The Language of the Land

Each pattern, color, and texture is a message

My first boyfriend was obsessed with a series of fantasy novels whose name I can no longer recall. When we began dating, he said I was just like the female lead character. She was a scryer — she threw stones and was able to find messages in the patterns they made.

At the time, my boyfriend did not know how intuitive I considered myself to be, how much I believed in magic, or that I even read tarot cards for fun. I found it incredibly affirming that he associated me, early on in the relationship, with someone who had such a strong connection to nature and such intuitive insight.

But after our breakup, I one day forgot about that book, about that character. Until recently…

Walking through the same woodland again and again for 25 years, my artist’s eye began noticing the contrast between the different colors of bushes and bark. I became entranced with the dances the long grasses made when the wind blew. I especially loved textures and patterns — the way dead sage or rabbitbrush would fan and flatten as it died, lying there alongside elegant twists and turns of living branches, or the delicious, slightly fuzzy bark that would peel away from the trunks of juniper trees.

I delighted in all of this, always wishing I could capture the beauty with more than just my camera.

And then one day, I read a blog post written by the luminous Sylvia Lindsteadt. She compared the detritus that washes up from the ocean to runes and speaks about the secret language of the land that is hidden in these seemingly random items, in the patterns made by sea and sand.

I began to think about the patterns that, at one time I simply noticed, and that now I seek out — the stripes of the clouds, the deer trails that crisscross the woods, the tiny, fluffy owlet feathers that seem to appear in the most random places in the spring.

While I am glad to notice these things just to appreciate their beauty, what if there is more to our interaction than that? What if these are the runes of the land and sky?

What if these items, these seemingly random placements and patterns, are not at all random? What if they are telling a very specific story of the land around us? What if those stories have instructions for us, information that could help us navigate through our own woodland (or seascape, or desert, or…)?

I started remembering my first boyfriend and the books he loved — the character he said was so like me. I thought how much I wanted to read the stories that were being written for me and for anyone who cared to read them — even though I didn’t quite know the language.

I began paying closer attention to the tracks and markings in the dirt. What animals had come through this area? I noticed places where there were dozens of owl pellets and learned where the great horned owls liked to rest after feeding. There were so many things happening in the world outside my front door, and I wanted to know all of it, all the details of life out there.

But like any other language, it takes time, attention, and immersion to understand it.

If we listen, if we read the runes, the stones, the bones, the feathers…what would they tell us?

© Yael Wolfe 2019