The Land: Ways to Know and Be Known by Wildness

In this final episode in the Summer of Support series, I'm sharing ways to reconnect and communicate with the land you're living on. Even in the midst of harm and legacies of colonization, the land seeks to know and be known by you. There are simple, easy ways to heal the severing of our relationship to the land that was brought about by civilization and capitalism, and I'm sharing many of them in this episode.

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A Wild New Work · 153. The Land: Ways to Know and Be Known by Wildness

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Welcome to a Wild New Work, a podcast about how to compost capitalism and the norms of dominant culture and answer the soulful callings of these times we live in, which includes the call to deepen our relationship with the earth. I'm Megan Leatherman, a mother, writer, teacher and guide. I live in the Pacific Northwest and I'm your host today.

Hi, friend, and welcome. I'm so glad that you're here today. I am really excited to share about Land Connection today, and this is the final episode in our summer of support series. So far, we have covered tracking and navigating your way through life. We've talked about working with your wise and well ancestors, and last week we talked about the five elements, and these are all sources of support, including today's topic, the land.

These are sources of support that you do not have to. Wait to access. You don't have to get a degree. You don't have to pay a bunch of money. You don't have to earn the right to receive support from these sources. They are readily available to you, and they're especially effective when we come in a good and humble way.

So today I'm gonna be talking about land connection, being in right relationship with the land as best we can be in this difficult situation of. I mean, whatever term fits for you, civilization, capitalism, collapse, colonization. In the midst of all of that, I still believe it's possible to connect to the land in a meaningful way, to be shaped by the land, to be an intimate relationship with the land and the beings that we live with.

So tracking ancestors, the elements, all of the topics we have covered thus far can converge in the topic of land connection. And you are already engaging in this web of support because you're alive eating the food of the land. You live in a place that's built on the ground, on the land. You literally cannot.

You wouldn't be here if you were not already in intimate relationship with the land. So today's episode is just a chance for me to share some thoughts about how you can strengthen that already innate relationship if you would like to. And I really encourage you to listen to the last three episodes of the summer of support if you haven't already before you come to this one, because I'll be referring to some of the topics in those.

Uh, in today's episode. I've really been looking forward to this episode because I just love connecting to the land and helping others connect to the land in a good way. Developing a stronger relationship to the land is like you have finally found the village or the festival or the gathering that you have been looking for, where you can be yourself completely, you can be comfortable, you are held by something much larger than you, and you also have an important contribution to make there.

So it holds you. You belong there, and in the midst of all of that connection and belonging, it's just infused with this awe inspiring beauty and sweetness, and it moves with the cycles, and it's just the most profound village or community that any of us could want. It's the original village and community.

So it's a really special thing to have an intimate relationship with the land, and I'm excited to share what I've learned about that over the last lifetime or so. There's so much support available through Land Connection. I've received, you know, just like basic guidance about what to do in certain situations.

I've received profound reminders of who I am and what really matters. I've received collective. Guidance for work I'm doing with others, people I've collaborated with and partnered with. When we go and listen to the land together, that can be really essential and informative. There's also just tremendous nervous system support and real grounding that our bodies and systems and souls need more and more in these chaotic times.

So I hope after listening today, you feel inspired to continue or begin a land reconnection practice that feels incredibly natural and beneficial to you. A couple of announcements before I begin today. The first is that the class that is sort of the culmination of the summer support is called the First Harvest, and it's on Tuesday, July 29th.

And in this class we're gonna be moving through each of the four major areas we've looked at through the summer of support. So we will be doing some tracking for you to get a sense of where your path is right now. We're gonna be working with some wise and well ancestors. We're gonna talk about. The fire element and summer and the transition from fire to earth that we'll be going through in a few weeks or so.

And then we're gonna talk about land connection and what that might look like for the rest of the summer season. So I'd love to have you there. It will be recorded if you can't make it live, and no one will be turned away for lack of funds. So I encourage you to check it out. If you've been enjoying the summer of support, you can do that at a wild new work.com/events.

The other thing I wanna make sure you know about is that the next round of Meant for More, which is my vocational guidance process that I work with people through one-on-one and in a small group that will begin in late September. And my class composting capitalism on the origins of capitalism will also be starting around that time on October 1st.

So there's a lot. That will be happening this autumn. If you feel like you're in a place of transition or wanting to go deeper or if you feel that kind of back to school energy of wanting to learn, I would love to invite you into any and all of these offerings. You can learn more at a wild new work.com and I'll also be sharing the links for registration and more information to my email list next week if you would like to subscribe to that if you aren't already on there.

And you can do that at a wild new work.com as well. The summer of support has been nurtured and made possible by members of Eagle Creek, those who are contributing financially every month to help make this work sustainable for me. Thank you so much for your presence there, and if you have been enjoying the show, if you've been listening for a while or if you've engaged in other parts of my work and you would like it to continue, I welcome your participation in Eagle Creek, and you can learn more about that at Wild New work.com/eagle-creek.

Okay, well, with that, let's shift into our opening invocation and dive into today's topic. So wherever you are, you might just take a deep breath. You might let out a sigh or place your hand on your heart and see if you can bring to mind a beautiful place on the land. When was the last time you were around natural awe inspiring beauty?

Can you just hold the sensation of that in your being for a moment?

May each of us be blessed and emboldened to do the work we're meant to do on this planet. May our work honor our ancestors known and unknown, and may it be in harmony with all creatures that we share this earth with. I express gratitude for all of the technologies and gifts that have made this possible, and I'm grateful to the Multnomah, Cowlitz, Bands of Chinook and Clackamas, tribes among many others who are the original stewards of the land that I'm on. May this episode be one small stitch in the great reweaving of right relationship that so many indigenous teachers are calling us into, and so it is.

Alright, well, I wanted to start today with a little bit of context because I think that's super important when we're talking about the land and connecting to the land.

And I want you to know at the outset that I am someone who is embedded, has been embedded into colonizer culture. I have European ancestry. My ancestors came to Turtle Island, so-called United States and were part of the colonization process. I'm not sure exactly how, I don't think they were some of the earliest folks here, but they absolutely perpetuated and benefited from the genocide that occurred to native peoples here and have benefited from the dispossession of those peoples and the colonization of the land here and.

Colonization feels to me like this veil that's always on my vision or it's like a disabling of my humanity in some kind, where if I'm not aware of it, it can be operating in the background before I'm even clear about what I'm doing. It can sort of inform. What I'm doing without me knowing, unless I'm really aware that that's happening, because colonization isn't, to me it doesn't feel just like this sense of entitlement.

I think that can be part of it for sure, but it's also this like deep, deep hunger for something. This hunger for connection or wanting to feel known or be known by a place. It's that root that has been cut off and it's looking for a place to regrow. And so it comes up as like, you know, this idea that we can own land and I will own this land.

I will manage this land, or this is my place. I belong here. I have a right to be here. I will show up in this way. I will take up space. I will use this. Because I need it and I don't wanna wait. So there's all of these insidious ways that colonizer mind sort of rears its ugly head and informs our behavior.

And to me it comes from a hungry place and that's why. Connecting with the other areas of support that we have covered can be really helpful If you are in touch with your wise and well ancestors regularly, people who, even if you're, you have European ancestry, these are people who were not all colonizers themselves who did have an intimate connection to the land.

If you're in touch with them regularly and feeling supported, if you are asking for help and signs from the great web of life and you're getting those, if you know what your primary element is and you're connected to the great forces of life, those are all ways that you can feed that hunger and feel rooted in so that colonization is not your.

Kind of mo constantly without you being aware of it, where you're not so hungry, you're not lacking roots. You can come to the land in a place that's less grabby and not just the land, but relationships with other humans as well. So here we are. Here I am in this colonizer capitalism civilization machine context cut off from natural rhythms to a certain extent, cut off from old, natural ways of accessing resources and being fed and being in sustainable relationship with the land.

So here we are. We live in these day-to-day lives that are very cut off and apart in many ways from the natural order and cycles of things with this legacy of colonization. And what are we to do? Well, I believe that even with all of this happening, it is still possible to have an intimate relationship with the land and the beings who live on the land where we live, and that's gonna look really different for each of us, depending on where we are and what's available and what we can access and the landscape that we live on.

But I wanna share a little bit about what it looks like for me today, just so you know. Kind of where I'm coming from and so that it just feels very grounded and practical. I mean, land connection is like as grounded and down to earth as you can get, and I wanna keep it that way because this will only work if it feels real and tangible to you.

So I live in a big city. It's called Portland, Oregon, and I am fortunate enough to have a home where I have a backyard and a front yard. There is. A decent amount of nature around our neighborhoods, not without trees and nature, of course, any city is gonna be more concrete and gray than I would like, but we're really lucky.

I look out my windows and I see green, and we have daily practices of tending to this land that we live on and live with. Every morning I take the first little bit of coffee that I brew out to the backyard, and often my kids come with me and we go and we say, good morning to everyone. We say hello and we name all of the plants.

We check on how everyone is doing. We thank them for being there with us and for allowing us to be there. And we give an offering of our first brew as a way to just show our respect and our care. We also let a lot of this land and the beings who live here in this little patch be wild. We don't mow. We try to treat.

This land as the land. You know, maybe it's not a wilderness, but it's absolutely the land. And even though many of the plants here that are growing and the crows and the feral cats, even though there's been a lot of domestication, we try to give enough. Room as much as we can for some wildness and rewilding and it doesn't look very nice, I guess, in terms of like how people think yards should look.

But we love it and we like seeing the critters and insects and birds thrive and it, that's really important to us. So that's a little piece of land connection that is just here every day all throughout my day. And I know I'm really lucky to get to experience that. I also have some regular spots that are further out of the city, you know, maybe 45 minutes or more, that are more wild places where I can connect on a more, you know, maybe monthly or seasonal basis.

I'm generally out in a wild space like once a week just for my. Sanity and for my kids, but that's more like we're just out enjoying the land and being with the land, not necessarily connecting with or doing ritual in the way that I'm gonna talk about today, but it's just like, I don't really know how I could function as an animal being without regular connection to places that feel less.

Managed and controlled. And I know I'm really spoiled with spots here in the Pacific Northwest kind of area. And I will talk about ways to move forward with land connection if you're not in a place that has a lot of wildness or if it doesn't feel easy for you to connect with beings and with the land in a, in a way that feels healthy.

So don't, um, don't give up. I guess if you feel like you're in a place that's super, super urban or if the land around you has been really abused and doesn't feel very inviting, I'm gonna talk about that as well. So I have my little, where I get to live, and then I have my spots that I go to regularly. And I am very average in all of my encounters with the wilderness.

I'm not an expert wilderness person, and I also know the term wilderness is even problematic because it sets up this binary or dichotomy we're we are this and that's out there, the wilderness, it's pristine, it's you know, humans don't belong there, et cetera. I know the term wilderness can be problematic.

I'm not gonna unpack that here today, but I just want you to know at the outset that I'm not like some great forager or tracker. I'm very much still learning. I always will be. I'm not super hardcore. I don't think you need to be super hardcore to have an intimate relationship with the earth. I know people, or I know of people who are quite hardcore seemingly.

Out there all the time who actually don't seem to know the land very well in a soulful, connective way. So it doesn't mean anything if you're out, if you're some expert backpacker, you can still be separated from or out of right relationship with the land. So there's no one right way to do this, certainly.

And I just want you to know at the outset that you don't have to be hardcore about this. So I have spots around me, places, bodies of water, where I am in regular. Deep relationship with these places and the beings who live there, the Sandy River, Oak Island, Eagle Creek, to name a few. If there is like a special occasion or a ritual that I need to do for myself, or a ritual that we're doing for the turning of the seasons, I will most likely be out working with the land in one of those special places to do it.

The wild lands around me. Are my beloveds. I wish there was like a good English word to describe a place, a natural place, a piece of wildness that is like a beloved. They're friends, they're teachers, they're mentors. They're the land is an extension of my home. It is the home. These beings are like lovers, beloveds.

I just can't imagine myself or my life without them. I've been fortunate enough to have become more and more stitched in to the landscapes of this place. They have profoundly shaped my consciousness, so that's how it sort of is manifesting for me right now. That's just what land. Reconnection has looked like for me, and I'm gonna talk about how I've nurtured that.

I also have big, long-term dreams of living in a wilder place of being the steward of a big land, big place, and letting that land, teach me, teach us, teach my village. It feels like my fate will guide me there. I don't know when. I hope it's coming soon. I don't know exactly how it will look or how exactly to do that in a way that's not perpetuating colonization.

I have some ideas, but I do believe that eventually me and my family and others that we are in village with will be living. Alongside Wilder places and beings in deep relationship and stewardship with that place. So I'm not there yet, but that's where I hope Land Reconnection leads me. And I talk to the land about that, about my desire to live closer to them and be in more regular daily conversation with.

Places that have been a little less domesticated or paved over, I guess. So the relationship that you will build with the land you're living with will be really unique to you, and I encourage you to let it be unique. It does not have to look any one way, but I wanted to share kind of what it looks like for me just to ground us and give you some ideas, and I'm gonna share more today about some of the foundational elements of building a stronger connection to the land, wherever you are, whoever you are, in whatever ways are available to you today.

I guess at this point, we should define what I mean by the land. When I say the land, I mean one, all of the five elements that we talked about last week. So the land being earth, soil, water, fire. Nature, all the growing beings and mineral, all the decaying matter, the stones. So all of that is the land. The land is also that, which is the more than human, that which predates humanity and human culture.

That which is beyond human culture, even as it is impacted by it. You could absolutely argue that the land includes humans. Of course, we are animals. We are from the land. We are of the land. But I today, I wanna talk a little bit about. Them as two separate things, which might just be perpetuating the problem, but just to help us clarify like what we're moving toward and what we're rebuilding a relationship with.

I'm gonna talk about the land as that which is holding us and is more than us, but is not just like human culture and your everyday kind of driving and going to the grocery store and all of that. Although all of that does happen on the land and at some level just is the land. So I hope that didn't get too confusing.

But when I talk about the land, I really mean the places and beings who are still in touch with their wildness, their authentic nature. Most places around the world, most beings around the world have been abused or managed or dominated through civilized culture and capitalism. They may be in recovery mode or they may be actively adjusting from some big interference or a demolition or you know, an oil spill or something like that.

And the truth is that so are we. I am also trying to rewild, I am also encountering pollution and interference every day full of microplastics, right? So we are in this together with the land we can meet the land in its struggling state as well, and be humbled and taught by it about how to bear this. So the land is.

The beach. It's the ocean. It's the sky, it's the mountains, it's the jungles, the wetlands, the deserts, and all the more than human kin who make their homes there. The land is where we can hear messages from the universe more clearly and receive the teachings we need as we are tracking on our journey through this life.

The land is where our ancestors went. Probably not the land you live on now, but. That's okay. The ancestors go to the earth. They become the land. And the land is also where the five elements are most readily seen, where we can see there's nature, there's mineral, there's water. The elements are present in everything.

But on the land environments that haven't been built up by humans, their power is still kind of contained or intact. So it's true that we're not actually sep, we're not able to be separate from the land, but just for our purposes today, I wanna talk about the land as a little bit apart from us so that we can rebuild this relationship and coming into even closer contact and awareness of each other.

Because the truth is that what happens to you happens to the land, and what happens to the land happens to you. We're in this together. Think about how many people are suffering chronic inflammation. Well, we see that in the wildfires that are taking hold on the land. You might think about how many people are feeling overwhelmed in their nervous systems, and we see flash flooding on the land.

When we see the land being healed. We might recognize aspects of our own healing and the potential we have to heal. So we are absolutely in this together, and the more we can strengthen our connection to the land, the stronger we all become. I wanna talk now for a minute about what capitalism and civilization have done to the land and to our relationship to the land and in composting capitalism.

My class on the origins of capitalism, we talk a lot about what's been done to the land and why control of the land is the first step in the emergence of, or the expansion of capitalism. It was essential that human beings inborn connection to the land be severed in order for capitalism to really gain a foothold in Western Europe in the 15 hundreds or so.

And it is essential to capitalism that that severance be maintained. Capitalism cannot exist without dominating the land, without controlling it. So when you reclaim your love for this sovereign place, when you reclaim the land's right, to be free and wild and unowned, that is a way that we can weaken capitalism's grip.

But of course human beings disconnect to the land didn't just start with capitalism. Capitalism, there was a a hole that capitalism could come in and root into. Humans have been dominating the land, bending the land to their will for thousands of years, arguably since agriculture or civilization showed up 10 to 12,000 years ago.

And this isn't in every case. There are examples of agricultural societies and civilizations. I don't think there's a ton of examples, but certainly agriculture. There's more examples of societies that found ways to work with the land in ways that truly were sustainable and life giving for the land, and that weren't about dominance and control.

But most of us indoctrinated in Western culture have inherited thousands of years of cultural messaging that says that relating to the land means managing it to relate to the land means farming, gardening, building on it, owning it, even conserving it. We really have lost the humility required to be shown by the land, what it wants and needs.

We have learned to relate to the land as something that needs to be managed, controlled, dominated, or owned, and. This is something that has to get undone inside of us so that we can come in to right relationship to the land. Again, we need to learn and remember that the land does not need us to save them or to control or manage them for millennia.

Humans did play an important role as a keystone species in, you know, making adjustments or cultivating certain plants or foraging in a way that was beneficial to the environment, but that was done in a very slow, long-term, intimate, humble way. For those of us living in a Western cultural context. Now we need to relearn that the earth does not need us to save her or to fix her.

We cannot and will not. We need to let ourselves be saved by the earth. To be shown how to be in right relationship with her again, to be humbled, to fall back in love with and into intimacy with our home. That is the only way we are gonna get through this. Policies and recycling efforts and cleanups are all great, but if they are not rooted in real love and being seen, and feeling seen, and feeling a sense of belonging to the land.

They just aren't gonna be as effective as they really could be. They're still gonna be rooted in some semblance of this control that we've inherited. So this is about you knowing a place deeply and being known by it, caring about the environment or the ecosystem where you live because you have balled your eyes out there or you've buried something or you took the best nap of your life there, or you were humbled by beauty there, or you were taught an important lesson without deep embodied roots with the land, even the best of intentions becomes more like management.

I'm gonna manage this invasive species. Let me show you what this land needs. So. Way to stop that and to get into a new mode of thought and relating to the land seems to be humility and a different way of relating to this place that is our home and how we relate to the land is so often related to how we relate to ourselves.

So in the emergence of capitalism, not only was the land enclosed and controlled, people's bodies had to be enclosed and control. This is something else that we talk about in the course. All of these thinkers like Descartes and all of these writers talking about how disgusting the body is, how it needs to be controlled, you know, proper manners and etiquette and the.

The rise of self-management as really a holy thing, that to be good, to be pious, meant to be cut off from the earth of your body. So civilization, I think, opened the door to land dominance, civilization and agriculture. And then capitalism came in to further the enclosure of the land and to use the land for an even more rapid growth in resources and profits.

And not just the land, but the enclosure of us and our bodies and archery nature as well. So what are some of the ways that we can undo this ugly history and find real healing and reconnection? I wanna talk about some of the foundational steps that we can take to return to more connection to the land.

The first is that I need to say, and I want you to have your own experience of the fact that the land still loves us. The land still welcomes us to connect to them. There has been a lot of pain and harm done to be sure, but this rupture between us and the way we live and the wellbeing of the land is not permanent and it's not irreversible.

I believe and have experience that the land still loves humans. Still wants us to relate to them in the old ways that we know how to do so. Even in our imperfections, even though we've driven our gas car to the place, even though we brought our snack in a plastic container, the land still loves when we come to visit, when we come to spend time there in a thoughtful way, this doesn't mean that the legacies of harm done to the land or on the land are forgotten.

I believe that pain can be stored on the land. If you've ever been somewhere that just felt really sad or it felt like there was a heaviness there, then you have experienced this. But I don't believe that blame is stored on the land. When we really sit down and we listen. To the land, to the ground, to the trees, to the beings there.

I don't hear panic. I don't hear anxiety. I don't hear human stories about how doomed we all are, how bad we are, how everything is going to end. There can be grief. Yes, there can be stories of loss and pain that the land is still holding, but it's what Resmaa Menakum calls clean pain. It's just the fact of the grief, the fact of the pain, not all the added story and panic and anxiety that humans are so used to adding to a situation or experience.

So could we for a moment, drop the stories and meet the land where they are? Could you be open to the idea that the land that you are living on now or that is around you. Still cares about you would like to connect with you, is aware of your presence already, and welcomes you to connect with them. I think if you go and listen to the land, you will find.

That there is a steadiness there that is not seen in most human conversations about how the land is doing. We're really good about telling the stories about how bad things are and how things are collapsing and falling away. And on some level that is true, but I think we're, we're not on the ground enough listening to the land to remember the stories of regeneration and resilience and the fact that the land is just gonna continue.

To grow and do its best in the midst of everything going on. So I'm not trying to whitewash anything or claim that harm is not being done, but in my experience, I, I get really turned off by most conservation or environmental or climate change efforts because it doesn't feel like the words or the ideas are coming from the land itself, from the ground up.

That when I go and I sit in a place and I really listen, the river is not the panicking. The trees are okay. In places where there's been fire, things are regrowing. I'm really hesitating here because I know there's this. Risk of like making it seem like everything's fine. But I just, I think it's really important that if we care about the environment, that we go and listen and take our cues from the land themselves.

The land will tell us what they would like us to do and what they need, and oftentimes it's just sit down and be quiet. Sit down and look at the beauty. You know, compost your own grief, take care of your own anxiety. So you might be surprised if you go and listen to the land and the ways that I'm gonna talk about, you might find that there's less.

Panic than most of us are carrying about climate change. And I'm open to being wrong about this, but I just wanna share that that's been my experience. Now, many of you will live around land that has been really harmed by, let's say, industrial agriculture or industry more generally. You may live around places that are being actively harmed, rivers that are being damned oceans that are polluted, and we don't need to avoid those places, but we can go and see if we can find the strong parts.

See if we can sit down and ask, how are they doing? How does it feel to experience this? Where are the resilient parts of that landscape? Can you name their beauty and strength? Can you reflect that back to them? And in that process, make sure that you're also feeling more connected to healthy places as well, as much as you can, and really root into those too, so that you're fortified and you have more in the tank for when you go and connect to places that are.

Grieving or are being actively harmed. And remember that you're not there to save anyone, but you can absolutely witness what is happening. You can pick up some garbage, you can cry. You can tell them that you're sorry this is happening. You could bring wild plants to replant in places that have been damaged.

You can tell the place that they're beautiful. Again, we wanna root into the love and welcoming that is intrinsic to our connection to the land. So that's where I want you to start with land reconnection. Asking yourself, if you're willing to believe that the land loves you and wants you there and wants to connect, can you go from that place instead of any place of obligation or guilt or shame?

Could you try that? The second really foundational piece is. To not assume things about the land, but to begin asking the land for their consent. So I believe that the land is alive, it has soul. I believe that the land is older and wiser than us. The land is where our ancestors went. So it is ancient. It is our ancestor.

So if we believe that the land is alive and sovereign in that aliveness, then we wanna approach the land as a sovereign wise. Elder and we wanna maintain an air of respect, especially at first as we're rebuilding our connection to the land and becoming more aware of these kind of colonizer veils or things that can get in our way.

So we know that the way we live is no longer in right relationship with the land. It's not the way we live is not a benefit. To the land and the ways that it would've been for indigenous peoples and in our indigenous ancestors, right? So the materials that we use for our home may not be readily digestible by the earth.

We're not, you know, managing our waste in a way that is beneficial to the earth. We're consuming too many resources. So there is some rebalancing that is needed that needs to be rooted in respect. So we start with more formality and then we can pair that back as it feels appropriate, because with time and repetition as we connect to the land, it will feel more like connecting with a familiar friend where we don't have to do all of the more formal things to establish reconnection.

I also wanna say that. You know, as adults, we will begin more formally, and I'll talk about that in a second, but we don't wanna put that burden on kids. This is something I notice sometimes kids don't need any teaching about how to connect to the land that's born inside of them. The younger they are. The stronger this is.

And sometimes I notice adults bringing their own anxiety about the land to kids where if like a kid is, you know, running on a log or picking at an ant trail or, you know, messing around in the water, there can be this like preciousness, like, you know, don't hurt anyone. Or like, don't, just like a kind of a hovering and an anxiety where we are bringing this belief that the land is in danger and it's falling apart and humans are so bad.

And then we're putting that on kids and not allowing them to feel held and loved in the St sturdiness of the earth. So I encourage you if you have kids, or if there are kids in your life, we don't wanna scare off their love for the land, the earth can handle them. The Earth can handle a kid playing with worms and maybe some of those worms don't make it.

And you know, I'm an animist and I believe every life is precious. And if my kids are playing with worms, I will try to teach them about how to ensure that the worms aren't dying and that they go back to their home. But I think long term, it's better for children to feel loved and connected with the power and sturdiness of the earth.

That that feels more important than putting my own fears about everything, dying onto them and expecting them to walk through the land as if they're in like a China shop. So I hope that makes sense. There's a really good book by Jay Griffiths called A Country Called Childhood, and she talks about how in different cultures around the world, indigenous cultures, how children are.

Raised and taught to connect to the land and just how essential it is that children feel their own innate safety and being held with the land first, and that as they grow, we can teach them over time how to develop a respectful relationship to the Earth. And we can model that, but we don't need to put all of our anxiety onto the kids and not allow them to, you know, make a fort in the creek or something because it disturbs some of the plants.

I really believe the earth can handle that and that the land will adjust, or the land will show us, show the kids that that's not appropriate through some means. So setting that aside for a moment, getting back to us as adults who still often carry not super helpful ways of relating to the land. We wanna start with a kind of more formal rebuilding of that connection.

So rather than going out onto the land or into our backyard and doing whatever we want, we wanna learn how to start stopping and asking first. So instead of just starting our hike, we might pause and say, hello, may I enter this forest? May I go pick these berries? May I build a house here? May I plant a garden here?

Where would you like me to plant? Or what would you like to be here relating to the land as the sovereign elder that they are, and asking for permission and waiting for an answer, we might just feel a response, a yes or a no. We might see an image in our mind or feel a thought that doesn't totally feel like our own or the land may do something.

Like, if we ask to enter a place, we may see a certain flock of birds. That feels like a yes or a fern might wave in the wind. Or if we're at our home and we're asking if something can be planted there, we may return tomorrow and there's, you know, a special feather or a fungus that has grown. That feels like an answer.

The answer might be no. And we have to learn how to hear and respect that. There have been times when I've wanted to gather things on the land and I've asked, and the answer was no. That there just wasn't enough of that herb or that nut for that year that it just wasn't a good time. And we have to respect that if we're going to rebuild this relationship.

Asking for permission means that we have to go slower. We don't just charge through the landscape and forage what we want, or we don't just go on the hike or take our respite on the land. We wanna pause, we wanna ask and wait. And we might accept. We might have to accept that getting a no will derail our plans.

No, you can't go down this trail today. No, you can't collect these acorns this year. So in asking. We acknowledge the sovereignty of the land, but we also reclaim our own sovereignty as well. Remember, what we, how we relate to the land is directly related to how we relate to ourselves. You deserve to be asked, would you like this?

Would you like to do this? Is that comfortable? Is this okay with you? You deserve for the people around you to go slower and to wait for your response and to respect When you say, no, that doesn't feel good to me. No, I don't have enough to share right now. So in your land reconnection process, I encourage you to start with the idea that the land truly does love you.

And two, to begin working from a place of consent. Once those two are established, and this can be just like you in your backyard, this can be you the next time you go to a wild place, or the next time you go camping. It could be just the next time you're at the park, could I accept that this land welcomes me?

Does it feel like that? And two, how can I incorporate consent into this exchange right now? And then there are a couple of smaller things that you can do to rebuild your relationship to the land. The first one that's really sweet is to make offerings to the land. These are easily digestible gifts for the earth or for the beings that are there not as payment.

This takes some undoing because those of us in capitalist culture are used to everything being a transaction and paying and you know, if I give you this, then I'm owed this. So we have, we have to be aware of that. It will probably feel like payment at first, but over time it will start to feel more natural.

We make offerings not as payments, but as gifts. Like if someone had you over to their house for dinner, you would probably take some flowers or a bottle of wine or something that you made. It's just a show of respect and not just that, but it shows the earth that you understand what they might like and need.

So good offerings could be ashes. Honey water that's been blessed. Uh, beautiful flowers or herbs, a poem, a compliment, a piece of your hair, anything that feels meaningful and that is easily digestible to the earth. Okay, so just like if you were going to a friend's house, you would choose to bring something that you thought your friend would like or could use.

If your friend has a gluten allergy, it would be. Weird or hurtful to bring over a loaf of gluten bread. You know what I mean? So we're not gonna bring like bottles of hairspray to the earth as an offering that wouldn't show that you understand or can empathize with them. Kids are great at making offerings to the earth at intuitively choosing things that are beneficial to the earth.

So I encourage you to either use your childlike mind with this, or if there are kids in your life to include them in this. So you can choose a simple offering and you come and you just give it, and you just tell the earth. I, I offer this in my love and respect. May you be well and protected and respected.

You can say whatever's on your heart and you make the offering. And I'll talk in a second about. Like a sort of ritual that you can do to incorporate offerings. But offerings can also just be made anytime you arrive at a place or leave or anytime you're doing something special. If you're hosting a gathering or if it's, you know, a special day in the cycle of the year, you can make an offering to your backyard or the beings that you live nearby or your house plants.

Uh, it's just a way to give a gift. The second thing that's really nice to do in the midst of land reconnection when you feel led is to give away what you need to let go of. The earth can absolutely compost your grief, your sadness, loneliness, worry, overwhelm. It is beneficial and helpful in rebuilding your connection to the land to allow yourself to be held, to be vulnerable.

To be humbled and allow yourself to receive the land's, help beauty care teaching in your land reconnection journey. I encourage you to be the tiny human that you are and to come and ask for help, to cry to the trees, to tell the birds everything you're worried about, to give your grief to the river. You don't have to come and answer for all of humanity's misdeeds.

You don't have to come and always be upbeat or there to help out or what can I do? That's not how relationships are built. Relationships are built through mutual vulnerability and care and reciprocity. So you need to allow yourself to be held by the earth too, and it truly lightens everyone's load for you to go and be rested and held to cry, to give of your grief, to feel relaxed and good because of the earth holding you.

So these are some little ways that you can build that reconnection. And then it's just a matter of time going back, returning to the same places, and listening, noticing how they change through the seasons, tracking patterns going not out of obligation, but because you love it. Because it feels good because you know that you're welcomed there, that they enjoy seeing you.

They enjoy having you there. They love when you come with your family or your friends. You can absolutely, you know, pick up garbage while you're there. You can ask the land if they would like you to do anything, but that's really key. Again, we don't wanna come from this like white savior place or this colonizer control place.

We can go and be held and ask if the land would like you to do anything. And picking up garbage is one really simple way that we can show respect. Some of the ways that I've felt really supported just through these. Practices just through accepting that the land loved me, practicing more consent, going slower, making offerings, giving the earth what I had to compost.

These don't seem like much, but over time they add up to pretty profound St Sturdiness and sources of support where we can begin to feel more rooted than we ever have in our lives. Perhaps capitalism, by its nature, uproots us. How many of us have had to move because of jobs or schooling? Our families had to move because of wars or famine?

Capitalism is constantly uprooting people in ways that are unnatural, that aren't just migration, but are, you know, forcible removals and. Unsteadiness. And now even if we don't have to move, we're so used to it that it's just like we're just picking up and going and none of the trees know our names. We don't know their names, and it just doesn't matter and we're just gonna start life over in a new city.

It doesn't have to be like that. So we can absolutely still experience a real sense of being rooted where we're going slow enough and having experiences of getting to know individual places and the individual beings who live there. Not everyone, but absolutely. You know, major figures, major stones or places on the beach or bodies of water or special birds that we have a relationship with, et cetera.

The land can absolutely also guide us and be our partner in learning the land absolutely guides me about what to teach, what to say, what to write about. My stress levels and health always benefit from time spent with the land, and I think this is kind of inevitable, even if you're just out on a hike and you're not really practicing in this way, but it's just even deeper.

I feel like I receive even more of a reboot when I'm going to the land in these ways where I'm going to, a place that I've built a relationship with. I know them, they know me. I come with respect. I ask for consent. I make offerings. I just feel like I receive so much more in return than if it was just a random place and I just needed, you know, to see some beauty.

That's not bad, but it just doesn't have the same oomph as I think relating to the land in this way does. So there are so many ways that the land can and does already support you feeling more rooted, teaching you, being good for your body, connecting you to a felt ancient, just primal sense of love.

Connection where you're not motivated by guilt or shame, but you want to be there because it's your home. And in that way it also teaches us how to relate to ourselves and others in a way that is healthier than and beyond capitalism. Again, how we relate to the land is a good indication of how we're relating to ourselves and to each other.

I wanna talk now about land communication specifically. So you can just, you know, move through land reconnection with some of the things that I have mentioned already, but the land will also absolutely talk to us. The land's beings, the ground. Through the elements, it's energy moving through and it's deeper than language.

And we can absolutely receive support in this way from the land. Practical support, help witnessing what we're going through, help holding what we have to hold in our lives, help knowing what to do, help getting our needs met. The land knows what that is like because the land is made up of the same elements that we are made up of.

So the land knows grief because grief is mineral. The land knows mineral. The land knows sadness 'cause the land knows fire and what it means for the fire to be dim. The land knows joy and gratitude. Okay, so we share the same elements, and this is energy happening on an unseen level. So if you would like to go to the land for a message or to receive help in a specific way, here are some things that you can do.

And how I would recommend you begin. One is that I encourage you to either remember or go back and listen to the last episode on the elements and identify your primary element. And I encourage you to start by connecting with a being of that primary element in your land communication practice. Okay? So if you Primary element is water.

I encourage you to go to a body of water to do this ritual that I'm going to describe. If you are a mineral person, I encourage you to go to a place with a lot of mineral, a mountain, or a place with big old stones or the beach. If you are an Earth person, then I encourage you to go to a place where the, the ground itself feels very alive and inviting.

If you have nature as your primary element, then I encourage you to go find a special tree or. Meadow or place where special plants grow that you can feel connected to if fire is your primary element. That's a little tricky because you know, hopefully fire isn't just burning through the landscape that you're on at all times.

But you can light a fire outdoors or you can connect to a place that feels really infused by the sun, or work with the solar cycles, the seasonal cycles, the solstice, the equinox. That would be a place where you would have a good entry point. So once you decide on a place where you would like to go and receive a teaching or a message, you can approach this now as a ritual, as a special container or exercise that you are going to undertake in which something important will happen.

And again, we can start off more formal in this and then it can become a little bit more relaxed over time. But I'm gonna lay it out for you in case you want to just begin. So you will arrive at your place wherever you're going and. This works best for me. If I'm alone, I have a really hard time hearing the land and the ways that I need to hear them when I'm with other people.

But you know, you can of course go with others if you want to. I know places without other humans are not available to everyone, so it's okay if there are other people around, but I encourage you to just kind of not engage and just see if you can find the most private place you can. So you arrive and you make some kind of threshold of some kind.

It could be sticks on the ground or rocks, or especially made kind of threshold that you brought with you. And you're going to step from one side to the other and you're gonna step onto the land across this threshold. You can introduce yourself to the land, and I encourage you to do this out loud if you can, and you're gonna state your intentions.

Again, crossing the threshold is kind of like we're there at someone's house, we're knocking on the door, and we're waiting to be let in. We're not just gonna barge in, right? And then when the door is opened, we're gonna introduce ourselves, hi, I am such and such. I'm here because I want to receive a message and teaching from you today.

Or, I'm here because I want to deeply listen and learn from you today. You are never anonymous to the land. The land always knows that your presence is there because you have an energy about you. So the trees know that you're there. The birds know the ground, knows that you are there. So it's better to introduce yourself and state why you're there than to just sort of skulk on through.

You know what I mean? So once you're across the threshold and you have introduced yourself and stated your intention. You need to decide or play with the idea that everything that happens from now until you are done with this ritual is meaningful, is a communication of some kind. So what you see there is important and has meaning.

What you encounter, the weather, everything that happens because you're in this ritualized container, is a message of some kind. And you'll know which messages are really for you and what's just, you know, the land doing what the land does. So at that point, this would be a good time for you to make an offering to the land or to a tree, or to a rock or a body of water.

Again, stating your intention, offering this in as a sign of your respect. And then I encourage you to start with sitting down listening. Grounding and just seeing what you notice. The land loves to be admired and noticed. We all do. So what's happening here? What does it look like? How are the trees moving?

How's the wind? What are the animals doing? What are the insects doing? Just taking it in and after a time when you feel ready and you feel like it's appropriate, I encourage you to speak out loud and have a conversation with the land. You can absolutely ask the land questions, express your emotions, share your troubles, share your joy.

I encourage you to pay close attention to what you notice in response. There are many ways to hear the land speak. You might have emotions that come up. You might have sensations in your body, something hurting or feel feeling really light in your chest or whatever it is. You might be able to hear something, hear a word, or hear a sentence in response.

You might have visions or see images that are like flashes of insight or response. You might notice signs on the land, so a big gust of wind when you say something or ask a question. Again, everything inside of this container is a communication, so noticing and taking heat of the ones that feel most meaningful to you, and when you feel complete.

I encourage you to stop and say thank you. Maybe you make another offering at this time as a sign of your gratitude, and then make sure you say goodbye. It would be weird or impolite to just leave your friend's house without saying goodbye at all. You know, kind of sneaking out. So say goodbye. Cross the threshold in a good way, and then as you return back to your day-to-day life, make meaning of what you received from the land.

The way that we can rebuild this relationship and strengthen it is not just by going and listening to the land, but changing our lives because of what we hear. If you go to the land and ask for help constantly, and you're getting signs and the ancestors are trying to speak to you through the land, but you don't do anything to change or take their advice.

The connection can kind of atrophy. So I encourage you to take the teachings from the land, seriously, write about them. Let them inform your work. Let them inform your choices. Change the way you relate to your spouse or your loved ones because of it. That's really the heart. I think, of land reconnection is not just the connection itself, but are we willing to be changed by the land and by that relationship.

So in terms of next steps, if I could sort of summarize this for us, one, see if you can believe that the land loves you and wants to get to know you better. And just notice how it feels like to even imagine that being true. Second, approach the land with more consent. Go slower. Ask and wait for a response and see if you can approach yourself that way To three, show that you care with the land through spending time with them, making offerings, going back to the same places, tracking patterns, giving away your grief.

Do important things with them. Host important occasions with the land. Learn from them. Ask if they would like you to bring friends. Would they like you to have a gathering there? In my experience, many places on the land wish more humans would be there in a good way. Not some rowdy unkind festival with a bunch of, you know, the.

Garbage and waste and all of that, but humans coming, taking in the beauty of the land, appreciating the land, tending to the land in a good way, that would be really special. I kind of lost track of my numbers, but the other, the other thing we talked about was to turn to the land for teachings whenever you need them, and to emulate and incorporate their wisdom into your life.

Just like we talked about with the ancestors, the web of life, sending signs and the five elements. The land can't fix everything for you. The land can't do for you what you need to do for yourself, but the land can absolutely help us return to our own St. Sturdiness so that we can show up in the ways that we have to so that we can show up grounded, humble, courageous, patient.

Not addicted to our phones and to the daily grind, but clear sighted. So land reconnection is absolutely a practice that will build over time. I hope I've given you some places to begin. It's okay to start really small. It can be really small. And the only way humanity will continue to exist is if we reconnect to the land in a much more humble, committed way that is guided first by love.

That is guided through humility. That is a relationship recreated because we want to be there because we know places and are known by them, not just because we feel obligated to take care of the earth, but because we feel entwined and entangled with it. And because of that, we feel a responsibility just like we do to our beloveds, that we make a life with.

This is something that most of us with European descent haven't really experienced before because of the legacy of colonization that we've lived through or have perpetuated. Most of us haven't felt so rooted that we love a place and we want to take care of it. And so there can be ti that can take time and it can again, start very small with just a little patch of land that we go to regularly or that we live with, and I encourage you to just begin however and wherever you can.

I hope today's episode has been a blessing to you. This formally concludes our summer of support series, and I hope you will re-listen to the episodes if you need. I hope you'll start with one area of support and continue to draw up what you need, asking for science and synchronicities, asking for practical help every day from your wise and well ancestors.

Getting to know your primary element and flowing in a natural way through your life. Letting the land love you, letting the land teach you, and could you strengthen your sources of support in these areas so that before you turn. To other humans for support, you are tapping into these first or regularly or primarily so that when you come to your human kin, it's from a place of fortification.

And that doesn't mean we come and have to be perfect, and we have no more needs. And I'm not saying that human relationships aren't incredible and essential, but I hope I've conveyed through this series. That you have immense, vast, loving support from so many more places than just the human community that you're a part of.

So thank you so much for coming on this journey with me. I hope you've been really blessed by it. I'm not totally sure what's next for the show. We will be back in the autumn season. I have an idea for a theme, but it doesn't usually get clear until the season gets closer. So my sense is that I will absolutely be back with new episodes in September once we move through the autumn equinox.

But, uh, we'll just have to see, it has to ripen a little bit more. And I know I need to take the month of August off, um, from making these so that I can refill myself a little bit. But the summer of support, I guess, actually isn't over because we still have this class on July 29th, and I'd love to have you there.

We will be harvesting all of this material in your life, and I would love to see you at this class. Again, it's Tuesday, July 29th. It's called The First Harvest. You can find it at a wild new work.com/events. I will still be sending my regular weekly essays. Between now and when the next season of the show starts.

I will take a little bit of time off from those as well in August. But if you'd like to stay in touch or go deeper, my newsletter is a great place to start and you can find that@awildnewark.com. Thank you again to all of the Eagle Creek members who are pitching in financially every month to help make this work sustainable.

I really appreciate your material loving support. I hope all of you take such good care. I hope you feel just incredible amounts of support. I know that life is a lot. At all times, and especially right now, and I hope that you have found some new source of fortification because you deserve it. And I know that as you feel that and become sturdy, you also bring more to the village and we're all blessed by your fortification.

So may you be so well and I will see you on the other side.