Letting The Land Lead

I love the diversity and depth of the Oxford Real Farming Conference, a cauldron of transformation in the agro-ecological movement, and from a ‘listening to the land’ perspective, there were two outstanding speakers this year for me, both from Turtle Island, the US. One was master tracker, animal communicator and pioneer of the global ‘nature connection’ movement, Jon Young, talking about ‘Letting The Land Lead’. The second was agro-ecological researcher Lyla June Johnston, present in many wonderful sessions, but most inspiring in her talk about humans as ‘Architects Of Abundance’, showing evidence of how our ancient indigenous ancestors cultivated and shaped the landscapes that we have assumed until now are wild.

My interest in ‘letting the land lead’, the subject of Jon’s talk, started with a report published by the Tapestry Institute in 2022, written by indigenous elders around the world, calling for a different understanding of how we steward our land. Indigenous people’s land stewardship understands that the land is alive, has its own agency, and knows how to heal itself. Indigenous people who have been close to the land for generations, can clearly hear the land, and can steward it in a two-way, collaborative relationship. They have faith their actions are for the best even when they can’t predict the outcomes. They are working within a system that is more intelligent than themselves. Their definition of the land is “all that exists, seen and unseen, on earth and across the entire cosmos, including humans and All Our Relations”.

I have been trying to understand the mechanics of ‘letting the land lead’ in this way of indigenous and collaborative land stewardship for the last couple of years. Many of us do not have access to the indigenous traditions of our lands, we don’t have the original instructions from nature that our ancestors carried within their places for generations, and we have largely forgotten how to listen directly to the land. So looking for a common wild tongue of nature, the voice of the land itself, how to hear it, trust it and work with it has become a quest for me. My conclusion so far is that there are as many ways of listening to the land as there are people with different perceptions. But in his talk at the conference this year, Jon gave one of the best explanations that I’ve heard.

Jon was taught as a child by Tom Brown Jr, who himself was taught by an Apache elder, of the importance of making very close and curious observations of the natural world. He was taught to know its denizens, the plants, trees, animals, birds, insects, not in a biological way as species with general characteristics, but every one he met as an individual. He observed how each one related to others of its kind, how each one related to different kinds, and how each one related to himself. He was taught to hold each being he observed in deep relationship as a ‘medicine bundle’, through aligning himself with the creature, by imitating it and learning to move with it, as we all do as small children, by feeling its movement within him, by absorbing its energy and knowing what it knows of the world, by understanding its magical power, its medicine.

“When we absorb nature in this way” explains Jon, “from the oak tree, from the little Solomon’s Seal growing on the ground, when we absorb all these things, the earth speaks through us, through these many different perspectives and we know better how to care for the earth”. The more bundles we carry, the more perspectives we have on what the land is saying, what it knows, that we with our limited human perceptions, cannot otherwise know. “The land will lead when we develop these connections” he says, “through all our sensory systems, in all our relationships with the plants and animals and trees and birds”. The threads between us will become ropes, with practice and repetition and observation and in the moments we help each other. And when we have ropes with everything, we will hear the land speaking through us.

Many Indigenous people, connected with their land for millenia, have ropes intact, or at least understand the perception and connection required to establish them from an early age. What if we all taught ourselves and our children to do this again? Could we support the land to thrive, is this possible as humans? Lyla June’s research gives us hope for this. She has looked at archeological evidence and found that in the times of our ancient indigenous ancestors, humans were a keystone species in the ecosystem - “a species upon which entire ecosystems depend”. Across the world, when we thought our forebears were “primitive hunter gatherers”, they were in fact gardening, cultivating and enhancing the landscape through regenerative practices, using low-intensity fires, timber harvesting, soil enhancement, carbon sequestration, diversion of rivers and holding back the sea.

The implication of this is clear, she concludes: humans were always and originally needed for nature and the land to thrive. Despite what we might think now about our impact on the natural world, on biodiversity, on climate, we were originally here to steward the land as “part and parcel of the beauty and sanctity of the whole earth”. If we did it then, surely we can do so again? Indigenous people today know the importance of this kind of stewardship that is rooted in “humility, respect, relationality, responsibility and love for the land and water”. Many of us are ready to relearn these ways that help us listen to the land and let the land lead. It’s heartening to see the number of farmers, growers and land stewards who attend these talks, as we come together, from wherever we are, to compare notes on how to make it happen.

Jon’s talk is here https://youtube.com/live/F-8zTHHJ-xo

Plant Teachers, a podcast

In thinking about my own medicine bundles, the Yew Tree has been an important part of my life for the last few years. I am lucky enough to visit the ancient yew of Dartington Hall on a daily basis, I have written with her, taken groups of people to meet her, and recently undertook a Yew Tree initiation ceremony to take our relationship further. The ceremony was held by British Plant Spirit Medicine Woman Emma Fitchett who facilitates a process of fasting, dieta, breathwork and dreaming, along the lines of indigenous plant medicine work all over the world and possibly how our celtic ancestors would have communicated with Yew, in these islands. In the days afterwards I recorded a podcast of her talking with intuitive herbalist Nathaniel Hughes about this idea of plants as elders and teachers of the land, as those ancient beings whose ancestral lines go back further than the advent of the human race. What can we learn about belonging, about beauty and wholeness and balance, from them?

Thus Speak The Plants: https://listeningtothelandpodcast.podbean.com/e/8-thus-speak-the-plants/

Wild Dark Shore, a book

I have lately been entranced by a wonderful animistic story about an island at the edge of the world, by author Charlotte McConaghy. It’s a story about those who live next to the wild remote sea, talking with seals and seeds, and whales and the wind, about treasures that wash in with the tide, about belonging and home and about loving our children in these perilous times. I fully recommend it.