The Land Can Restore Your Ancestral Memory

We are not too far gone.

Within your bones reside ancestral memories of knowing and being known by the land. The bodies of your ancestors, whose bodies gave you life, evolved in an intimate relationship with the trees, the birds, and the sacred Waters around them, and somewhere in your being, you remember that. 

You remember the peace of sitting at the base of a great tree like Oak, or the power of doing ritual at the Sea. Somewhere nestled in your organs are memories of what it was like to live in Village or have a kinship with an animal like Deer.

If those memories live in your body, then they live in the bodies of the beings we share this Earth with, too. 

Somewhere in the heartwood of an Oak resides a memory of what it was like to be loved by humans. The Sea remembers your peoples' songs, and she misses them. The Deer carry ancestral memories of what it meant to be respected by the human people, and to give up their bodies so that those humans could be fed. 

The land remembers you. 

The land remembers us. 

Some days, I feel like the human community is too far gone to remember what we need to know right now. More people are comfortable talking to ChatGPT than they are with the Tree in their backyard. But then I feel the old knowing in my bones and I hear about your old knowing, and I become convinced again that we are not too far gone.

I've been writing for a few weeks now about the dream I have to live in Village with the land and other humans in Silver Creek Canyon. To be totally honest, the idea of stewarding 440 acres of wild land feels way easier than the idea of creating a healthy community with other human people. 

Normally, when people feel called to live in intentional community, they begin by bringing other humans together, discussing values and priorities, and then they go and look for land together.

The project I'm inviting you into right now takes a different approach: I asked for a land to show themselves to me, and I believe the human community will need to form alongside / with / for that land. For this to work, I believe that the land needs to be the primary focus, the primary relationship, and all else should grow from there.

To be in Village together in a good way, we need the Earth's body to remind us of what still lives in our bodies: immense acceptance, reservoirs of patience, and the knowing of how to live in right relationship again.

A Grandmother Oak at Oak Island, taken by me in 2025.

Even if you're not called to live in Village right now, the Earth's body is where you can go to have your ancestral memory restored.

When we spend time with a healthy creek, wild birds, or with plants who are free to grow as they know how to do, something in us remembers…Beneath words and modern ideas, an older knowing in us awakens to what it means to live, and to live well–we remember how to flow with ease, stretch our wings, or bloom when it's the right time for us. 

Last week I wrote about how this is the season to "go big or go home," meaning that now is an excellent time to reach, open, and claim that which is meant for you right now.

If you're not sure what that is or how to expand energetically, I encourage you to go spend some quiet time with a wild place, where wild beings will show you how.

I know that in your body lives the memory of how to be here in a good way. And I know that the more-than-human beings around us remember when we came in a good way, too.

Let us all remember, then, and move toward making that memory real again. 

This is a piece I shared in one of my weekly newsletters. If you’d like to receive my writing in your inbox, you can sign up here.