Experiencing life as a baté two-spirit gets me thinking a lot about the nature of in-betweenness. When surrounded by binarist rhetoric in everyday life, I often forget the importance of removing myself from an exclusively male or female perspective, for there is great significance in both that I must harness to self-actualize.
Nature is full of in-betweenness. The towering redwoods remind me of nature’s presence in a way that shatters my unconscious assumptions influenced by colonialism, particularly anthropocentrism. As an individual, I am far smaller than the redwoods in both space and time. They remind me that in their presence, I am their guest.
It gets me thinking not just about what we can see above ground but also what lies beneath, all the roots, all the mycelia, all the minerals. Without the life beneath the earth, all the life above would not be able to flourish: No plants. No fungi. No animals. All life begins and ends in the soil. During this life, we exist in between the soil of the past and the soil of the future. There is something very sacred about that.
Awé ahóoh. Diiwaaxpáashte.
I thank the earth for it is sacred.