What if the lands we walked on could speak? What might they tell us?

My novels invariably carry a strong element of magical realism. In one of my stories, land has consciousness, it hears us, it feels us, it knows us ... as you can imagine, this was an usual tale!

“Home” tells the story of an old man who has spent his whole life protecting New York’s Coney Island. He has never left the island, not once, because one day way back when when he was a kid and sat alone on the beach, he heard, from far below the sand, the heartbeat of the island. He knew that it didn’t make sense, and yet he knew that what he had heard was real.

Anyways, this former cop is thrown into a story of murder and mystery and Coney Island’s glorious golden age and, oh yeah, Atlantis! Should you ever feel like spending time with the man and “his” island - be my guest!

This post isn’t about that novel - I really just wanted to share an idea, an odd notion: What if we could hear the land we walk on - not flora and fauna, not the weather - but the land beneath?

As a species, we’ve done our best to see ourselves apart from nature, for it to be something that is here for us to use and abuse as we see fit. We’ve lost respect, we’ve lost humility, we’ve harmony, we’ve lost our place. We have perfected the ways of destruction over the course the past two hundred years. As we continue to destroy, it all multiplies into our own destruction. We can raze forests and poison fields and pollute rivers and lakes and oceans. Species come and go. Worst case scenario, for us, is the end of our species.

The land itself, the rock beneath, remains unaffected. It operates on an entirely different time scale. In the novel, the land is sentient. Most of the land knows about us, senses everything, but largely doesn’t care about what happens on the surface. But they have heart and character and tempers - and in the novel, the land beneath Atlantis had enough and shook off what had been walking on it.

What if we could hear the land in our own language? What would lands say, lands that have been here for billions of years through tectonic shifts, through the creation of continents and mountain ranges and countless eruptions? What they say just might surprise us. Here’s a message from a land that cares.

(from the novel ‘Home’)

“You are not alone. You are never alone. We are here, always, right here with all of you. We know your minds. We can feel the heaviness and the lightness of your hearts.

We hear everything and the sound you make is rich. You crawl and you walk, you run and you dance. And when you do not move, especially then, when you simply stand or sit or lie - when you just take the time to breathe and to listen - then you can feel us, too.

Some of us do not like you. some of us ignore you. There is no need to concern ourselves with you. You come and you go, from the first to the last. We will be here long after you have vanished. I hope that day may never come.

It is your doing, your choices.

There are the sorrows that you bring, there are the joys, too. Some of us care. We cherish the reverberations of your love, we smile with the beat of your passion, we embrace even your darkest emotions as they seep into the ground beneath your feet.

You have no idea how rich you are.

Your life is but a blink, but oh, the wealth contained within that single moment that is your life. You create, you build, you destroy and you create again.

You are a marvel and yet so many of you are caught in the constant search of everything you already have, everything you always are.

Sometimes it is amusing to listen to you. And sometimes it fills me with sadness. And sometimes your stories, your lives, make me want to rise and walk among you, to be with you, to be like you.

Do you understand what I am saying?

Do you understand just how much you have?

That someone such as I would want to be you?

Know that all of everything is yours.

This is what I have learned, this is what I have felt for as long as feet have walked upon me: Those who breathe and those who listen will know when to walk and when to stand. They are the ones with lives fulfilled.”

There you have it, it’s a hopeful take, I know. If we continue on our trajectory, those single moments that are our lives will be forgotten before long. This planet, these lands and millions of other species won’t care if we’re gone - who’s kidding who, our extinction would come with a monumental sigh of relief.

As for me, I am more hopeful these days, too. Yes, we cannot rely on the global economy to change itself - that machine will always want to continue upward, higher, faster, bigger, more. But there are movements happening, and governments stepping up, rules are being changed and new ways found. We’re now working on protecting 30% of nature by 2030. We’re learning to not just protect and conserve what’s there - but to employ rewilding to return nature to its biodiversity-rich state. Yes, I am more hopeful these days - because more and more of us are rediscovering respect, humility and harmony for and with nature.

What are your thoughts? Hopeful? Pessimistic? Somewhere in between? I’d love to hear about it.

Cheers,

D