The Ramblings and Wanderings

Archive for the ‘Musings About the Land’ Category

Emma H asked in a comment to another post:

Do you ever find when communing with land spirits, that the condition of the land around them affects the clarity of their answer?

There are some places here that I like to walk, that are a little abused (seriously, what’s the point of fly tipping?) and I figure if I tried to commune with the spirits there, they’d be more interested in trying to draw my attention to their own issues. Which, given the condition of their land, is fair enough!

Good question Emma!

Just as you find when visiting a friend who have endured some trauma or injury, when visiting a natural place that has been harmed it will have something of a “one track mind”

Which is, as you say, fair enough.

But also as with visiting a hurt friend, one you’ve visited a few times and listened attentively to their expression of pain, you will develop a closer relationship. Often once they realize how good of a friend you have been to listen to their hurts, they will happily open up their ears to you and reciprocate.

All relationships are a matter of give and take. Sometimes you have to give more than take at first. Especially when working with a damaged landscape.

When going into a place that has been harmed I expect anger, resentment, fear, hurt and the expression of such from the land. I cultivate a good bedside manner and I listen and validate just as I would for a dear friend laying in a hospital bed. Hopefully one day that landscape will be willing to hear me out as well, but if not, at least I have learned something and done a little good for the Land.

If I am seeking my own answers, to express my own thoughts, to do something like a casting or divination I will not go to a damaged landscape if I can avoid it. I will go to the local Nature Reserve or well tended park or a loved garden. Just as if I needed advice from a friend I would go to one who is stable, steady and not suffering from a lot of pain herself right now. A give and take relationship must still be built with even an unharmed landscape, but it often will be more balanced right off the bat.

Cheers!

Oil is not blood

It is million year old Sunlight

Captured by the Earth

In liquid form

The good green things

Drink up the light

Photosynthesize

Die and decay

Buried and pressed

Digested by the land

And transformed over eons

Into liquid Sunlight

We with our opposable thumbs

Dig deep and greedily

Hungry and careless

Thirsty and addicted

Spoiled gluttons, never satisfied

Always wanting more

Like sociopathic children

We tear into our Mother’s body

Rip and rend

Slice and cut

We plunge long hungry hands

Through ocean-life-blood

Push greedy fingers into the soil

And suck out the liquid Sunlight

Buried within

With noisy machines

And without empathy

We penetrate and violate

We force our way in

We rape our own Mother

Remove the Sunlight within

To fuel our sick and twisted desires

To fuel our fires

To feed our noisy machines

To heat our homes

To make our lives easy

Because we are spoiled and greedy

To make this liquid Sunlight

Fuel our fires

We must pump toxic fumes

Into the Sky and the Air we breathe

The Oxygen we share with other living things

Which damages the thin layer called ozone

That protects us from the Sunlight

There are other ways

To fuel our fires

But we are too lazy, spoiled and greedy

To turn to them

And to learn new habits

Because we are addicts

Blinded by greed

The need to be comfortable

And the fear of change

We will keep digging deep

Until all the liquid Sunlight

Is gone

Burned up

Used up

No more

And then we will tear ourselves apart

Just wait and see

In order to have plants in my sunroom I need:

Plants. Plants that will happily grow in my eastern exposure sunroom, don’t require at lot of nit picking and who like loads of sunlight.

But wait! First I need money to buy plants. I could beg for cuttings from friends. Or steal plants from neighbour’s gardens and porches while they sleep! Eh, maybe I can put my pennies together to buy a packet of seeds from the dollar store and rescue a few forlorn plants from the clearance rack.

But first, I have no pots to put them in! Hmmm maybe I can recycle an old teapot and a pair of boots? A coffee tin and yogurt containers? Make folded paper pots out of flyers? Use cardboard boxes lined with shopping bags?

But wait! I have no soil to put in my pots! And no money to buy soil. The dollar store soil is terrible and seems to kill things. Perhaps I could steal soil from construction sites? Pester neighbours with back yards for compost? Put kitchen waste and grass in a box in the sun and make my own?

But wait! I have no shelves to put the pots on! The poor plants (that I don’t have, who have no pots or soil) will have to go on the floor.

But wait! The floor is covered in boxes and bags of stuff I can’t put away because I have no shelves.

Huh

Maybe this year I’ll just draw pictures of plants, print out a few photos of yards and gardens I used to have, and tape them to the windows and walls of my sunroom.

But wait! I have no tape to put the pictures up with.

Maybe I’ll just go for a walk in the woods instead, hug a tree or two and listen to the birds sing.

But wait! I live in the city!

Huh

Well then … never mind.

Got some great pics from my Mom of the critters at the family farm Misty Acres, including shots of my horse Morgan and my boy-dog Tristan (who are happier at the farm with Mom than in the city with me right now). Click on the images for full size.