Knowing the Spirit of the Land

Living climate abundance at home

Photo by petr sidorov on Unsplash

So, here I am at 62 year old, living in the forest, and writing. It’s a good life. But this week, it is hard to think of such a thing as a “climate abundant life” as Los Angeles burns, Dallas gets iced, and half a foot of snow falls across the mid Atlantic states… again. And yet, this is precisely the challenge. If your home or business was burned, you are one of those for whom any solution to climate change is already too late. It is easy for everyone else to fall into a state of helplessness, especially as government seems to be going in the wrong direction after our last election. Still, we must live and we must lead. We want to do what we can to account for every increment possible, and we also want to live good lives. For me, this has led me to consideration of my relationship with this land where I live.

I seek a lively relationship with the land, the forest, and the water of this area. I have ten acres that can be treated well and turned into wonderful living. A garden. Homestead. Trails. Serving guests. I love all this. I want to experiment with permaculture here, or create a homestead process that works in harmony with earth. I want to work the systems — from seed to table to compost. All of it in that endless cycle while living as best I can until the place I live gets hit with a catastrophe, which is not inevitable but possible. Therefore, each step in this process needs to be its own reward — not just an “investment” for the future, but its own joy for the doing itself. In fact, the oncoming challenges of climate change drive me into that kind of awareness.

But my notions of connecting with the land go well beyond these economic conditions. My wooded ten acres is a microcosm in nature. In addition to the production of nature, it is loaded with spirit. Spirit I do not know yet. I know this from when I lived north of Duluth many years ago. The spirit of that land held me and fed me in many ways. It even protected me and my family. My dreams rose up out of that land, and this was the first time I became aware of the profound differences between an imagination that is native to this continent and one that is harkening back to Europe. This isn’t about the cultures, per se; it is about the spirits of the land and the imaginative energy that comes from it.

For example, I have worked with Greek mythology for most of my adult life. Although that mythology underpins a whole lot of western culture, it is native only to Greece. That’s all fine, but when Zeus comes to Wisconsin, things get weird. He doesn’t belong here. Many of our native beings are reflected in local native American culture — in the form of white buffaloes and tricksters and old crone woman. I am not suggesting an appropriation of those cultural beings, but rather a listening to the land. When one listens carefully here, you don’t hear Zeus. At least, not in the land. You can hear him careening across the capitalist office culture and the domineering labor relationship, but he does not come up out of the land. Those are different spirits and different gods we need to listen to. In this place, I can finally lean into that listening. I can pay attention to the little people, as some call them, and I can be present to this world without the imposition of my cultural upbringing. This is part of the great joy of living now. Time to listen. Time to watch. And this is what I am living into.

This listening takes time… that may be why it took until now to engage it. I have found that it happens outside and in every corner of my land — near the trees, in the grass, along a trail, deep in a ravine, or even next to the stone wall I built. The listening also requires silence, and it is always profound when the listening arises into the unconscious as in dreams. I have a poem about that and how it spoke to the seminal experience of my life — the death of my late wife. That poem came right out of this land in a dream.

I haven’t yet heard the faeries, but I’ve been told they are here. I’m not yet connected into the mycelial network underground either — you know, the deep earth connections where mushrooms grow. But the eagle has called. And I have tracked the bobcat and the wolf. And I learned that trees speak their own language, though I don’t understand it yet. I am building a relationship with that special spot I call “garden,” where I pour things I understand to have fertility — compost, manure, and leaves — and where sometimes I pray for the spiritual energy it needs. I walk the land often, frequently attending the spirit grave my human community created for my late wife. It is a place of healing, and grief. It is a porthole to the other world where she now resides. All this on one piece of land. So much to be explored and experienced without taking a single step to anywhere else in the world. Staying in one place and paying attention is a climate abundant strategy.

Because things are so rich here, I call the world to myself and my place. People come. Friends who need respite. Travelers on their way north stop by overnight. This constant churn of people comes into me, and I happily host them. We talk. We cook. We eat. We connect. And when they leave, I return to the solitude and my relationship with this place. This is one of the great gifts of my life now.

I am focused not on turning away from something I enjoy but on turning toward a new life — toward the opportunities to live, learn, and understand the place that I occupy. There’s no self-denial by not flying to another country; rather, I choose not to fly because there is so much vitality to engage right here. I don’t choose to go vegan to deny myself meat, but rather, I become accidentally vegan because of the joy of growing my own food in the garden and preparing it in my own kitchen. I am choosing into and engaging a different life rather than avoiding the one that has been deemed negative.

My focus on the present moment and the present place opens all these possibilities. Many spiritual practices speak of focusing on the present moment, but few focus on the present place. For me, the two go together, and in their dance together, and new magic is discovered.

It’s been said that the missing ingredient in environmental activism is love — a true love of nature and the land. A love that derives from deep knowledge and spiritual awareness. A love that goes beyond species counts, degrees of temperature rise, and the laments of lost resources. Such a love sees not only the beauty of nature, but also her endless violence. It pays attention to the spirits of the land and engages them. It hears the elven voices and scribes their poetry. It matches the dreams as well as the nightmares that arise from that land. This love embraces it all. There is no sacrifice, just pure joy. In experiencing this, we come to know the true spirit of the land, and through it, the Earth itself. I can think of no greater gift and no deeper practice than this engagement. For in this, one experiences the true rapture of being alive!

Anthony Signorelli

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