A beautiful conversation with Ian McCallum

Ian McCallum talks about our profound connection to the wilderness, and our place in it – an instinct we have tuned out. A renowned doctor, psychiatrist, psychologist, wilderness guide and poet; Ian uses his insight to connect the dots between human psychology and the role our environment plays in our internal make up.

“We are intimately linked to wild places, wild animals, to landscapes of the earth. It is part of our identity,” Ian utters. Appealing to our sense of fair play (an ecological conscience), Ian gives voice to the wild – a reverberation of our own wild nature. In doing so he creates a space in the wilderness for the humbler human being. For the impact of NOT being part of this wild nature is that “a loss of an animal species echoes a loss within yourself.”

The Green Times visited Ian McCallum at his homestead in Lakeside, Cape Town. Download the full audio interview here.

the rising

One day
your soul will call to you
with a holy rage.
“Rise up!” it will say …
Stand up inside your own skin.
Unmask your unlived life …
feast on your animal heart.
Unfasten your fist …
let loose the medicine
in your own hand.
Show me the lines …
I will show you the spoor
of the ancestors.
Show me the creases …
I will show you
the way to water.
Show me the folds …
I will show you the furrows
for your healing.
“Look!” it will say …
the line of life has four paths –
one with a mirror
one with a mask,
one with a fist,
one with a heart.
One day,
your soul will call to you
with a holy rage.

wilderness

Have we forgotten
that wilderness is not a place,
but a pattern of soul
where every tree, every bird and beast
is a soul maker?
Have we forgotten
that wilderness is not a place,
but a moving feast of stars,
footprints, scales and beginnings?
Since when
Did we become afraid of the night
and that only the bright stars count?
Or that our moon is not a moon
Unless it is full?
By whose command
were the animals
through groping fingers,
one for each hand,
reduced to the big and little five?
Have we forgotten
that every creature is within us
carried by tides
of earthly blood
and that we named them?
Have we forgotten
that wilderness is not a place,
but a season
and that we are in its
final hour?

By Soninke Combrinck