The Story of My Heart. Richard Jefferies
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the marked feathers of the birds; through the insects’ hum and the colour of the butterflies; through the soft warm air, the flecks of clouds dissolving—I used them all for prayer. With all the energy the sunbeams had poured unwearied on the earth since Sesostris was conscious of them on the ancient sands; with all the life that had been lived by vigorous man and beauteous woman since first in dearest Greece the dream of the gods was woven; with all the soul-life that had flowed a long stream down to me, I prayed that I might have a soul more than equal to, far beyond my conception of, these things of the past, the present, and the fullness of all life. Not only equal to these, but beyond, higher, and more powerful than I could imagine. That I might take from all their energy, grandeur, and beauty, and gather it into me. That my soul might be more than the cosmos of life.
I prayed with the glowing clouds of sunset and the soft light of the first star coming through the violet sky. At night with the stars, according to the season: now with the Pleiades, now with the Swan or burning Sirius, and broad Orion’s whole constellation, red Aldebaran, Arcturus, and the Northern Crown; with the morning star, the light-bringer, once now and then when I saw it, a white-gold ball in the violet-purple sky, or framed about with pale summer vapour floating away as red streaks shot horizontally in the east. A diffused saffron ascended into the luminous upper azure. The disk of the sun rose over the hill, fluctuating with throbs of light; his chest heaved in fervour of brilliance. All the glory of the sunrise filled me with broader and furnace-like vehemence of prayer. That I might have the deepest of soul-life, the deepest of all, deeper far than all this greatness of the visible universe and even of the invisible; that I might have a fullness of soul till now unknown, and utterly beyond my own conception.
In the deepest darkness of the night, the same thought rose in my mind as in the bright light of noontide. What is there which I have not used to strengthen the same emotion?
Three years have passed since discovering this small book in that shop on the Maine Coast. We’ve read it many times. We’ve read what others have written about it. We’ve followed Richard Jefferies through the part of England where he was born and lived. We sat at the desk where he wrote, and looked out over the same landscape. And we walked some of the same paths he walked nearly every day of his life. I’ve reconstructed the history of my relationship with The Story of My Heart, and have a good idea how he managed to hijack my attention and then hold onto it this long. The more I learn about Richard Jefferies, the more I wonder why.
Terry started reading out loud. We were sitting on a rocky beach on the Maine Coast, perched against giant, pink granite boulders separating the forest from the sea. The autumn afternoon sun beat down on our shoulders and legs. On page one of The Story of My Heart, I heard the perfect combination of words: “An inspiration—a long deep breath of the pure air of thought,” a promise of new expansive ideas that would challenge some of my beliefs and support others.
Finding Jefferies was the latest marker along a path I’d been following for three decades, since discovering that a different life existed beyond the “work for the man till you’re 65”—suppress your passions—loyal Mormon life I’d been given.
Terry and I met at a fork in my path—one paved and lit, complete with a secure job selling plumbing supplies, with “eternal life” guaranteed. The other was overgrown and wild and seemed difficult to follow, with no obvious goal. I’m not sure I could have negotiated this unpredictable, “road less travelled” alone. Knowing we could explore that unknown path together gave us courage.
Meeting Terry meant meeting her grandmother, Kathryn— “Mimi,” we called her. Mimi had an insatiable appetite for knowledge and had accumulated an amazing library by some of the world’s great thinkers. When Terry was five, Mimi first took her bird watching. They danced and painted and explored. Mimi fostered in Terry a clear sense of her own uniqueness that no one could challenge.
I, on the other hand, struggled.
I’ve struggled, knowing I play a role in our long-term ability to thrive on this blue spinning orb we call Earth, but pulled by a constant force toward the life modern men are supposed to live. Mimi left me her library when she died. These books by Carl G. Jung, Marie-Louise von Franz, J. Krishnamurti, Alan Watts, Ira Progoff, Joseph Campbell, and others have helped me understand my greater role in the world. I am not alone.
If page one of The Story of My Heart got my attention, page two captivated me. Jefferies writes:
I would write psyche always instead of soul to avoid meanings which have become attached to the word soul, but it is awkward to do so.
Jefferies was in conversation with me as I was in conversation with Jung. Jung also used “soul” and “psyche” interchangeably. The psyche, I’ve learned, is the complete human mind—conscious as well as unconscious. What intrigues me most is Jung’s idea of the collective unconscious—that part of the psyche every human shares, that evolved as our cells evolved, through natural selection, consisting of “mnemonic deposits accruing from the experience of our ancestors.”
Randomly discovering a book I’d never heard of and reading a passage about psyche and soul—concepts I’d been struggling to understand—was for me a “meaningful coincidence,” Jung’s definition for synchronicity.
Synchronicity is, according to Ira Progroff, “at the frontal edge of life where evolution is occurring.”
As Terry and I read to each other that afternoon, the tide coming in, I couldn’t believe we’d never heard of this man. If the dead are still out there among us in different form, and if Jefferies wanted to send me a message, he could not have sent more obvious clues. I felt as if I’d found a kindred spirit. We are part of the same story.
This story is about living in this modern world, vastly different from the natural world we evolved to live in. It’s about the joy and peace and motivation we get from rediscovering that original world still alive in the remaining wild places. Jefferies writes less specifically about the natural world surrounding him, but in great detail the path his mind takes through that original world.
In Chapter I, Jefferies describes his pure experience, expecting the reader to make sense of his mystical euphoria. I would learn later how well-read Jefferies was despite being relatively uneducated. His confidence in relying on nothing outside of his own direct experience, something I need to learn.
Although separated in time by a century, Jefferies and Paul Shepard, one of my intellectual heroes, would have had a great conversation. Shepard suggests that we are made of an original, evolved core now covered by the veneer of civilization. Jefferies writes:
A species of thick clothing slowly grows about the mind, the pores are choked, little habits become a part of existence, and by degrees the mind is enclosed in a husk. When this began to form I felt eager to escape from it, to throw off the heavy clothing, to drink deeply once more at the fresh foundations of life.
Later in Chapter I, Jefferies describes what happens to him lying on the grass on the side of a familiar hill, a three-mile walk from his house. While hearing Terry read this, I swear I heard Abraham Maslow describing a “peak experience.” His book, Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences, consists of the information he got by asking over two thousand people to describe their “ecstasies, raptures…the most blissful and perfect moments of life.”
Years ago, when I first read this book, I realized much of what I felt in the wild made sense far beyond my own considerations. Although nothing in my upbringing could accommodate these feelings, Maslow helped ground me in a different kind of truth, in a “hierarchy of needs” and what it means to be human—to be fed and safe, to dream. Many of the moments Jefferies