Empty Forest Phenomenon

When I lived in Montana, after I first moved there, I went hunting several seasons. I never even shot the rifle, except to sight it in. I did do a lot of walking as quietly as I could through miles of Montana forest in the late fall. I don't remember if one of my hunting companions taught me this, or it just occurred to me, but after a while I realized something: I can't take what I'm seeing and hearing and smelling there in the forest at that moment as necessarily representative of that area. Specifically, just because I don't see any deer, or squirrels or birds, doesn't mean there aren't any nearby.

That's because my presence goes out all around me. I'm noisy, even when I'm trying to be quiet. Because of my noisiness, animals are alerted to my presence well ahead of my physical arrival. On my side, my noisiness drowns out any faint rustlings that those alert deer might make as they move away from me. Basically, I send out a very subtle and shifting force field that blinds me to my surroundings.

The other day I was driving, and reveling in the speed, and exclaiming to myself that all San Diegans love to drive fast. It then hit me almost visually: My own speed had warped my perception of everyone else's speed. Not everyone drives fast - obviously, because I am more often passing than getting passed. I had somehow projected my revelry in driving fast onto all other drivers, even as I passed them going ten miles per hour faster than they were going.

There's this almost tragic horizon, this rippling that we send out around us in every direction, and we can't experience beyond it without disturbing that as well.

Another way of thinking of this projection is as a physical shadow cast by sources of light. We can't be without a shadow where there's light, but we so early in our infancy recognize our shadow that we never mistake it for anything else. It is never a source of confusion for us.

What would it be like if I could come to recognize the emotional and psychic level ripples I send out all around me? To learn not to be afraid of my own shadow?