Ecological Identity

Date: July 10, 2023

We wake up

simply by remembering

what we truly are.

-Ben Page

On January 1, my partner and I visited a local bird sanctuary and as we often do as aspiring and emerging birders, we went to where the small crowd was gathered with binoculars and cameras in hand. Immediately, we were greeted by someone who told us that there were two long eared owls that had set up residence. We looked through our own binoculars at the curious creatures and gazed at them with awe and wonder. They were gazing back.

We got home to do our own research on owls and learned some important etiquette about sighting these nocturnal birds. We learned that we shouldn’t share the location of the owls on social media lest they get inundated with visitors; we shouldn’t linger around them so as not to disturb their daytime to rest; and we should give them space and read their body language (for more, see The International Owl Center).

I went back the next day to continue getting to know the owls. I wondered if I could genuinely build a relationship with them or merely “watch” them do their owl things. I cared about their movements, features, habits, and personalities. More than knowing facts about them, however, I cared about them as beings and hoped to cultivate trust, reverence, and compassion for them. I visited them everyday for eight consecutive days, until January 9 when they were not on that same branch. Where did they go? I impatiently walked through the bird sanctuary and looked up every tree that I could. I felt saddened, even devastated, and I also worried for them. I looked around the bird sanctuary to see if I could ask someone if they knew anything about what might have happened or where they might have gone. One person responded, “They weren’t there this morning. Oh well.” I was shocked by what seemed to me to be a flippant attitude but questioned whether I had become too attached. After sorting through my feelings, I was able to recognize the intention of relationship that I was hoping to build. I was building an ecological identity, a sense of myself, related to the long eared owls, and I wasn’t ready to let them go.

During those eight days, and beyond, I was attempting to cultivate what felt to me like a real relationship with the owls – I honored their intelligences, dignity, and freedom. “As we become more aware that we are nature, we move toward a sense of interbeing, further challenging our notions of separateness” (Ben Page). In my brief acquaintance with the long eared owls, I accessed a part of my identity unknown to me before, though it was never solely “my” identity: It exists in relationship to and with the more than human world. After the owls left their temporary Chicago habitat, I pondered my connection to them and my need to restore relationship with other wild animals in our big and busy city. I grieved my estrangement, or species loneliness, from much of creation in the name of progress. When and where have I missed other opportunities for kinship?

The owl provided me with an opportunity to explore my species loneliness and accept that the owls were doing owl things. Though the owls may not have been aware of my motivation to be in relationship with them, the relationship from my point of view had and continues to have its own kind of specialness.

Almost three months later to the day, I was walking through the same bird sanctuary, offering nature-responsive spiritual companionship by phone. I usually walk the same route closer to my home, but I felt a need to “meet” among the birds. As we talked, listened together, and held silence, we incorporated what was happening around us in the natural environment. About three quarters of the way into our conversation, I looked up from the path into a tree about five feet from where I stood, and behold! A baby owl was watching me.

~ Jeanette Banashak