For two days the rain came down, down and down. Hard and heavy. More rain in those 48 hours than what is usual for the whole month of May..
Not only has the forest flooded, but human homes too - cellars filled with rain, roads closed and even a dramatic rescue of a human totally submerged in their car where a road once was.
It reminds me of the Great Flood in the realm of the Moomins, the loss of homes by the creatures of the forest and the floating of the house built by Moomin Pappa to what became known as Moomin Valley.
As I walk in the flooded forest, negotiating my way across what was paths, I think how the Moomins seem to inhabit two worlds… the macro and micro. Despite being small enough to fit on water lily leaves to traverse the waterlogged forest, they often are perceived as having human-like size when described as fishing in the small stream for instance.
Putting on my Moomin lenses to make the forest strange, I suddenly see that the blueberry plants would be like trees, a dense understory - a forest within a forest; small green openings would be like a valley, surrounded by mountain like rocks, and the small streams that I can easily step over would require a bridge for Snufkin to sit and play his harmonica on.
Yet in these slivers of water cutting through the forest floor the Moomintrolls and friends go fishing. I have stood at length staring at these waterways imagining what fish might live there, maybe fish that are as magical as Moomin trolls that can shift between size dimensions.
Having observed a small tufted duck protecting her five chicks in a noisy battle and speedily herding away her brood, only to see the next day that four remained in her care, I realised that the Moomins need to transform somehow, to avoid being eaten by the very thing they seek to catch to eat. Large pikes in spring are hungry, and being the first mamma on the lake is probably not the best survival strategy for the newest generation.
This sense of smallness and largeness connects with my own relationship with the forest, and with the outdoors from my earliest memories. This sense of feeling so small in the magnitude of the natural environment at the same time as feeling larger than life as I connect to the whole ecosystem. It feels both overwhelming and powerful, and could this possibly be the moomin-ness of the forest?
This strangeness, this unease, seems to be something increasingly desired, especially in research, and I find myself getting excited by this prospect. It felt bewildering to read a research article describing this strangeness but gave examples that were my normal. As an Actually Autistic person I am perpetually surprised by the “strangeness” of the neurotypical in the sense that it is unfamiliar not to see the world like I do, and at the same time liberating to read such articles with a sense that I am becoming free to be who I am. But I am wary that this is being written as “strange”, as it feels “othering” - while at the same time they harness my normal as if they are brave discoverers and should be celebrated. They are colonising my world!
So how do we navigate all of this?
How do those that usually dwell in the macro world become familiar with the micro without colonising it and changing it into something else? Could inviting the micro world to communicate themselves be a better option than the macro stomping around and taking what would make their world a better place or make their world more friendly for the micro?
I see this with Indigenous Knowledge, how Western theorists cherry pick ideas and propagate them on their soil. Yes, they bring awareness to Indigenous thinking but at the same time fail to let those ideas be shared by the very people who have been cultivating this thinking for centuries.
Response-ability. Responsibility.
Those that are othered, those that are oppressed belong to this micro-world, and are learning, like the Moomins how to walk both worlds... sometimes perceived as human size, sometimes perceived as less than human sized - by those that dwell in the macro, as well as by themselves... after all, that is the pervading narrative booming across the multiverse drowning out the stories of others.
The macro-dwellers have the responsibility to respond to this situation - to listen. Not to just listen to the strangeness to enrich their own lives, but to give value to others. There needs to be the ability to ensure that others listen... not just by acknowledging where their ideas come from... that is a first step, but to actually step back and allow those ideas to come from those where they are not strange, but "normal".
So beyond the forest, I experience a kind of Moomin-ness in my everyday. Being a "tiny autistic" and a human-size neurotypical - as I have learned to navigate the human world at great expense to my "Moomin spirit". My Moomin-ness allows me to contribute with perspectives that would otherwise be missed in the macro world of humans. The Maori word for autism is takiwatanga which literally means "in their own time and space". Which I like for multiple reasons... not least the idea of a Moomin/micro space filled with the magic ability to survive in two worlds.
I have not only been playing with small Moomin figures in the forest, but also afterwards with digital tools, to make strange what was once familiar. Can I notice things, feelings or messages that would otherwise go unnoticed if I looked with my usual eyes? Interestly, Little My has gone missing... she is off on her own adventures somewhere in my little house in the woods, or in the woods themselves... I keep a look out for her.
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