How the Land Calls to Us, and How I Learned to Listen: Anna’s Story of Ritual Building Resilience

There was never a time when the land did not speak to me, just as there has never been a time when it did not speak to you. To all of us. But I did not always know this, and I certainly did not always know how to hear it.

When I was young the earth, along with her flora and fauna, were my friends, my playmates. I would watch carefully as I turned over rocks and logs to spy on their inhabitants below. I would follow their paths, tracking their movements on the ground or in the sky, and I learned from them lessons that even now are difficult to put into words.

More than I can express in language. 

They were my teachers, for a time. Until new teachers and new lessons took their place.

Photo by Anna’s son Henry, age 12

In 2020 I experienced clinical burnout after spending years dedicated to a cause I held as more sacred than myself. I’d spent years pushing past my warning signs, my body’s cries for help. I thought the cause didn’t rest, and so neither could I. It has taken years of recovery to learn that I must meet my passion with sustainable action, and that this looks different for every person and situation.

In the early years of recovering I had to slow down so much more than I would have thought. Like someone learning to walk after injury, I had to learn to interact with the world all over again. Little did I know that things would never be the same.

In 2023 I was diagnosed with my first autoimmune disease, with many more conditions trickling in over time.

What a blow it was!

Everything had changed, especially my capacity. Worse, it fluctuated unpredictably. I worried if I would ever be able to work at all, let alone to give myself over to a cause again. How could I possibly be of use, I wondered. 

I had to learn to slow way down. I can tell you this is a practice I have not perfected. In this slowing down I learned to notice not the fast-paced world of work and people, but the shifting and undulating pace of the natural world around me. 

This was the land calling me back to her.

Around this same time I was beginning to learn an ancient form of divination practiced by my people, ancestors whom I had been trying to build connection with. One aspect of this practice was to take the signs and omens. While I had long practiced rituals, my relationship with them shifted then. This meditative process took time and attention. It required me to be in the present, in the now, with my full self open.

It required me to ask, over and over, “what can I learn from this?”

Yet my capacity, energy, and pain levels varied wildly, so this needed to be accessible or it wasn’t going to happen.

Simply coming fully into the moment and noticing became and continues to be one of my many regular rituals. Rituals that became a lifeline; that continue to bring me back to the land, back to my ancestors, and back to myself. 

Now, Ritual is such an ambiguous word. So many things can be a ritual! In its simplest terms what I’m talking about is an action paired with intention(s). For this story I’m focusing on nourishing/rejuvenating/connective intentions. 

I’ll give some examples:

I enjoy a hot coffee each morning. My ritual may begin as I prepare; boiling water, grinding beans, scooping, pouring, waiting, plunging. My incredible partner usually beats me to this, so more often than not it begins as I take my mug and head outdoors, settling in to observe the natural world, if only just while I drink the coffee.

Each step is a call back to the moment. I allow the process to pull me from my thoughts and hold me in the present moment through sensory experiences:

The smells, warmth, color, taste. The repetitive nature, the rhythm of the work holding me steady.

My intention is to connect to the moment, to open myself to the lessons I may learn as I observe the natural world around me, to allow myself to be cared for by myself, my ancestors, and the land. I watch a pollinator going about his work, resting when he needs to.

A lesson.

I watch the birds come to the feeder, some all at once in a frenzy, jockeying for better positions, while others follow the instruction of their leader who ensures everyone gets a turn.

A lesson.

Photo by Anna’s son, Henry, age 12

An ant following a trail I cannot perceive, the cry of a hawk high above invoking stilled silence, a rabbit with one eye always on me while he nibbles my clover lawn. Lesson, lesson, lesson.

This ritual nourishes me.

It teaches me.

A ritual can also help speak to the animal of your body. While I may know something intellectually, it is not the same as understanding or believing it somatically. 

I work from home, so I lack the clear delineation of leaving a building, spending time traveling, and arriving home. The body can understand those movements, but mine struggles to accept that work is over when I am still in the same place. A ritual to denote the end of the workday can be simple or elaborate, but key points to consider are sensory elements and visual queues. I close my computer and straighten the desk, move to another room, light a candle or incense, move through a short interval of stretches.  

Sometimes a ritual is less about my agenda and more about honoring.

It feels especially right for me to tie these to nature’s own rhythm of the seasons, the sun and moon cycles, and the tide.

One such ritual happened recently.

I harvested and processed what the land had grown, and removed invasive species that were encroaching, choking out the native plants. There was a lot more of that choking than I’d have liked since my capacity for gardening did not meet the needs of the garden. But that, too, was a lesson.

I bundled what remained together tightly, wrapping with twine and with my heartfelt thanks, speaking my gratitude for what the earth had brought me, what she would continue to provide.

So much more than just the bounty of harvest. I would burn them and when the ashes cooled I would mix them into my compost, eventually returning them to the soil.

As I tossed each bundle into the roaring fire under the full moon I remembered my gratitude and renewed my promise to continue to tend to the land how I could.

I felt a part of the long line of ancestors who greeted the moon as a friend, who knew that the land deserves a relationship.

That she is not a teacher who only gives and never takes: she is a friend and mentor who requires care and tending herself. 

One of the early markers of civilization is the existence of healed bones. Someone had to help this person remain safe while they healed, to tend and care for them. Tending to our sick and disabled is foundational to civilization, and one of the great benefits of it. Making these rituals accessible for myself was necessary, but I’ve realized that this accessibility benefits all of us. Accessibility can be around things like time commitment, location, position, and movement, allowing for these nurturing, nourishing rituals to be something easy and appealing to incorporate into our lives. 

The land is so much more than the ground beneath our feet. It is the entire ecosystem, the water, plants, animals, and more.

To know what the land is asking for requires that same open-hearted observation. To listen.

To wait.

To let her speak in her own language.

It may be very easy to come up with big, bold ideas of how to honor the land. My first suggestion would be to give it back over to the indigenous stewards and follow their lead. Since I’m not in charge of that, I have to come up with different ideas. I ask myself what I can do today, with my resources and access to the land. Maybe it is to plant and tend a garden. Maybe it is to sit and listen at a stream.

Perhaps the first thing the land is asking for is you to sit at her feet and listen.