Sacred Springs Stories, Part 2: My Ichetucknee Story, Springs in Buddhism & Closing Remarks

Ichetucknee Head Spring

My Ichetucknee Story

The first time I went to Ichetucknee, it was a beautiful sunny autumn day in 1969, the year before the State of Florida bought the land that became the state park. My two roommates and I were the only people there! After being in the water for a while, I left Chad and Pam splashing around in the spring and walked up the little hill (where the restrooms are now), spread out a big towel, and lay down in the sun.

It wasn’t long before I started to hear pspsps whispering, like you’d call a cat. Pretty soon the whispering got louder, and finally resolved into a spoken language—a language I’d never heard before.

I thought there must be someone in the woods so I stood up and did a 360-degree turn, but there was no one there.

I later learned from my parapsychology teacher that this kind of auditory hallucination is common in places where people have had intense emotional experiences.

I didn’t realize it then, but that was when the Ichetucknee marked me. To this day, it is one of my very special—sacred—places, what Carlos Castaneda called a “power spot.”

I never figured out what the language was. Maybe it was the language of the nagas.

Springs, Water & Nagas in Tibetan Buddhism

A naga from the Rubin Museum's traveling exhibition, "Himalayan Art in 108 Objects," at the Harn Museum of Art in Gainesville, Florida

I have it on good authority from some of my Tibetan Buddhist teachers that there are beings who may live in our springs who are invisible to most people, although some are said to be able to see them. (I’m not one of those.)

These beings, called nagas, have the torso of a male or female human and the lower body of a snake. They like springs and they like magical trees, and sometimes they guard Buddhist teachings that they reveal to humans when the time is right.

There are three types of nagas. The good ones serve the dharma, the Buddhist teachings. The mutable ones can alternate between being good and bad. You don’t want to mess with the bad nagas.

One thing all these nagas have in common is that water pollution makes them sick. And when they get sick, they take revenge on the polluters by sending natural disasters and diseases, particularly skin diseases.

Now, most of you won’t believe this, and that’s OK—I don’t expect you to believe it. I believe it because I’ve heard it from my teachers and I know them to be trustworthy, and also because I’ve been interested in strange things—what one of my friends calls “the woo-woo”—since I was very young.

But even if you don’t believe nagas exist, isn’t this idea a remarkable analogy for what we are experiencing now—water pollution, natural disasters and diseases? I’m reminded of people like one very respected elder in the springs defender community who can no longer go into the water because he gets a rash from algae.

The Buddhist teachings I’ve received lead me to believe that our human minds are connected to our external environments in ways that we may not completely understand.

17th Karmapa's (Ogyen Trinley Dorje's) Monlam Pin

This slide shows a pin that was designed for a Buddhist prayer festival by the 17th Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, who leads one of the Buddhist lineages I’m affiliated with. He thinks of the Earth as a benevolent goddess and here’s what he wrote about his design of that pin, which speaks to the idea that human beings and Mother Earth exist in an interconnected relationship:

Now the time has come when the earth is scowling at us; the time has come when the earth is giving up on us. The earth is about to treat us badly and give up on us. If she gives up on us, where can we live? There is talk of going to other planets that could support life, but only a few rich people could go. What would happen to all of us sentient beings who could not go? What should we do now that the situation has become so critical? The sentient beings living on the earth and the elements of the natural world need to join their hands together—the earth must not give up on sentient beings, and sentient beings must not give up on the earth. Each needs to grasp the other’s hand.

Note that he mentions the importance of joining hands with “the elements of the natural world.” In Buddhism, those elements are earth, water, fire, air and space—not just outer space, but the space between things.

The last thing I’ll say about the tradition of Tibetan Buddhism is this: The essential nature of the element of water is considered to be a Buddha—a female Buddha called Mamaki. So water is a sacred element in this system.

How do we hold hands with Mother Earth? What would be different if we talked about our springs not as “resources” or “recreational opportunities” but as Buddhas—as living natural systems? What if we told our stories about springs with reverence? What if we understood water as something that’s alive and sacred with which we exist in relationship, as something that deserves our care? Because for a lot of us, that’s what water is.

Can we hold hands with Mother Earth and with our priceless springs on a spiritual level? And what might change if we elevated our relationship and our stories in that way?

Closing Remarks

One last thing and then I want to close with couple of snippets from literature.

I think those of us who first encountered the springs, as I did in the middle of the 20th century, may be the last people who know what a healthy spring is supposed to look like. And I think it’s important that we document what our springs have meant to us. So I encourage you to share your stories with your children and grandchildren and with as many other people as you can. Tell your stories, share your photos, make art, write music, honor our sacred springs with your creative gifts in whatever ways you choose. Document, document, document!

Here's a poetry snippet from “Life Chant” by Diane di Prima, who was in that cohort of American poets that includes Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder:

may the wind deal kindly with us

may the fire remember our names

may springs flow, rain fall again

may the land grow green, may it swallow our mistakes

And this is a favorite, from the novelist Charles Frazier:

The spring rose up from its deep source and smelled of wet earth and the stones at the center of the world. Whatever you believe, and whatever God you pray to, a place where clean water rises from the earth is in some way sacred.