaken belief, that I was in her land—the sole purpose of which was for her exclusive enjoyment and possession, is emblematic of what we see happening across the UK, as revealed by the Right To Roam campaign, and a tiny sliver of what we are witnessing surrounding the genocidal dispossession and displacement globally, including in Palestine.

The simple act of showing up every day, slowing down, and taking notice of the life around me—the mayflies, dragonflies, ladybirds, blackbirds, jackdaws, robins, great tits, and wrens—meant that I had deepened my embodied connection to the land. I had opened myself up to the land and felt held in return. The assertion that I didn’t belong there or have the right to be there (when I did, in fact) felt like an unwarranted rupture. I couldn’t go back to my sit spot for weeks, the feelings unearthed and unwelcome memories still tender to touch.

Thinking about those who experience great power and privilege in this hierarchy, sometimes it appears as though they sleepwalk into ownership and exclusive possession. Contrastingly, those who have lived at the edges and margins in some way—whether that be through race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity, neurodiversity, or otherwise—are all too cognizant of the ways exclusion, dispossession, and unbelonging might be experienced by intersectional, marginalised groups globally and what the lexicon of exclusive possession represents.

“EDGE
Tortula muralis, Wall Screw-moss
You have your nerves on show,
so that anyone might know
what finds your edges,
or for whom you are smooth,
what turns you reckless,
of whom you approve. Might I
live like that? The silver thread
stretching from my very tip into
others, its tether of impossible courage.”
—Elizabeth-Jane Burnett, Twelve Words for Moss (2023)

Recently I spoke with Michael Malay, author of the life-affirming and awe-inspiring book Late Light. Michael shared with me a quote by John Muir that I’ve been thinking an awful lot about and which has provided a lot of comfort:

‘When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.’

As Muir reveals, “We are kin to everything.” We cannot see a living being as a single entity. When we notice the true wholeness of biodiversity, we see the universal thread that ties that being to other beings. Imagine a starfish hitching a ride on a Hawksbill sea turtle as it wades through a kelp forest. Imagine the fibrous fronds of Pearl River Mussels that clean thousands of litres of a river for the trout and salmon to thrive. When we stop to take notice, ours is not a lonely existence.

I recently discovered why beavers pause while they chew trees to make their dams. They pause to listen for the tree’s movements so that the tree doesn’t fall onto them. This survival tactic helps to ensure they can make a move and scamper away to safety before a tree comes crashing down to the earth. To me, this is a beautiful metaphor for the work of activism and dismantling oppressive systems. We are chewing at the root of the system. Biting away at the wood until, eventually, we have chewed away so much at the bottom of the trunk that the rest must topple over. Day and night, the beavers chew and listen. Chew and listen.

How can we keep ourselves safe and held while living out the truth of who we are in hostile environments? How do we stay as soft and tender in our edges as moss, while we chew away at the roots of oppressive systems? Presently, what universal threads do you wish to be held by to feel like yourself again?

It is a painful thing to realise our physical, mental, and emotional limits when we want the world to be more hospitable for ourselves and others (including other-than-human species). I felt this truth so deeply when reading from

Ruth Allen

’s wonderful new book Weathering: How the earth’s deep wisdom can help us endure life’s storms:

‘Limitations — like time itself — are unequally distributed through populations. Some have none. Some have too many. This is a real problem.

To be in the truth of your body is to see yourself as the human animal that you are. And also the fox. And the fish. And the sloth. And the ant. And the bee. And the elephant. And the translucent space-jelly pulsating through the abyss. We have elements and tendencies shared with all the animals above, and many more besides. We can walk and swim, sleep, form groups with profound bonds, we can work, create beautiful things, laugh together, solve mathematical equations, go to space…change identities. We can do so much, and while we can’t do everything, what we can do is enormous and magnificent.’ (Rethinking Limitations and Boundaries, p.43)

Like the course quills on a Crested porcupine’s back, boundaries and limits keep the soft animal of your body safe, as space to thrive decreases. As Burnett reveals, it takes “impossible courage” to stay as soft as our non-human kin in this global environment of enclosure, exclusion, and dispossession.

And still, the world needs you.

The world needs you to feel rooted and tied to that essential ecological thread that can transcend this othering. This is the thread that reveals our kinship to everything.

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Here are some of the universal threads I want to be pulled by:

1. the scales on an Elephant Hawk-moth’s wings

2. the way a jade vine pollinates the top of a bat’s head, just behind the neck, as they drink from the flowers in the moonlight

3. multicolour pearls produced by river mussels

4. ambient language (check out this piece by Stephanie Sy-Quia)

5. how birds have different “accents” depending on what region they live in

What are the universal threads tugging at your heart, nourishing your sense of belonging? I’d love to know.

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Books I’m currently reading:

• Dispersals: On Plants, Borders and Belonging by Jessica J. Lee

• Weathering: How the earth’s deep wisdom can help us endure life’s storms by Ruth Allen

• Twelve Words For Moss by Elizabeth-Jane Burnett