Love the Land You’re With: Tips for Connecting in a Sacred Way

I love poet Gary Snyder’s powerful call: “[F]or Americans, the real work is becoming native to North America… coming to understand we really live here, that this is really the continent we’re on and that our loyalties are here, to these mountains and rivers, to these plant zones, to these creatures.” The same applies wherever you are in the world, as I know my readers come from and live all over. The bottom line is: Love the land you’re with. Love her fiercely.

Transplants to other places sometimes feel guilty: Do we have a right to make a sacred connection with the land if we are basically colonizers in one way or another, or if our ancestors holocausted the First Peoples? The answer is: We must. No time to waste, folks, and Clan Mother and Metis elder Hua Anwa agrees. She and other indigenous peoples speaking at the recent conference Sacred Mountains of the Bay Area said that it’s high time we all recognized that “the same red blood“ flows through our veins, and that Mama Earth and her creatures, waters, features, trees, and plants need us to “awaken” them once more, regardless of our race or ethnicity. This means we need to restore the reciprocal loop of love between us humans, these Earth elements, and their accompanying elementals ­–– the unseen spirits residing around and within, which include ancestors who have been here before us.

Hearing the teachings of Hua was a real affirmation of the work I have been doing both independently and with the Gaia Grid Activation Program I’m in the midst of teaching this fall with Theresa Dintino out at Mt. Burdell, Ring Mountain, and the Redwoods of West Marin.

How To Create a Sacred Relationship with the Land

Here are some tips for establishing a bond with the land near where you live:

 • Start with your own backyard, and apply the suggestions below. Hua reminds us that “every place is sacred.”

 • By foot, explore new mountains, hills, forests, lakes, ocean sides, or other earth areas near where you live. Feel which places call to you. When you find a place you like, keep returning. Make a commitment to visit it at least once a month.

Ask permission to enter any given place from what you feel is the “guardian” spirit of the place –– you’ll instinctively sense where it resides. What’s important is your respectful intention.

State your intention for being there –– to love the place, say prayers, hear what it has to say, be of service, heal the land, honor the local ancestors, make amends for transgressions to the First Peoples, etc.

Bring offerings to that guardian and the spirits of the land each time you come: libations of milk, honey, water, wine, or hibiscus tea; natural edibles like nuts, dried or fresh fruit, seeds. Elemental creatures (the Fairy and Fae folk) like shiny metals & coins; use with care so as not to pollute.

Bring tobacco offerings. According to Hua Anwa, Tobacco Spirit agreed to be the messenger to Great Spirit for prayers. Take a small handful of loose tobacco (in the U.S., Natural American Spirit is a great brand; I like the organic kind in the red package, available anywhere they sell cigarettes), breathe your prayer into it, and leave it on the land, under a tree, scattered in the water, and so forth.

Sit and feel your love for the place. That’s it. Just feel the appreciation you have for the beauty of the landscape, the trees, the plants and animals. Let Earth Mother and the visible and invisible elements feel your affection.

Listen for messages. Get quiet and see if you can receive information –– and healing –– for yourself, others, Mama Earth, etc.

Leave the place better than you found it through your offerings, spontaneously created songs to the land, prayers for the Earth –– and maybe even by picking up some trash.

Thanks to… I’m grateful to Daniel Foor and Ginny Anderson for their work to establish sacred bundle keepers and tenders on major mountains in the extended San Francisco Bay Area. For more on Daniel’s Earth Medicine Alliance, visit here. Ginny is the author of Circling San Francisco Bay: A Pilgrimage to Wild and Sacred Places. For more on Ginny, visit here.

With love,
Marguerite Rigoglioso, Ph.D.
Founding Director
Seven Sisters Mystery School