What the Natural World Can Teach Us About Conflict

Strange noises in the dark.  It was about 9 o’clock at night and we were sitting in the living room of our home about to wind things up for the evening. We reside in northern Arizona where the summer months are beset by welcome monsoons, drenching the desert earth and calling forth a display of life you’d never suspect lay in wait—bursting forth under the shelter of rain.

Our acre of property stretches down a rocky hillside spotted with juniper trees, desert flowers, massive granite boulders and a seasonal creek that runs clear and strong when the thunderstorms visit the mountain above us.

We’ve grow intimate with the summer sounds, hummingbirds dive-bombing the feeders and each other, javelina hogs rooting and snorting around the garden, and canyon tree frogs singing us to sleep in the evening with their mating songs.

But on this night, we heard a strange and unfamiliar chirping noise bouncing off the round boulders and reaching our deck that provides us with an overview of the dell. 

Good God—don’t do it! My wife is an animal lover and this is her heaven. The yard and garden are her domain. Rock, earth, plants and animals bend to her desires as she dances with the existing shapes and slopes to create pockets and sanctuaries of beauty and repose for our family. A new yard sound generates in her an intensity of curiosity that is only satisfied by exploration.

I’m just the opposite. I love our home. I love where it is. And I love being on our deck—outside, but high above the creepy, crawly desert life forms that pour forth from every crevice and hole 24 hours a day. Relaxing on our porch I never have to worry about being charged by a wild alpha-pig that finds me standing in the way of its foraging. 

So when my wife announced that she was going down into the yard with a flashlight to see what was making this new chirping sound, I had some inner work to do. I have come to recognize the difference between what I always thought was prudent caution and, on the other hand, my over-active imagination—which frequently provokes a level of anxiety that is not useful for me to make everyone else’s problem. What I wanted to say about her plan in this instance was, “Good God, don’t do it!” But instead, I held my tongue and let my adult partner make her own decisions about where to draw the line between an exciting adventure and a foolish foray. 

She went downstairs and out the lower-floor doors while I stood up top on the deck watching the cone of light produced by her flashlight bob up and down with her steps. 

The encounter. Our backyard descends in several tiers, plateaus of landscaped earth that my wife herself has fashioned in place. As she descended down several of these landings she stopped mid-yard at the edge of a sort of dam she had constructed to form a sweet little fish pond at this mid-yard location. 

It was there she stood at the edge of the pond, peering into the darkness, scanning back and forth with the flashlight trying to locate the source of the chirping sound, which had now stopped. Little did we know that everything was about to stop. For in the next instant a sound rolled forth from below, a preternatural thunder that was part warning, part roar of reality. 

My son had traipsed down to the yard trailing behind his mom and I’m sure that all of our hearts stopped at once, along with every sound any other creature was making and every breath that might have been drawn. What we had just heard in real life was the same sound all movie-goers have heard for years at the outset of MGM movies. A lion’s roar. In this case, the resounding roar of a mountain lion.

Come to find out later the chirping sound we had heard was apparently a sound that lion mothers and their young use to locate one another. Now that mama lion was making a crystal clear communication. 

“You can turn around and walk away or you can take another step in this direction and cease to exist.”

My son’s response was an instant, primal retreat. He effectively hovered over the earth, temporarily tapping into some elven survival magic, his feet somehow not touching the ground as he flew back into the house. My wife, incomprehensible being that she is to me, backed up slowly while keeping the light focused toward the cat. “Get the hell out of there,” I shouted while she calmly reversed her steps. She later explained that she (wisely) thought it better not to turn her back and run. 

“You can turn around and walk away or you can take another step in this direction and cease to exist.”

The roar of coexistence. We all regrouped back in the house. To my great relief my wife was quick to declare she would never do that again. As in, go out into the dark forest of our yard at night to investigate an unidentified sound. And to my credit, I didn’t say “I told you so.” Mostly because I didn’t tell her so, except in my mind.

So practically speaking, we had learned our lesson, but there was something else going on that we didn’t talk about until later. 

All of us admitted finding ourselves in an altered state. A kind of alert euphoria at having had direct contact with a voice from the natural world. We had been spoken to by a sentient creature who delivered a communication of immense power and clarity that was simultaneously devoid of hostility. The purity of nature’s boundary as it came through this wild beast was actually an invitation to coexist, an act of relationship. There was no mistaking its intent. It said, “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will do what I need to do to protect my own.”

By default I avoid all conflict. My assumption is that conflict is going to lead to separation. And yet what I had just experienced was the opposite. I felt more connected to myself and to the natural world because this force of nature had made it clear where I stand. The illusion of human predominance and authority that is sustainable in our manufactured environments had been pierced. Presumably we’ve created that illusion to fortify our sense of security, but in some strange way I felt more oriented and connected after being reminded of my tenuous place in the greater world.

Perhaps connection isn’t about avoiding differences and erasing boundaries. What if boundaries are the distance at which our relationships can thrive? And if that’s true, I’m actually collapsing the zone of intimacy that my heart and soul most desire when I hesitate to communicate my limits.

What if boundaries are the distance at which our relationships can thrive?

I’d say this single encounter left something both broken and restored inside of us for days afterward. Broken was our ability to pretend that we’re existing in a human-centric universe. Restored was a sense of place and humility in the grand scheme of things that I wasn’t even aware had been missing. 

Looking back now on the experience I am heart-broken by the progressive disconnection we seem to be pursuing as a species. I’m not suggesting the answer is to put ourselves in more frequent mortal peril, but I also have a sinking feeling that our safety is killing us. 

Is there something in between?

Rick Lewis