Wherever you go, the land remembers you.

The Appalachian mountains of Turtle Island were once part of the same mountain range as the Scottish Highlands and the Caledonian Mountains of Norway and Britain. There were rivers and reptiles that meandered from Brazil to Namibia and Nigeria. Antarctica, India and Australia once shared the same sunrises and sunsets. For nearly one hundred million years all land was connected, forming from sediment sent up from the Earth’s mantle, through the ocean floor, and up to the surface where water met air. It was as if the Earth itself longed for life.

Yet here in our modern lives with millions of years separating the Earth’s union, it is easy to feel out of place. Maybe your ancestors are from elsewhere. Maybe your ancestor’s land has been stolen. Maybe there are too many hundreds of years of violence and tragedy to know what to feel. There is no place on earth that has not seen pain. Please note, this does NOT negate the ongoing oppression of native people. In fact we cannot connect to the land without acknowledging the violence that continues to happen, our part in the perpetuation and working towards making reparations.

The land has a different concept of time though. Millions of years of connection do not fade silently into the night. No matter where you are from or where you ended up, the land recognizes your feet upon the soil from one continent to the next. It does not care if you think you are good, or if you think yourself bad. It simply is.

This does not erase the actions of man, but it allows us to become a part of something. Because if we are a part of something, then we grow to love that thing, and if we love something we feel responsibility towards it, a need to protect it at all costs. And if we feel a need to protect the thing we love, then we open the door to repairing what is broken and moving forward in a new, more accountable way. Put simply, people cannot truly know how to do better for the Earth and its people unless they feel they are a part of the thing they are repairing. Empathy and compassion cannot authentically be cultivated from a distance.

I remember driving eastward for hours and hours on my way to my new life in Colorado (for a few years at least) and seeing the dry western plains and the mountains rising from them for the first time. You know that feeling you get when you go somewhere new and you have an instant sense of home? Like you had been there before somehow? This was not that feeling. It was so alien to me, nothing like my home of forests and lakes. And yet as I got to know the flora and fauna of the land and walked reverently to mountain tops, my feet remembered. It was new but it was also the same.

wandering the Eastern plains of Colorado

The night before I left Michigan I specifically remember worrying that there wouldn’t be crickets in Colorado to sing outside my window at night. Of all things to be worried about, this was important for some reason. But even on those first nights in my new apartment, thousands of miles from where I began, I opened the windows and heard that they were still there. It was a reminder that no matter where I go, I am home. So long as I know who I am and know whose land on which I live, I am home.

Loving on the mountains surrounding Durango

Once you experience the deep sense of belonging, a new world unfolds in front of you. The question is no longer where do I belong? Where is home for me? Rather, it becomes how can I heal the space, the community, that I am in? How can I make it more beautiful, more vibrant, more me?

Wendell Berry once wrote “There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.” Our task is no longer this endless journey of searching for a place that feels like home. Instead, our task is to steward, create, listen and celebrate. Whether you stay where you are or move elsewhere, home is not a place or a person, it is what YOU do with the space you are in.

With each step you take on the soft earth, know that it reverberates deep into the bones of the earth where it all began. I hope you know that you are exactly where you are meant to be at this moment in time, and even if that changes in the years to come, the land remembers you.