A Language Older Than Words by Derrick Jensen Page A

necessarily lie and dissemble to protect itself from the truth. Environmentalists lie, industrialists lie, newspapers lie. Parents lie, children lie. We all lie, and we are all afraid. Afraid to not know what is going on, and even more afraid of finding out. The opposite is true as well. Honest discourse is the first and most important step in stopping destruction.
    George and I had lunch, and he dropped me off at the ferry before continuing northward to give a talk in Bellingham. "It's for a Christian television show," he said, "and that's a hopeful sign. Ten years ago you had to put on an owl suit to get mainstream media to pay attention. Now, all I had to do was write a book, and I'm having rational discourse with Christians."
    The ferry ride to Friday Harbor was chilly, and a cold headwind brought the blood to my cheeks. As we weaved between islands, I stood to watch the waves roll beneath the ferry, went inside to warm up for a while, then returned to stand behind the railing above the ship's square bow.
    Jim was waiting for me near the dock, and he drove me in his old yellow pickup to the home he shares with his wife and their two daughters. He showed me his garden, a beautiful patchwork of herbs, fruit trees, berries, and vegetables, set off from the pathways that weaved through them—like the Sound through the islands—by small boulders he'd moved for borders. He took me to a one-room cabin across the garden from his house.
    We talked about his garden, how every day he walks the paths for an hour or so, stands in front of the bushes and talks to them. He observed that whenever his family leaves, the plants look listless on their return, even if they've been well taken care of.
    "The plants know when we're here," he said, "or when we're not here. How do you verify something like that? It's pointless to even try."
    He continued, "I know this about my garden in the same way I know my hat is made out of cloth. To be able to surrender to the knowledge that the garden and I are connected nurtures my soul. I wish more people could know this connection more often, and I believe people did know it before we became so dependent on machines and jobs and time."
    Away from the Sound, the afternoon grew warm, and in the sunny cabin, with its wide windows and the line between sun and shadow sliding slowly across the floor, it became warmer still. Jim said, "People laugh up their sleeves at anything that defies the industrial explanation of our lives, anything that is spiritual. But these experiences are grace. Interacting with nonhumans doesn't have anything to do with gathering information; it has to do with being blessed. And wanting to be blessed. It has to do with that intersection of communication and communion."
    I nodded in agreement, and then changed the subject. "Do you ever wonder if you're projecting?"
    "There was a time, when I was thirty-five or forty. I was working intensely with orcas, alongside scientists, and I worried about that all the time. But I don't really care anymore. I'm content to set up situations where 'those things,' whatever they are, are likely to happen. The meetings themselves are so remarkable—whether they involve 'interspecies communication' or not—they justify themselves."
    The tape recorder hummed and ticked on the table between us. Jim continued, "I couldn't do what I do if I had to count on results, because too often I don't have any, in terms of what our culture or magazines or editors would believe. In the late 80s I was doing a film every summer, and we'd have these incredible interactions with whales, but the filmmakers never got them. It's like they never happened. Finally I had to walk away."
    I looked at him, puzzled, and he continued, "I had to find a new reason for my work, for my art, or I would have had to stop doing communication with nonhumans. Then I realized that art doesn't really need to have a reason to exist. It's like what John Cage said, 'Art is whatever you can get