Such beautiful photos, especially that one of the stream. I think consistent walking, seeing the land in all its moods, is the best way to get to know a place. There are longer-form, seasonal patterns that only long observation reveals. I've lived in the same place for 13 years, and I feel I'm starting to understand it, but I can also see it's a lifetime's work. I'm lucky to live right by the sea, which is such an awe-inspiring, powerful, changeable force. I love the in-between, liminal, intertidal zone the most- it's so alive, never the same from one tide to the next.
Thank you, Sharon. I have recently moved to a place I have great difficulty connecting with. I moved from my beloved Scotland to Texas to marry my soul mate, who has lived in Texas for over 30 years. I find it to be a desperately sad and ugly environment, arid and hot, and destroyed by careless money making humans and their love of cars. Fortunately our house is in a small oasis surrounded by trees and visited by a huge variety of birds. I am working on getting to know the birds and trees, and discover what I can learn from this place I would never normally have chosen to live, and how I can help heal at least the patch of earth I’m on. Your work helps me.
Oh Sue. I deeply resonate with you . I share similar story, I moved from my beloved California to Texas , and I found it the same way you describe it , I found a wasteland, my soul hurt there, I felt the pain of the land. And I think I was in the better part of it outside of Austin. I lasted less than a year came back to California. I am glad your home is a sanctuary where you can connect to nature .
Thanks so much for your heart warming understanding! Yes - it is a soul hurting feeling. It seems that many Californians are moving to Texas for the cheaper property costs and lower taxes.There's some good things about Austin, but I can totally understand you needing to move back. So far I am coping with it if I know I can have frequent trips away, especially to my homelands of Scotland and New Zealand. I hope you've able to resume your good lifestyle back in California.
Yes, I saw the incoming of Californians, I moved 5 years ago, when it kind of started . I moved for community , there are wonderful earth based communities there. I have wonderful memories or some natural places and experiences there , like vision quest and ceremony. But California is home to my soul. Yes, traveling to your homeland is the medicine you can enjoy . Hope you can find like minded community. If interested to connect with me, I can share resources or places I have found in Texas to have a nice nature connection . Or online communities like what I am holding . Check out my website www.teresaechaide.com. Many blessings to you and enjoy the solar eclipse tomorrow that you will be able to witness !!! 💜🌎☀️
I never tire Sharon, of reading your evocative descriptions of a beloved landscape{s)and the deep connections you have made. I wonder if you agree that once we have learnt this way of being, this allowing of ourselves to fall into the enchantment of a place, the land is ready to welcome us even in places we may not have chosen to be - and somehow there is an immediate recognition. The land can almost read our hearts and draw us in in unexpected ways. We stumble across old stories that remind us of the myth of a former beloved place, and we begin to realise that all the voices of the land are connected to the same magic. I haven't perhaps put this very clearly but I know the place I live in has picked up on some sadness and longing and is offering kindness and grounding and showing me at the same time a new face to fall in love with - and to step out of myself. There are big challenges in my life at the moment and somehow I feel I'm in the right place to face them! Isn't it all such a wonderful mystery.
Yes, absolutely. I've always thought of it as a life skill; once you figure it out, you carry it around with you. The only place it ever (mostly) didn't work for me was Wales, where I lived through the pandemic. But that was a complicated time and a complicated place, and I think it' s natural that we just don't resonate with some places anyway –they just don't fit us and vice versa – just as we don't resonate with all people.
Mine is a story pond in a prairie place. Though I have lived here all my life, I’m not sure I know its lore. I’ve never thought to ask the tall grasses, my friends- the birds, a blue night heron too. Thanks for the tip. Off to listen...
Thank you for this piece Sharon. I am still rooting here in West Cork and am just participating in a group called “Heritage Keepers” where we are looking at the culture, folklore, ecology and land use in our very local area. It’s really interesting and not just about the science. Xx
Thank you Sharon for your courage in being a bridge between two quite different views of our relationship with nature. I'm from an 'environmental' background and know there are more people in the field who hold, or crave, animistic understandings of nature than let on. I'm sure your talk planted seeds in listeners that will eventually come to fruition in all kinds of interesting ways. Very inspiring!
Oh that’s interesting, thank you. I did wonder how many were in the closet! And I always believed in saying it anyway, because you never know who might listen who could change the world.
This really resonated with me - thank you! I’m on a journey from being scientific about nature to a more connected and enchanted relationship. I feel like I’m waking up. I’d have been one of the polite doubters back when you gave the talk, but not any more. There is a place in the New Forest (I live on its edge), a crossing of paths in the middle of a plantation that long ago used to be a hill of hazel (it’s called Hasley Hill), where I always, always hear bees. Even in winter! I puzzle over what it means and hope it will one day reveal itself.
And isn't that just how we grow, and grow into relationship with the world around us ... and so everything changes and reveals its own becomings, as it will to you.
After reading this I had a "moment" this evening as I was walking my dog. As he was tumbling through the snow I looked up to see (what I now know as I looked it up afterwards) Castor and Pollox. I experienced a moment of instant connection to the universe.
I loved reading this, Sharon. Even though I'm a scientist by background, I never was attracted to quantification or list-making, but much more attuned to the tug of wild places that were entirely alive.
Thank you for being a voice for the perspective you write about so beautifully!
Thank you for writing this. Reading it gave me clarity about some of my experiences while walking in the forest near my house. I have often had folk tale like imagery pop into my mind's eye/my imagination, while walking through different natural areas where I live. Often the same images pop up while passing the same natural beings at different times. For example, an image of an old woman living in a forested cabin, brewing teas with a wood stove burning. I understand now that these images are born of the meeting place between me and beings of the natural world and the Land. This is a new and welcome insight as I have been trying to figure out why these images are so vivid and so real to me. It's like they are alive. I understand that they very much are alive, and are part of the Imaginal realm, and my mythical imagination. As a primary school educator, I wonder how I can help my students hold onto and develop their own mythical imagination and connect it to the natural world where we live? I agree with you that this is an inborn human capacity that should be encouraged and developed at this time.
You’ve planted a seed in me that wants to explore more about the place where I live. There really don’t seem to be any legends about this place other than from an Indigenous perspective. And I didn’t grow up in an environment that was at all connected to spirituality and the land. I’m looking forward to what I might discover.
As I said, everyone polite, most perplexed, some enthusiastic! But I didn't really feel like part of the crowd. If you show up with an open heart, lots of things will discover you, I'm sure!
Loved reading this, it’s so easy to get wrapped up in daily comings and goings, human business and all its distractions, “things” we deem as so important, and I have many... This morning reading this reminded me, pulled me back into my body and its senses and a deep place of longing for connection to the land and its mysteries, and my place within it. Thank you.
Hi - I’m a New Zealander too who once lived in Australia for 21 years without ever being able to feel it was home. I can relate to what you say. I simply couldn’t connect to it and my life there was a struggle on many levels. The only food for my soul came from loving the birds and the marsupials in the environment.
Such beautiful photos, especially that one of the stream. I think consistent walking, seeing the land in all its moods, is the best way to get to know a place. There are longer-form, seasonal patterns that only long observation reveals. I've lived in the same place for 13 years, and I feel I'm starting to understand it, but I can also see it's a lifetime's work. I'm lucky to live right by the sea, which is such an awe-inspiring, powerful, changeable force. I love the in-between, liminal, intertidal zone the most- it's so alive, never the same from one tide to the next.
Thank you, Sharon. I have recently moved to a place I have great difficulty connecting with. I moved from my beloved Scotland to Texas to marry my soul mate, who has lived in Texas for over 30 years. I find it to be a desperately sad and ugly environment, arid and hot, and destroyed by careless money making humans and their love of cars. Fortunately our house is in a small oasis surrounded by trees and visited by a huge variety of birds. I am working on getting to know the birds and trees, and discover what I can learn from this place I would never normally have chosen to live, and how I can help heal at least the patch of earth I’m on. Your work helps me.
Oh Sue. I deeply resonate with you . I share similar story, I moved from my beloved California to Texas , and I found it the same way you describe it , I found a wasteland, my soul hurt there, I felt the pain of the land. And I think I was in the better part of it outside of Austin. I lasted less than a year came back to California. I am glad your home is a sanctuary where you can connect to nature .
Thanks so much for your heart warming understanding! Yes - it is a soul hurting feeling. It seems that many Californians are moving to Texas for the cheaper property costs and lower taxes.There's some good things about Austin, but I can totally understand you needing to move back. So far I am coping with it if I know I can have frequent trips away, especially to my homelands of Scotland and New Zealand. I hope you've able to resume your good lifestyle back in California.
Yes, I saw the incoming of Californians, I moved 5 years ago, when it kind of started . I moved for community , there are wonderful earth based communities there. I have wonderful memories or some natural places and experiences there , like vision quest and ceremony. But California is home to my soul. Yes, traveling to your homeland is the medicine you can enjoy . Hope you can find like minded community. If interested to connect with me, I can share resources or places I have found in Texas to have a nice nature connection . Or online communities like what I am holding . Check out my website www.teresaechaide.com. Many blessings to you and enjoy the solar eclipse tomorrow that you will be able to witness !!! 💜🌎☀️
I never tire Sharon, of reading your evocative descriptions of a beloved landscape{s)and the deep connections you have made. I wonder if you agree that once we have learnt this way of being, this allowing of ourselves to fall into the enchantment of a place, the land is ready to welcome us even in places we may not have chosen to be - and somehow there is an immediate recognition. The land can almost read our hearts and draw us in in unexpected ways. We stumble across old stories that remind us of the myth of a former beloved place, and we begin to realise that all the voices of the land are connected to the same magic. I haven't perhaps put this very clearly but I know the place I live in has picked up on some sadness and longing and is offering kindness and grounding and showing me at the same time a new face to fall in love with - and to step out of myself. There are big challenges in my life at the moment and somehow I feel I'm in the right place to face them! Isn't it all such a wonderful mystery.
Yes, absolutely. I've always thought of it as a life skill; once you figure it out, you carry it around with you. The only place it ever (mostly) didn't work for me was Wales, where I lived through the pandemic. But that was a complicated time and a complicated place, and I think it' s natural that we just don't resonate with some places anyway –they just don't fit us and vice versa – just as we don't resonate with all people.
Mine is a story pond in a prairie place. Though I have lived here all my life, I’m not sure I know its lore. I’ve never thought to ask the tall grasses, my friends- the birds, a blue night heron too. Thanks for the tip. Off to listen...
Let us know what you hear.
Thank you for this piece Sharon. I am still rooting here in West Cork and am just participating in a group called “Heritage Keepers” where we are looking at the culture, folklore, ecology and land use in our very local area. It’s really interesting and not just about the science. Xx
Perfect!
Thank you Sharon for your courage in being a bridge between two quite different views of our relationship with nature. I'm from an 'environmental' background and know there are more people in the field who hold, or crave, animistic understandings of nature than let on. I'm sure your talk planted seeds in listeners that will eventually come to fruition in all kinds of interesting ways. Very inspiring!
Oh that’s interesting, thank you. I did wonder how many were in the closet! And I always believed in saying it anyway, because you never know who might listen who could change the world.
This really resonated with me - thank you! I’m on a journey from being scientific about nature to a more connected and enchanted relationship. I feel like I’m waking up. I’d have been one of the polite doubters back when you gave the talk, but not any more. There is a place in the New Forest (I live on its edge), a crossing of paths in the middle of a plantation that long ago used to be a hill of hazel (it’s called Hasley Hill), where I always, always hear bees. Even in winter! I puzzle over what it means and hope it will one day reveal itself.
And isn't that just how we grow, and grow into relationship with the world around us ... and so everything changes and reveals its own becomings, as it will to you.
After reading this I had a "moment" this evening as I was walking my dog. As he was tumbling through the snow I looked up to see (what I now know as I looked it up afterwards) Castor and Pollox. I experienced a moment of instant connection to the universe.
How lovely!
I loved reading this, Sharon. Even though I'm a scientist by background, I never was attracted to quantification or list-making, but much more attuned to the tug of wild places that were entirely alive.
Thank you for being a voice for the perspective you write about so beautifully!
Thank you for writing this. Reading it gave me clarity about some of my experiences while walking in the forest near my house. I have often had folk tale like imagery pop into my mind's eye/my imagination, while walking through different natural areas where I live. Often the same images pop up while passing the same natural beings at different times. For example, an image of an old woman living in a forested cabin, brewing teas with a wood stove burning. I understand now that these images are born of the meeting place between me and beings of the natural world and the Land. This is a new and welcome insight as I have been trying to figure out why these images are so vivid and so real to me. It's like they are alive. I understand that they very much are alive, and are part of the Imaginal realm, and my mythical imagination. As a primary school educator, I wonder how I can help my students hold onto and develop their own mythical imagination and connect it to the natural world where we live? I agree with you that this is an inborn human capacity that should be encouraged and developed at this time.
What lovely visions. I’ll be writing more about that imagery in the weeks ahead.
Oh good! I look forward to it.
How, in the end, was your talk received?
You’ve planted a seed in me that wants to explore more about the place where I live. There really don’t seem to be any legends about this place other than from an Indigenous perspective. And I didn’t grow up in an environment that was at all connected to spirituality and the land. I’m looking forward to what I might discover.
As I said, everyone polite, most perplexed, some enthusiastic! But I didn't really feel like part of the crowd. If you show up with an open heart, lots of things will discover you, I'm sure!
Loved reading this, it’s so easy to get wrapped up in daily comings and goings, human business and all its distractions, “things” we deem as so important, and I have many... This morning reading this reminded me, pulled me back into my body and its senses and a deep place of longing for connection to the land and its mysteries, and my place within it. Thank you.
Hi - I’m a New Zealander too who once lived in Australia for 21 years without ever being able to feel it was home. I can relate to what you say. I simply couldn’t connect to it and my life there was a struggle on many levels. The only food for my soul came from loving the birds and the marsupials in the environment.
I know how you feel! Where are you? I lived on the Gold Coast and it was bearable in the winter but it was a short winter.
Perfect!