Because of the love and trust the animals have for us, they've lost their fear of humans
and the only thing left is curiosity and generally wanting to meet and maybe even share.
The humans who come here are very interested in trying to connect but there's some fear
there.
Usually within about five minutes the fear is gone.
So the animals aren't afraid, the people aren't afraid, then magic happens.
Then there's a connection that's beyond words that just widens your understanding of the
nature of life and the nature of animals.
It's like every animal deserves to be seen, like every human being deserves to be seen
for what it is.
Not just a human but the being that it is, we all deserve to be seen and loved.
To have animals that you could start to learn how to connect with who acting almost like
a translator, that's the underlying goal of what Earthfire is to help people see the
beauty and the richness and the mystery, if you will, and the wonder of what's on this
Earth with us and for us.
These animals are able to and want to offer a change in a way people see and not at as
wolves or bears but as individuals.
And because of our fear and our unfamiliarity with them, we only see animals when they're
hunting or in the wild or frightened or we don't understand one another cross species.
Here's a unique opportunity for people to understand animals that you ordinarily cannot
get to know and help people get to know them.
And in that sense broaden their understanding of things and deepen their connection to wildlife.
And when you begin to live with them, you begin to see their individuality.
So we don't refer to the animals as a grizzly bear.
We refer to him as Teedog Totem, who happens to be a grizzly bear, Ms. Clover, who happens
to be a badger, and almost everyone appreciates it and gets it right away, they even apologize.
I'm sorry Ms. Clover, of course you're Ms. Clover, who happens to be a badger, you're
not just a badger.
I mean, you could look at a herd of a thousand buffaloes and each is an individual.
Each response different.
All that came towards me was this heart, this beautiful, beautiful heart that I just started
seeing her like the way she wants to be seen, you know, that sense of, you know, wanting
to be seen for all of who she is and what she is, and she just showed that to me.
Being like that, that's so incredibly powerful and so big, it doesn't really get matched
very often.
She was really beautiful, she was a great teacher just then.
So yeah, all of it just sort of really touched me deep, deep in my heart.
As human beings, our relationship to nature is evolving, and we've tried several models
so far, and they all have their limitations.
So we need to keep working on new models of how to relate to nature.
And Earthfire can help with that because you can start to look at nature differently as
not nature out there, but nature is part of us.
Animals not as strange beings out there, but beings on this earth with us, traveling the
same journey with us.
As a culture and as a time, I think we're starting to move in that direction.
And Earthfire has a really important part to play in that.
A major goal of Earthfire is to help enlarge our sense of community, to include not just
people who are really important, but also animals who are also really important and
all the living beings on the earth, to enlarge our sense of community and to have our animals
here because they're comfortable with people and can act as translators between the wild
and humans to find a way to relate differently.
But just like a great book can open horizons for you, will help them see the possibility
of developing an intimate relationship with the wild animals they have around them, be
it a dove or a woodchuck or a fox.
They are all individual beings that can open the door for us to a deeper connection with
nature.
That's what I hope Earthfire can offer the world.
And here it's just amazing.
You can see all the different personalities the animals have.
Normally in the wild, they're either aggressive or submissive, but here you can see the whole.
They're actually happy, just relaxed and it's pleasant to be around them.
It was really moving because my whole life, I have automatically felt this way about animals.
Being like this operation that can just give people that momentary opportunity to see it's
not only that these creatures have the same capability, they are the same and in fact
every creature has compassion.
And so to observe that, animals are more than just some kind of genetically programmed
instinctual being and how Earthfire can help.
It's this by seeing the potential for suffering in all beings and then the way that it makes
us feel happier to try to relieve that in some way.
You know, we started this place with just one salary, one normal salary and a sense
somehow of what we were going to do with it and we started in 2000 and we're at a place
now where we have some physical facilities, not much staff yet, but we're just on the
verge of, after all these years of thinking and being with the animals and learning what
the animals had to say and thinking about how to convey it to people and thinking about
how to share it with people and thinking of how to make the best use of this incredible
resource we have here and the unusual combination of things of animals and John's talents and
my own type of thinking together, we're on the verge of being able to start to take it
out into the world and vision of Earthfire is to help forge a new way of living together
on this earth.
It's not about me and it's not about John and it's not about animals even, it's about
possibilities of a different way of being in the world with one another.
