How to Connect With and Speak to the Land
It’s easy to simply inhabit a land. Each of us lives in a physical location we can assign meaning and identities to, a place which evokes a certain feeling or atmosphere. But it’s not often we take the time to connect deeply with the space around us, communicate with it and listen to what it has to offer in return.
Let’s say Person A takes a walk in the woods. They have an hour until they need to be back for their next virtual work meeting, and they’re anxious that they need to finishing getting their 10,000 steps in today before that, as they won’t have time later on. They head to their usual walking route, headphones playing a podcast on how to better themselves, and start off down the forest path. Person A passes the great old oak trees, and is pleased by the surroundings, but they do not stop to ponder it further or press their hands to the oak bark.
To their left, a rabbit scurries into the hedgerow, but they do not hear this, and never get to see the white of the tail as it flees into the leaves. Their phone is buzzing, and they frequently pull it out of their pocket to check for notifications and their most recently updated step count. Person A walks quickly, checking the time, and doesn’t hear the call of the mighty wren, or hear the babbling of the brook nearby. Person A leaves feeling disconnected, frantic, and dissatisfied.
Now let’s look at Person B. This person has switched their phone onto ‘do not disturb’ when they walk through the same woods and carved out a little space for themselves to wander. They’ve decided to walk headphone free, listening to the sound of the leaves rustling in the breeze, the chitter of the sparrows, and the rushing water all around them. They have worries, and anxieties of their work and family life, but they let the thoughts flow by, instead choosing to focus on the butterfly that has landed on a hawthorn blossom in front of them.
They whisper a ‘hello’ to the butterfly and let their mind wander, considering the colours of its wings and wondering where it has come from, what it looked like as a caterpillar, and what it is doing today. They put their hands against the old oak trees, feeling their bark and watching the ant walking up the ridges. Person B leaves feeling content, connected and full of wonder.
This post is all about engaging with the land around you, understanding the spirit of a place, and how you can deepen your connection to a place. I hope you find it useful and helpful on your own journey.
Connecting with and communicating with the land is something I’ve been thinking about for a long while. Many folktales and ancient stories of lands all over the world explore this idea and how the land interacts with us. In the Western world, we seem to have this idea that plants and the natural world are some kind of dull, inanimate being with no presence or spirit of their own.
It’s only in fairly recent years that the science has caught up with what indigenous people have been sharing for centuries; that the landscape around us communicates in ways we simply cannot often perceive with our limited human understanding. We now know that trees send complex messages to one another through underground networks of fungi, and that plants share information on threats with one another. It stands to reason that there is a wealth of communication and connection available to us if we look deeper than speech and what we can perceive with our eyes.
Person A mentioned above is not a bad person by any means, nor are they doing anything ‘wrong’, but I would encourage you to consider the approach of Person B and carve out space to experience the world like this when you can. I’ve been on many fast, rushed, or ‘fitness-focused’ walks, and they have their place, too. But to really deepen your connection with the land you’re on, you will need to take things at a slower place.
I want to share some practical tips with you here in this post.
Speak to Everything
This is one of the most transformative and simple practises you can do, and I guarantee it will be life changing. I will show you how this looks in a practical sense for me.
When I visit my local woods that make up my daily walk, I whisper (either aloud, or in my mind) a greeting to many of the things I see. I say, ‘Hello, trees. Hello, earth. Hello, flowers. Hello, birds. Hello, insects. Hello, sky. Hello, water. Hello, rock…’ and so on. By whispering my little incantation in this way, I am acknowledging both the physicality and the spirits of the land, and welcoming them into my awareness.
You can start with a simple generic greeting, or I usually take it further. I will set my hands on a tree, and say hello to it specifically. If I wait a few moments with my hand to the tree, often they will have a message for me if I am ready to listen (yes, I really mean this - but perhaps this is a post for another day!). Or if I see a particular bird, I will stay while and speak with it. Or perhaps I will cup a wildflower in my hand, whispering to it.
When walking in the Irish mountains recently, I was enamoured with the hawthorns trees and their frothing white blooms at this time of year. The hawthorn is a sacred tree, associated with the fae realms, and each time I saw one of these solitary hawthorns dotting the hillside, I set my hand on my chest and nodded to it with a slight bow of respect. Why did I do this? It just felt like the right thing to do when I saw them.
A few moments later, after greeting these particular hills and trees and walking a while in the hills, I found an incredible deer antler lying waiting for me in the grass. It felt like such a gift from the land, it brought tears to my eyes. I shouted aloud, ‘Thank you, mountains!’, and felt so much gratitude for the land. This small moment could just be seen as a coincidence, but I prefer to look for the deeper meaning and see it as a relationship with the space.
I promise you, that greeting and acknowledging things in this way is such a transformative thing to do. Give it a go and see what happens. P.S. You can watch a video of the experience I had here:
Get Curious
One of the other key things I would recommend for connecting to the land is to simply get curious and explore everything. There is so much beauty and wonder in the world waiting to be found, and it only requires you to take a proper look and start asking questions.
When you next find something in your land that interests you, I encourage you to pull on that thread. Perhaps it’s getting to know the wild herbs in your area and how to use them, or perhaps it’s a tiny little bird. It could be that you are fascinated by different types of rocks, or learning each species of bee in your local space.
Once you find something, engage with it and learn about it, it enables you to really begin to understand it and appreciate its role in the world. You can build connections and relationships with the natural world around you by doing so, and even pick up new hobbies and interests.
To become actively engaged with the world means we really begin to participate in it. We take note of what is around us, and we discover all we can.
Follow your intuition
Another way of describing this could be to follow your childlike-wonder. We get so used to following routes, keeping to the footpath and not listening to our own ‘pointless’ whims. I’m not encouraging you to get lost in the woods, unable to find your way back, but I am encouraging you to listen to the little thoughts that crop up in your mind.
Perhaps you are walking one day and spot an interesting tree in the distance, or there’s a certain location that calls to you. Like a child, follow your thoughts and see what you can find. Perhaps the land is speaking to you in ways that you can’t hear in speech, perhaps it is guiding you to something you need to see or realise. Follow your whims, your intuition, and led yourself be guided, unspoken, by the land.
Tend to something
Reciprocity cannot be overlooked, as everything works in symbiosis and delicate balance in the natural world. Tending to a space can create a deep connection you wouldn’t be able to find otherwise. Perhaps you begin by picking up litter as you walk through the woods, or by watering or guerrilla gardening and planting seeds when you’re out.
You could create a garden of your own, or get involved in a community garden or project that will help you work with the land. Give the gift of your time, effort, and love into the spaces around you and you will see what they have to offer you in return.
Look for Connections
Much like me with the antler on the hillside, you can search for connections everywhere you go and choose to see the beauty and magic. Another example of this could be seeing feathers or flowers at a meaningful time, asking questions and choosing to see the answers in the landscape, or simply looking for the connection between things and how they work together.
Some folk choose to gather something from the landscape and bring it into their home, decorating their surroundings or using it as an object in divination.
I hope you found this post helpful and some of it resonated with you. I’d encourage you to follow your intuition to connect with the land and deepen your connection to nature in life, it is extremely rewarding.
