Ó Pedro Cuiça - Bright Angel Trail - Grand Canyoning (Arizona - USA)
«As a
special case of this sense of the fluidity of motion in time and place,
consider the tradition of running among many Native Americans, a hint of
worldwide traditions, mythically and cosmologically integrated, drawn
undoubtedly from the esthetics of the chase. Running had “magical ends” and “mystical
purposes”, including “trance running” or “skimming” in “the hummingbird way.”
Peter Nabokov describes the “extrasensory perception of the trail” as though it
moved under the runner, a special way of “trusting the earth”. To spiritualized
running one might add nightwalking to see in the dark by training the skills of
peripheral vision. Night vision depends on the non-color-sensing (rod cell)
parts of the retina surrounding the central (cone-cell) area of keen vision
where we focus the images we “look at.” By walking at night without looking at
the trail (deliberately inhibiting the central area vision) we develop the peripheral
field, mediated by the rod cells. Through this exercise we achieve a new level
of nocturnal sensibility as well as more acute perceptual abilities. If
peripheral information feeds directly into unconscious, as some believe, we may
enhance access to our unconscious by such nocturnal skills as nightwalking. The
rational, objective world, which occupies most of us each day, usually
overrides the nonrational and unconscious world – which, when neglected, intrudes,
disrupts, and overturns our logical mind. In the world of the forager, this was
not an issue since the rational and nonrational functions of the brain were
balanced and acknowledged. They could see in the dark as well as discern the
dark underside of human consciousness.»
SHEPARD,
Paul – Coming Home to the Pleistocene; Washington: Island Press, 1998, pp.
56-57.
Ó Vanda Rita
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