FIND YOUR WILD
- Meiun Caroline MABY
- Aug 27
- 9 min read
Updated: Aug 30
“In Wilderness is the preservation of the world.”
— Henry David Thoreau
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What does that mean?
Do we carry a "wild Nature" within us? What is it?
By our "wild Nature," should we understand raw instinct, or an original impulse freed from social and cultural conditioning? Or would it be, in a more spiritual sense, a return to a deep authenticity?
What I especially wish to highlight here is our bond with the living world: how can we reconnect with untamed Nature, with the animal within, with what is organic, instinctive, sometimes unpredictable?
How can we reawaken this life force that ties us to the earth, this source of truth through which human beings rediscover greatness, freedom, and balance?
It begins with the ability to re-inscribe our existence in a continuum of relationships with the rest of the living and the non-living: to inhabit the world not as manager or dominator, but as parent, companion, stakeholder — in a gesture that is both individual and existential, as Thoreau invites, and also collective and ontological as Descola suggests.
I revisited my first sensations of Nature to observe the evolution of my immersions, of my relationship with her, almost in a phenomenological way. Have I always been separate from her? I don't think so.
BEING NATURE
First there was the naked presence of Nature,
Countless are the images, mostly summer vibrations, where I cannot add any personal filter (emotion, thought) to an impression of being “pure Nature.” They go back to my early contemplative childhood and could just as well belong to someone else.
Rūpa and vedanā*
— The Alpilles, France, summer 1977 | Blazing sun
I am three or four years old, my head tilted back, the sky is made of plane-tree leaves arching like a tunnel above the road leading us to Les Baux de Provence. The rays of the white sun are like the pipes of a great organ. Each time they touch my skin as the convertible moves slowly forward, a sound, a pure outer joy, a color bursts forth — instantly balanced by the benevolent shade of the canopy. Shade becomes silence, coolness, caress.
Obscurities and sudden flashes chant and dance in a living tableau. The senses do not seem individuated. Nothing is named, nothing grasped. Caroline is not — there is only… from a meeting between a small body and the world, sensations are born, stirred by leaf-forms and the fire of the sun.
As we grow, these dilutions become rarer, for the fields of consciousness in which they can expand grow tighter, leaving narrower and narrower interstices for full presence, sealed off by the ego in its solidification.
Only slow dawns over the ocean, the encounter with a whale, the midnight sun in the Lofoten, swims far offshore in the Mediterranean… have been able to (re)dissolve the boundaries between inner and outer space. These moments of Nature never allowed themselves to be commented upon, nor to be appropriated by a “calculative thinking.”** The body, however, let itself be crossed through, dissolved spontaneously without the need for an effort of renunciation or fusion.
Is this getting in touch with our wild Nature? Not yet...
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* Rūpa and vedanā: form and sensation in Sanskrit, are the first two of the five skandhas.
** In contrast to meditative thinking. Reference to Martin Heidegger, [ Serenity, in Questions III].
BEING MOVED
Perceptions and projections then begin to color the sensation.
saṃjñā and saṃskāra*
— Talloires, France, summer 1983 | Storm rising, a boat in the middle of the lake
A charcoal-grained psychopomp anvil overshadows the sky. Raindrops — soothing in taste yet stinging on forehead and arms, as if falling very fast, from very high — rebound on the outraged black lake, scarring it with a thousand circles.
I don't know Arvo Pârt yet, but I hear a tintinabulli behind the dark rumbling of this threatening roof.
We row hard, I try, to reach the shore before the whirlpools catch up with us.
I'm 10 years old. My father and I were caught out by a thunderstorm. At the heart of Nature's made of water, emotions are add themselves to imprints of the absolute: a dull fear merges with the thrill of being surprised and with the wonder of the sky hastening twilight.
And yet, I am not thinking — or at least, I do not remember thinking. I let myself be overtaken by the elements.
By preempting pure sensation and the direct connection to the lake and the sky, the states of sould crystallize into a memory. They also cling to the untamable — and by resonance, scratch the varnish that hides the wild within me. Contact.
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* saṃjñā and saṃskāra*: perception and mental formations in Sanskrit: third and fourth of the five skandhas
BEING EMBRACED
In the memorial palimpsest of my relationships with the elements and with the living, labels inscribe themselves: happiness, wandering, love, loss… and worse still: reflections, notes, subtitles… a carousel of small captioned slides.
To truly touch, to come into contact with the throbbing heart of “wild essence,” I had to experience a surpassing: a trusting abandonment to the necessity of being consumed / subsumed by Nature.
It has happened to me several times to believe myself swallowed whole, to the point of tipping over — by a raging sea or by the mountain that overcame my exhaustion. This feeling of total powerlessness in the face of elements greater than myself could even summon the extreme idea of disappearance, of returning to humus or sand.
I chose the experience of Itsukushima to illustrate this.
Nicknamed Miyajima, the sacred island is famous for its large torii* gate set in the water. Of this I keep no trace; it was completely wrapped up Christo-style for its renovation. I aimed for Mount Misen (535 meters), which crowns the island with its mystical aura. It is revered by Buddhists; the "eternal flame" lit by Kobo Daishi, founder of the Shingon lineage, is said to have burned there intact since the 9th century.
Panoramic view from the top of Mount Misen over Hiroshima Bay. Momijimanju, the small maple leaf cake is an island specialty (and matcha!). Momijidani Park, famous for its maple trees. The Itsukushima Shinto Shrine built around 1168. The adorable Jizo of Miyajima. | Photos © 2019 Maby
vijñāna**
— Itsukushima Island , Japan, December 2019
I ascend Mount Misen with the last cable car. The twenty-minute ride unfolds above an exceptional primeval forest, a UNESCO World Heritage site. So dense, authentic, and vibrant with wisdom… it ought to appear as a reassuring carpet.
But it adds to the vertigo.
In the perpetuity of this forest (as in the flame of Kōbō Daishi) there is a dizzying quality, a devouring scent of eternity.
It appears to me as an ogress, deepening the gravity given to Hiroshima Bay by the rain-laden sky. Below, all around, lies the abyss.
At the summit, I find my footing again, linger and lose myself a little in the blue perspectives, the history, the maze of temples. I speak with the Jizō and the clouds, meditate, write my wish on a daruma, caress the sacred stones…
The sun is sinking. It is well time to descend.
The path through the forest is made up of nothing but stone steps. Uneven in height, the rain makes them slippery: it is impossible to find any walking rhythm, and my worn-out Converse seem to promise a sprained ankle.
And then, I don’t cross a soul. Did they all descend by cable car? Small cries… monkeys? I feel the night approaching above the treetops; below, it is already dark.
Alone on this path that seems endless, I imagine myself lost. Grisly news-story scenarios pile up in my mind, I begin to anticipate a night spent under a quilt of maple leaves, with a broken bone.
“She went to Japan.” But in truth, no one knows where I am right now.
I am 46 years old, and I am a little, quite, very afraid.
I focus on my steps, as darkness sets in… and in the heart of the vegetal, I spontaneously seal the pact to let myself disappear, swallowed by the forest, should she ever decide so.
And it is there, I believe, that a true recognition of this immanent “wild state” emerges. An intimate pact made of both the awareness of our full belonging to Nature and the inner fire that binds us to her. This throbbing, immutable interconnectedness moves us, most rightly.
And perhaps it is there that I most deeply perceived the wild, unseparated pulse of my cells with the living. Let them become moss, drops of ocean, or plankton! It is perfect—so long as one accepts the gift of surrender.
I also know that this movement of renunciation is an artifice, the necessary step back I had to dance in order to rediscover the wild within me.
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* torii 鳥居: traditional Japanese gate, commonly erected at the entrance to a Shinto shrine, marking the separation between the sacred precinct and the profane surroundings.
** vijñāna: consciousness, fifth skandha
KISSING
Where does this journey toward the wild lead me? First, to recognize the state of “being Nature,” then to let myself be moved by its ardor until I reconnect with my own animality.
Ancestrally associated with a god or a demon, the serpent is an animal through which humankind has often expressed its deepest fears. In Burma (Myanmar), in order to save their village from curses, certain priestesses would kiss the Cobra three times, as he was regarded as a god.But also… to kiss the Cobra is to be Cobra. And it is to know how to kiss death. And through this transcendence, to be fully alive.
If fear had only revealed it to me through fleeting experiences, I truly recognized and integrated this idea of full connection to the wild at the moment of my little cat-goddess Smoky’s passage into the otherworld. The grace that orchestrated her departure also took my terror under its wing, to deliver this sublime teaching to me — with tenderness.
Animals, even domestic ones, are masters: they reveal to us the value of the instant, of the quality of presence and interdependence. The delicious scent of a warm little fur, a piercing gaze, a reaction of wisdom… Vaster than we are, they show us how to trust our instinct again — and it is much simpler, brighter, and more immediate than we think.
To be fully interrelated with Nature and to let oneself be animated by its ardent fire — hers, theirs, the same — that, for me, is what it means to rediscover one’s wild nature.
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FIND YOUR WILD
I was exploring the quality of this wild sap. In this hypnagogic journey, I was shown a shortcut beyond fear and self-abandonment: vehicles of reconnection I had relied upon until then.
In this vision, it became possible to throb with a wild fire… under the inspiration of the great felines. Not threats, nor domestic cats — real tigers.
From this was born a painting:
FIND YOUR WILD, Details. Click to enlarge. | © 2025 Maby
"I am the spirit of the forest.
I am the spirit of Nature.
Every particle of air you breathe is infused with me, green as moss, fiery as tiger's fur, adamantine as spring water.
You breathe in, you breathe it in, it inspires you and connects you to something greater than yourself, sentience dominating the biosphere.
It's just a re-sync.
Breathe.
The tiger soul is within you, strong, grounded, conscious, with panoramic and sharp vision.
Nature loves you and kisses you before you even lay a finger on her.
Do you know why? Because from now on, you have nothing more to conquer. You are, thus, realized, absolute, and this Love that you bear to the clouds as to the beetles… it includes you entirely.
As is.
Finding your wild soul means hearing your childhood laughter, rediscovering the game of fragile clay masks and hiding places behind talking trunks, whispering your secrets to the ants and running wild through the stinging grass.
I am the spirit of nature.
Child king, sit down and contemplate with your eyes closed.
Listen to the counterpoint of these wonderful little birds, hear the rustling of the branches as the light ermine passes by, feel the feline's breath on the back of your neck.
Everything is watching over you; you have never been so protected."
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Note: FIND YOUR WILD is now framed in a black floating frame, suspended, with a subtle warm LED backlight. Photos will be updated soon. :)
