The relationships between spatial and temporal dimensions clarify when one ditches the automobile in exchange for feet and a bicycle. Slowing down to a natural human pace, I feel a nostalgic linking across pasts, presents, and futures – a remembrance of a simpler, carefree childhood, when time was rarely measured, and spatial relationships manifested in a felt bodily awareness. Driving a personal vehicle from place to place for all my adult life (apart from walking and biking as a form of exercise), I realize how the world outside the car blurs, becoming backdrop, reinforcing the bifurcation of humans from the more-than-human world. How can one connect when one is encased by metal and glass, whizzing past the world at speeds no human would otherwise achieve? But this separation is mere delusion. For while humans in their cars, on their highways, on their ways to various human-designed and built spaces can ignore the more-than-human world, the more-than-human world cannot ignore the climate-altering gases spewing from tailpipes, the coal-fired powerplants climate controlling their constructed spaces, or the deforestation, mining, and toxic contamination required to extract the materials needed to maintain the delusion. As much as we can construct narratives that we are separate from our environment, such constructions are nonsense. Everything we do co-creates the world, for better or worse (Bawaka-Country et al., 2020; Bawaka-Country et al., 2016).

As I pedal to the farmers’ market, I relax into the unscheduled mind space that opens up in the absence of quick transportation. I will get there when I get there, spend as much time as I need to, and then head home. I have dedicated a whole day to this adventure. I feel a familiar urgency in the cars zipping past me on Asheville’s bicycle-unfriendly roads, heading everywhere in a hurry. I am grateful that most motorists are polite. In fact, my life probably depends on it. In the squeezed narrow roads without bike lanes, they must wait patiently to pass me in the presence of oncoming traffic. Many then put pedal to the metal and fly past, anxious to make up for those few lost seconds. On my bike, I am unable to somnambulate through traffic, as I often did in my car. I am very much in the world – wind in my face, sun (and rain) on my back, taking in every sound and sensation.

An interesting and beneficial byproduct of my self-induced braking to bipedal speed has been that time itself seems to slow. In fact (ironically), a relatively recent study discovered similarly that the “time-saving” technologies modern Western humans have grown accustomed to actually accelerate one’s temporal awareness (MacDonald, 2015). Embedded in technological, as opposed to more-than-human worlds, time flies by, and the minutes saved using technology are usually used up pursuing a Western capitalist agenda instead of actually enjoying one’s life. A recent Gallup (2017) poll found that of the 100,000,000 employees in the American workforce, only one third find their jobs fulfilling and enjoyable.

My capacity to rewild time undoubtedly reflects my white, settler, land “owning,” middle-class privilege. On the other hand, refusing to engage with consumerist capitalism, I spent in total only $30 this week at the farmer’s market. In the absence of television, shopping for things I thought I needed, and compulsive attention to social media, I read more, sleep better, save money, and generally feel less stressed. And, I have the great satisfaction of knowing this week, that my carbon footprint is negative (I planted some trees) and that nothing I did enriched the pockets of the already-rich corporate masters who are destroying the planet.

However, as I attempt to re-condition myself to the natural rhythms of the more-than-human world, the time constructions of Western contemporary life still confound my attempts.  The tick-tock of the clock forces me to conform, whether I want to or not. Yoga at noon, farmers markets on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, deadlines, appointments – I can’t seem to avoid the scheduling that characterizes globalized Western life. And I begin to experience that this scheduling is not just a benign tool. A certain quality of tension or anxiety flutters up when I glance at the calendar and the scribblings that commandeer my freedom for an hour or two here and there. Scheduling minutes, hours, days, and weeks comprise such a ubiquitous part of Western daily lives, it has come to seem natural, inevitable, unquestionable. I wonder. Do our constructions of time serve or enslave us? And can different notions of time liberate us? What other seemingly imperative narratives (e.g., about work) could we reject to create happier, healthier communities?

But when night had fallen, the sorrow of the worshippers was turned to joy.  For suddenly a light shone in the darkness: the tomb was opened: the god had risen from the dead; and the priest touched the lips of the weeping mourners with balm, he softly whispered in the ears the glad tidings of salvation” (Frazer, 1922, p. 407). 

 The Vernal Equinoxes mark the point in the year when, rather than favoring either the northern or southern hemisphere, the Sun exactly aligns with Earth’s equator, resulting in a (mostly) equal day and equal night. For Indigenous cultures across Earth, even Europeans, the Spring Equinox represents a joyous time of reawakening, resurrection and rebirth. In the modern era, Christian Easter, Jewish Passover, Wiccan Ostara and the Zoroastrian celebration of Nowruz, to name a few, represent fragments of a collective human heritage commemorating Earth’s reawakening from a long winter slumber to once again bring forth life.  Mythologies invoke variations on the theme of mortality and rebirth.  Cybele and Attis, Persephone and Demeter, Jesus and Mary, etc.

 For me, the day also marks a death and resurrection, the dying of a lifetime of a Western lifestyle characterized by human exceptionalism, waste, excess, and repression of my emotional attachment to the more-than-human world. Clawing my way out of the debris of my past existence, I hope to be figuratively reborn, not as a perfect Human, but as an integral participant in the messy entanglements of wild earthly materiality.

 Day one begins like any other day, except the television in my bedroom that typically blasts inane distractions is gone, and no social media scrolling infuses the morning with an unhealthy dose of doom. Instead, I get out of bed immediately, attend to the needs of the furry residents of the household, and begin the first of many morning rituals to come. I choose to mark this year of rewilding with daily ritual, not because I subscribe to the dogma of any particular religious tradition, but because, as many have observed, the more-than-human world communicates not with words but through a “language of things” (Mathews, 2019; Weber, 2014). Perhaps this is at the heart of the almost universal human desire to express ourselves with song, incense, fire, dance, meditation, and feasting in an effort to reconnect within a wholeness greater than ourselves.

 I begin with the lighting of a candle and incense, centering of breath, and an invocation of my intentions – From the compost of my life’s destructiveness, I seek to resurrect flourishing for myself and the more-than-human community of which I am a part. The Australian Aboriginal notion of “deep time” blurs distinctions between Western linear notions of past, present, and future. The vestiges of this Land Community’s cumulative ecological and colonized histories are not isolated in some distant timeplace outside the present and future. The eternal now emerges from collective and co-created abundance, scarcity, love, violence, joy, and sorrow of all beings who make home here (Bawaka_Country et al., 2020).  

 I therefore think it’s fitting to mark the first day with offerings and engagement with Se-di and Sowo[1], two Black Walnut trees with whom I have already fostered relationships. These two Trees, one in the front yard and one in the back, dominate the visual and ecological landscape. Their substantial size points to their “old growth,” with lifespans that predate the settlement of this land by white European descendants and even the founding of the City of Asheville. The deep time knowing of this place infuses their ancient wood.  

 Their natural histories also dictate which more-than-humans will be welcomed to this rewilding party. Generous to a fault with mast fruiting, Se-di and Sowo feed countless birds, squirrels, humans, and other fauna with their abundant nuts each year. On the other hand, their roots, nuts, leaves, and wood are infused with allelopathic juglone, a chemical that acts as a natural herbicide, inhibiting the growth of many plant species, although not all. In co-creating and co-designing a forest of food for all who choose to live here, I will necessarily need to work with these most influential architects.

 I take them each an offering of incense and precious last cups of Coffee. I explain my intentions, ask for their cooperation, offer gratitude for their existence, and sing a spontaneous Black Walnut song for them. Then I just sit. The Rooster crows his ode to the morning, and neighborhood Crows respond with a raucous chorus. A Nuthatch swoops from Sowo’s branches to the bird feeder and back again, offering a mate (or newly fledged chick) a seed. The cool but not cold breeze brings the promise of the season while myriad voices from the surrounding hills cheep, chit, and chirp, rejoicing and co-creating this glorious morning.