Connect With Your Land
an early Earth Day essay
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With each passing year, I find my bond with the land I live upon deepening and expanding. Years of paying attention have transformed my life, how I live, and how I am in my inner being.
Of course, I do things like gardening with native plants, keeping a nature journal, feeding the birds, and learning as much as I can about my area's plants, animals, geography, and history, but the great secret is observing.
I say this because gardening, nature journalling, and even keeping a bird feeder are beyond some people's grasp. Age, ailments, physical limitations, HOAs, urban environments, and more can stand in the way of more active engagement with the land you live on. That’s why I want to emphasize that observation is the most important element and the key to living in harmony with the Earth and achieving that deep sense of belonging and connection we crave and need.
Paying attention is free and can be done anywhere and through any of your five senses. Nature is resilient and adaptive and can be found popping up even in the heart of the largest city.
We belong to the earth, and if that connection is impaired, severely limited, or severed altogether, we will suffer in our souls, our bodies, and our minds. This is why even general outdoor activities like walking or hiking have tremendous health benefits. More intentional activities like forest bathing, nature journaling, nature photography, and gardening bring us even more healing benefits. Finally, when you go deep and cultivate a spiritual connection to the earth, you begin to experience a transformation that transcends mere activity. It’s then that cycles, patterns, connections, compassion, oneness, and awareness of divinity sparkling in all of creation reveal themselves to you. That is a life-altering moment.
I’m going to share something that might be a bit of bitter medicine to some of you, but I don’t want you to take offense because it’s exactly how I began. Over many years of teaching nature journaling, I saw that many people fall into this predicament. So, if you recognize yourself, know that you’re not alone and that there are so many easy things you can do to remedy your situation.
I love the natural world. Animals, trees, flowers, birds, insects, rocks, rivers, lakes, oceans, sun, moon, stars, all of it. I always have. One of my core archetypes is The Nature Child. I grew up in suburbia, though fortunately, there was a large wood across the street from my childhood home. My family, immediate and extended, were all city folk from Brooklyn and Queens, New York. I had no role models for being in a relationship with nature. Yet there I was, hand-feeding squirrels and birds in my backyard, begging for a little plot of earth to plant seeds in like Mary from The Secret Garden, and freaking my parents out at age four when I began petting the prairie dogs at the Bronx Zoo.
Fast forward a few decades, and I’m living in Connecticut. I have young children, and I want them to grow up knowing and loving the natural world. One summer day I walked out my front door and looked around at our yard and I realized that I didn’t know most of what was growing there. I knew the big tree in the front yard was an oak, pretty obvious from the acorns in the fall, and the tree at the corner of the property was a maple; we were hockey fans growing up, and the Canadian Maple Leafs logo gave it away. But all the other trees, shrubs, and weeds(?), wildflowers(?) beyond the dandelion remained nameless, an anonymous tangle of green ignored and overlooked.
In the fall, I wanted a bird feeder. I hung it in what I thought might be a juniper tree. The birds began to arrive. Cardinal, that’s the red one. Check. Blue Jay, that’s the blue one. Check. Stripey brown, Sparrow. Check. Other birds arrived, but they were strangers to me.
By spring, it was obvious to me that while I “loved” nature, I knew so little about her. Sure, I had plenty of experiences in nature as a child, playing with Hot Wheels cars and Barbie Dolls at the roots of a huge tree, collecting minnows at the beach, seeing box turtles in the summer, feeding the backyard squirrels, but those childhood encounters only took me so far. As an adult, I began to recognize that “loving” nature wasn’t enough, and what I was feeling was a deep call to anchor myself in a relationship with nature in a way that was informed, reverent, and sacred.
So maybe that’s you. You “love” nature, but you’re not really in a relationship with it. You don’t know one tree from another beyond the most obvious, same with birds and flowers. Rocks are, well, just rocks. The seasons come and go, and you like some more than others, but you don’t really know the secret ways that nature unfolds each season. What is the first sign of spring? What comes next? What’s the first bird species to migrate back in the spring, which is the last to leave in the autumn? There are hundreds of questions like these to ask and even more to know and understand, and maybe that’s why it’s easier to just “love” nature from afar. You sigh at the sight of green trees, beautiful lakes, and amazing mountains. Nature is a goddess, cool and removed like a smooth white marble statue on a pedestal. But to love from afar pales in comparison to a passionate relationship that’s intimate and reciprocal.
I’m writing today to encourage you to take your relationship and your “love” for nature to the next level. Do that by truly being curious and paying attention. Pick one thing to watch in your surroundings. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, like you’ll never be knowledgeable about nature, start with something really big and obvious that most other people are oblivious to. For example, follow the rising and/or setting of the sun. Pick a stationary landmark like a tree or building and begin noticing where the sun rises or sets in relationship to that landmark as the seasons progress. Check-in once a month or at the beginning of each new season. You’ll likely be amazed at how much the location of sunrise and sunset changes across a year. For something with more changes over a shorter amount of time, follow the cycles of the moon across an entire month. Soon, you’ll begin to understand the pattern that governs the schedule of moonrise and moonset and its relationship to the phases of the moon. Can you read about this in a book or on a website? Sure, but discovering it for yourself through observation guarantees that you’re not likely to ever forget it.
Some years ago, I taught an online nature journaling course. The video below was part of it, and I created it to share my own experiences and inspire others to deepen their relationship with nature. If you have five and a half minutes, sit with some tea and hear what I have to say.
There’s no shortage of resources online and in person when it comes to getting to know nature more deeply. But the secret really is observation, and there are so many ways to start.
You could set out to gain an overview of where you live. What’s your yard or local park like? Is the ground dry, or wet, are you near a water source, are the trees evergreen or deciduous? Is it mostly sunny, or is there shade? Are there lots of birds and small mammals? Do you see bees, dragonflies, and butterflies? Get up early and listen for the dawn chorus. Do you hear lots of birds or just a few? In the evening, do you hear insects or frogs?
Set yourself to the goal of identifying five birds, five mammals, five insects, five trees, and five flowers in your immediate surroundings. Five too many? Then go with three. This is supposed to be a joyful experience, not a school assignment. You should be motivated by deep love and curiosity.
Once you start to actually notice what’s around you, you can begin asking questions and seeking answers based on your interests. Make friends with a single tree. Identify it, and watch it through an entire year. Of course, this means making time daily or weekly to get outside to watch, look, and listen. You may also want to keep a notebook to jot things down. What caught your attention, what did you see, where, when, what was the weather like? Your notebook or journal can be words, drawings, or both.
There is another level of relationship with nature, and that’s a spiritual one. It deserves at least one, if not several, essays to even begin to explore the depths of what we can discover about ourselves and the unseen realms that are just behind the veil of trees, flowers, animals, stars, moon, and sun that constitute our physical reality.
A Word About Healing in Nature
Nature is a great gift to us. She can relieve us of so many emotional burdens and hurts. She can listen. She can absorb, grief, anger, loneliness and sadness. If you need her she is there and you don’t have to wait until you can identify five trees before she will offer you her healing embrace. Takes to the forest, meadows and mountains if you need relief. Watch the birds in the trees, sit among the boulders walk ankle deep at the edge of the sea and experience how Nature can heal you. Her immensity, age and wisdom are always available to you.
This Earth Day, April 22nd, I encourage you to make a commitment to level up your relationship with Nature. Observe, explore, engage, and turn your love of nature into actions that initiate a deeper experience and closer communion with the natural world.
In the Nature Section of the Topics Library (which you can find in the right sidebar of the Hedge Mystic Website), I recommend you begin with these essays to inspire your nature journey…
Where are you in your relationship with Nature? Are you at the loving from afar stage? If so, how will you deepen your understanding of and relationship with the earth? Are you already deeply connected to the land you live on? How did you develop that connection? Let’s share our experiences and encourage each other to value connection and love of nature.
The comments section is a safe and welcoming space to share your insights and experiences.
Comments and conversation are always appreciated and enjoyed, so feel free to let your voice be heard. I read all of them and endeavor to respond to each one.
Thank you for reading Hedge Mystic and participating in this vibrant and growing community of creative, spiritual humans. You are always welcome here, appreciated, and loved.
Lovely, piece. And, thanks for the glimpse in your journal. I saw some swallows on a short hike yesterday. Now, I want to try drawing them :)
Such a beautiful essay that truly speaks to me. Thank you!