I’d like to share a story with you. It’s about an extraordinary woman who accomplished extraordinary things. I’m sharing it not because she did these things, but because we all have this ability to share our lives in an intimate way with nature. Read on, and believe...

Barbara McClintock was one of the great scientists of the century. Born in 1902, she became interested in plants and in her own consciousness early on. She was to combine the two interests in a way that led to a breakthrough in genetics and eventually a Nobel Prize. As a young woman, McClintock wanted to study the nature of genes. Keep in mind, no one in those days had even seen genes. The only way you could study them was by observing traits as they occurred in maize, or corn. To study corn, you counted kernels, noting their different shapes and sizes. You examined each ear both by hand and under the microscope. After taking lots of notes, the next year you planted another crop of corn and carefully bred the plants. You then studied the new crop, keeping track of the similarities and differences. Endless ears of corn, years of work, hundreds of pages of notes; infinite patience.

McClintock loved her plants and spent most of her time in the field trying to uncover the secrets of maize. She’d get to know every single one of the hundreds of plants in her plots. She would know its parents and she would visit it often as it grew, learning its look, feel and personality. She would develop, as she would say, "a feeling for the organism."

In the 1860s, an Austrian monk named Gregor Johann Mendel systematically crossbred plants having different colored seeds to see what would happen. In time, he found a predictable pattern to the way offspring developed. Some "units" however, seemed to carry traits and characteristics down through the generations of plants in an odd way. These traits would disappear suddenly and then mysteriously show up generations later. Mendel wrote a paper about his discoveries, but no one paid much attention. Mendel died before his mathematical formulas were understood.

McClintock became interested in Mendel’s mysterious moving traits. She accumulated vast quantities of data, which she studied closely, looking for patterns to emerge. Bits of ideas and partial answers came to her, but the mystery remained.

Remember, in the ‘20s and ‘30s, no one had ever seen genes. They were abstract pieces of a theory. It was like trying to draw a portrait of someone using only a list of the phone numbers they dialed.

McClintock had always been interested in consciousness as well. As a girl she loved to run, jumping high into the air as she ran. After doing this for a while, she’d come into a focused clarity that she enjoyed. Over the years, McClintock developed the art of solving problems using tremendous focus. Michael Roads, in his book, "Talking With Nature," calls it the art of listening and seeing – of being in the moment.

"If we listen, totally, we cannot think, for thinking moves us away from the moment," says Roads. "We can think and hear, but hearing is not listening. Listening brings us into the moment, the only place of life, of God."

Roads also reminds us to practice the art of seeing. "We look at Nature and people through yesterday’s eyes, just as we hear with yesterday’s ears. We have forgotten how to see anew, the way a child sees, everything brimming with the excitement of discovery."

McClintock used this same type of practice to do something no other geneticist had done. She let herself "think like corn." She let herself merge with the object of her study, her passion, her love. This is the same technique of musicians, artists, scientists and mystics.

One day, when all of the work was fresh in her mind, she went for a walk. She sat down and let herself think like corn. She began to see things from the perspective of a gene. She suddenly got a series of intuitions about how these genes worked, how they moved, and why they did what they did. She saw how they would sometimes jump around, and why. It made sense of all the data, yet it destroyed a lot of present day theory.

McClintock returned to her normal awareness and went back to the lab. She was excited to learn that her vision explained the facts. Theory would have to change. It did. She wrote up a version of her vision, which is now known as jumping genes. Though it took a long time to be accepted, it is standard practice in genetic theory today. And though her method of thinking like corn had carried her well ahead of her colleagues, she knew well enough not to mention her technique.

How many of us have the courage to follow Barbara McClintock and Michael Roads’ examples when faced with a problem?

The following steps will help you learn to communicate with plants, be they houseplants, maple trees or a wild iris. These are only guidelines, so allow yourself to develop your own technique. We all have the ability to communicate with other species. "The interconnectedness of all life does not have to be an abstract concept. We can live it," writes Judith Handlesman, author of "Growing Myself--A Spiritual Journey Through Gardening."

Remember to relax and don’t try too hard. Regular practice is the key to developing any talent or skill. May your journey be one of learning, growth, and love.

Author Marion Stirrup Owen is co-author of an exciting new book, "Chicken Soup for the Gardener’s Soul." She is looking for true stories or anecdotes that will uplift, inspire or entertain gardeners and plant lovers. For information, e-mail marion@ptialaska.net or mail a SASE to PO Box 1694, Kodiak, AK 99615. Submission deadline is December 1, 1999.