Recently a few friends asked me why I became a wildlife rehabilitator, so I thought I would share my story for anyone who is interested. I have always had a deep affinity for the natural world. This was not nurtured; it was just something I was born with. In fact, as a child I had little understanding of the natural world, but I saw the damage that mankind was inflicting on it very clearly. As I became older, my understanding…
Watching birds in the ocean yesterday, I was struck by the connectedness of all things – the ocean, the sand, microbes, plankton, fish, people, all of it. I became aware of the universal consciousness, the divine thread that binds us all together. I watched the shore birds fluttering in the waves searching for fish and I thought, “Their life is my life, their suffering is my suffering, their pain is my pain, and their death is my death.” We are…
Last night while I was sleeping, I woke up very suddenly feeling exhausted and depleted. I felt strangely filled with an innate sense of knowledge and I thought to myself, “This is how the earth must feel.” I was so surprised by the clarity of this sensation even though there was some part of my logic-seeking brain that thought, “Don’t be ridiculous. The earth can’t FEEL anything.” In actuality, I think that is just the part of my brain that…