The Mythology of the Land Beneath Our Feet

A quick but mighty storm front moved across our stretch of the Hudson Valley on Monday night. 

The temperatures had been in the 50s and the earth was reminding the sky it was meant to be December. Enough of the sweater weather, it was time for hats, coats, and mittens. And so, an argument was had in the space between here and the heavens and, inevitably (for now), the seasonable cold air won out.

Considering so much of my passion and attention are devoted to Ireland, I can believe for just a moment that these were the first breaths of Storm Barra, which engulfed the country on Tuesday. But, of course, the Atlantic is wide and even a fairy wind probably couldn’t travel so far so fast. 

On that stormy eventing, while we were out in the dark, ensuring the chairs didn’t blow across the deck and the cushions didn’t sail into the neighbors’ yard (we’re having trouble letting go of the trappings of warmer weather as well), we heard a tree split in the woods behind the house. Since the swing set still was standing and nothing came close to the deck, we didn’t dwell on the mystery and simply got back to the endless business of being human in the stillness of the indoor air.

Tuesday morning, after the school bus left, I put on my boots and went searching for what we’d lost.

I was looking for what we’d lost on our land, but I soon realized I had no idea what we had.

I crunched across the grass, all frost kissed by the almost-winter chill. There was a spectacular scrap of bark nearly five feet long lying on the ground. It would have been stripped from one of the dead ash trees. Those old sentinels lose a little something in every gale, but their naked trunks, fragile yet unyielding, still insist on challenging gravity and clinging to the last of their past glory.

Maybe that noise we’d heard in the night was simply the stripping away of ash skin. The sound had carried over the wind, but it certainly wasn’t the kind of explosion that rips through when the forest loses a long time resident. These woods came back from clear-cutting more than a century ago and it seems they’ve created a close, thriving community since being left alone. Certainly the bears, fishers, and coyotes seem to like it.

This wasn’t a day for tracking wildlife. I was here to speak to the trees.

That’s when I noticed the birch.

When we moved here thirteen years ago, there were two birch trees at the edge of the new lawn. I loved those trees almost as much as they seemed to love one another. One shone with masculine energy, the other with the feminine. It felt like we were being greeted by an old couple who had lived on the land for ages, even though our house was brand new.

Perhaps there had been an entire family of birches here before they bulldozed and blasted to place a home made of sticks and vinyl. Perhaps I interpreted the sway of their elegant branches as waves of welcome, when really, they were performing a dance of mourning. 

We lost the tree I still think of as “Himself” years ago. When he fell, his trunk disintegrated into neat, symmetrical pieces. The were scattered evenly down the hill that leads to what we call Blackthorn Alley. It seemed a regal, intentional way to be laid out and I took it as one more sign that this patch of the planet was enchanted in its own small way. 

On this particular morning, I saw the tangle of white branches just past the bramble of the eastern wineberry patch, and I gasped. Had we lost his lady, Herself, in the night?

It’s the time of year when we can remember what it is to ramble and explore. The ticks all ought to be sleeping. The poison ivy is dormant as it plots the next season’s revenge. As I do near the end of every autumn, I recover my sense of bravery and take to the wild wooded acres beyond our property. I wonder why we ever spent so much time on that boring old lawn. We’ll have this freedom til the sap starts to rise in the maples and the specters of Lyme disease and skin rashes loom large again.

Unafraid of the beasties in the brush and ready to offer my prayers to our fallen tree sister, I tramped over to the long stretch of her body. She’d split twenty feet up at the unique twist in her trunk, the shape of which looked like a nipple on a nursing woman’s breast. Unlike Himself, she had held together well when she came to rest on the earth.

A Friend Long Gone

And then I looked more closely at the intricate network of trunk and branches that lay on the ground. I realized that a brown-gray poplar was tangled with the birch bark. The break in Lady Birch’s trunk was faded and soft. 

We’d lost that tree, a tree I have no right to name, a tree with whom I can claim no special relationship, ages ago. Apparently, I was a fair weather friend to Herself. 

I have romantic notions of living in relationship with nature and the land. It’s nice to consider myself to be singularly connected to this bit of hill that runs between the ridge and the river. When sitting at my cozy desk looking out to the five-way crossroads in front of the house, I like to imagine I’m a worthy caretaker now that this land’s original inhabitants, the Esopus people of the Lenape Tribe, are gone. 

But then, I cannot even be relied upon to know whether my friends, the trees I claimed to know and love, are dead or alive.

Recommitting to the Story of Place and the Mythology of the Land

All I can do is promise to do better, be better, and walk the talk.

I can actually read the book of Lenape stories I found used online.

I can keep fulfilling that promise I made to walk the natural boundaries and speak to the whispering trees, the sleeping stones, the spent gardens, and the distant ridge.

I can look to the horizon every morning and ask my ancestors’ distant goddesses and the local spirit guides to help me see clearly.

I can linger instead of instantly coming in from the bus stop to get swallowed by the screens and photos of other people’s views of the planet.

Mythology Connects Us to the Land, Both Distant and Right Here

As I prepare to share a season of stories on the KnotWork Podcast, I keep reminding myself that mythology was never meant to be mere fodder for psychologists and story nerds. At its core, mythology isn’t about the quarrels between gods and heroes or about which clan claimed a particular swath of territory. At least, mythology isn’t just that.

Mythology is the account of the land and the people’s relationship with nature and their quest for survival. Mythology offers us insight into how ancient people grappled with the unknown, be it storms in the atmosphere or storms within the human heart. 

The stories that speak to me and through me tend to be from Ireland and other parts of the Celtic world. These are the stories are in my blood and hold my soul. It has been half a lifetime since I lived and learned on that tiny island, however. I make my home a few hundred miles from where I was born, on soil we now call “American.”

When I look out to the Shawangunk Ridge, it may look a bit like the rounded mountains of County Sligo, but I can’t populate this piece of New York with Queen Maeve and the warriors of the Fianna. As those two fallen birches taught me, I cannot rely on romantical visions about myself and this land.

I am called to root in, open my eyes, and ask the stones and trees, plants and creatures what I can do and what I must learn.

We are all called to root in, open up, ask, and listen to the stories that come up from the soles of our feet

The stories we carry with us, which may come from halfway around the world can help us pause and tune in. Characters from distant myths, like the Celtic Cailleach who made the land by throwing boulders from her apron, never set a foot on the granite of the northeastern US, but they remind me of the power of creation and the sacredness of a tossed stone and a rotting tree. I can transfer that awareness to my own backyard, my own valley, my own understanding of the global ecosystem.

Mythology describes the deep, enduring relationship that existed between the spirit of the land, the plants, the animals, and the spirits of the people fortunate enough to coevolve beside them.

Mythology helps nurture that relationship still as it reminds us to open our ears to hear and our eyes to see the non-human narratives constantly being woven around us.

Notes on the Harvest (Plus, Cool Stuff Offered By My Friends)

I realize that I often mention what's happening outside my window when I sit down to write a newsletter. Perhaps it's simply easier to begin a conversation by talking about the weather. I think there's more to it than that, though...

Telling you that the trees at the five-way crossroads where we live are whispering about the coming October with gold-flecked tongues seems important. I want to set the scene because strong stories depend on generating a sense of place. In fact, I think the land and the elements are actually characters in my daily writing, especially when I'm writing in my own voice and sharing what is on my mind.

And then there's the fact that I believe in the practice of land acknowledgement and naming the people who lived here before colonization.

The Esopus tribe, part of the Lenape nation, thrived upon this land before the French and Dutch settlers arrived. They spoke the Munsee language, but their name is all that is left here now. Those native peoples who survived wars and dislocation were forced to take their language, culture, and stories to Wisconsin and Ontario, far from the Hudson River they knew to be Mahicannituck. 

In light of this, it's interesting to think that my family actually lives in the town of Esopus, but the vagaries of mailing addresses and school districts cause us to tell folks that we live in New Paltz. The story of the colonizers shapes the story in one more small way.

The little that I do know of the people who would have hunted, gathered, and planted in the Hudson Valley comes from school field trips with my kids. It seems we always enter the replica wigwams and longhouses when the corn and gourds are being harvested.

There's a shared fascination with harvest time. There's an earthy truth that we need to acknowledge and celebrate (even if the modern harvest in the Hudson Valley looks like traffic jams caused by apple picking day trippers). We are creatures of the turning seasons, even if our pumpkin spice comes with orange dyed sprinkles.

A Rich Harvest of Ideas and Innovation

I'm so grateful to be standing in the midst of so many creative beings whose visions are coming to fruition right now.

Yesterday, we began a thirteen-week journey in the Sovereign Writers’ Knot.

As one writer put it after our group's first writing session (paired with art by Theresa Vee):  

Feeling EXACTLY like this painting after our session today!

And, as this special group of nine writers begins new projects or deepen their relationship with existing, in-process work, I'm so happy to watch other friends, colleagues, coaches, and clients out their creations into the world:

• Biz Cush, an alumna of my Sovereign Writers' community, is rebranding and relaunching her podcast. Perhaps hanging out with women who speak of the princess, queen, and wise woman had an influence on the new name?
  
  Awaken Your Wise Woman promises to be a great new show from this veteran podcaster, psychotherapist, and women's life coach. I had the honor of turning the tables on Biz and I got to interview her for her first episode. Listen to our episode and subscribe to the show!

• My former coach, KC Carter of This Epic Life is releasing his first book, Permission to Glow: A Spiritual Guide to Epic Leadership.
  
  I had a chance to reconnect with KC and soak up a few thousand jolts of inspiration this weekend. I'm excited to get my copy this Tuesday. And don't just take my word for it. Ani Difranco (yes, the singer who created her own label and is the voice of a generation of feminists) calls it: "Freakin' EPIC! This book teaches many of us how to lead, and all of us how to truly live."
  

• And finally, my current coach Jeffrey Davis is also releasing a book this week: Tracking Wonder: Reclaiming a Life of Meaning and Possibility in a World Obsessed with Productivity. 
  
  On Satuday, Jeffrey is hosting a free half-day online event this Saturday, 10/2 called The Wonder Summit. His guests include Rev. angel Kyodo williams and Danielle LaPorte. It would be wonderful to see you there. Register today.

To your harvest, to your stories, to your sacred relationship with the land on which you dwell,

Marisa

The Inconvenient Allure of Solitude by Guest Storyteller Maia Macek

I didn’t have my phone to take a picture as I sat by the river at dusk and watched the waves roil up against the rocks of the shore. A part of me felt like I was supposed to capture the moment and post to social media about it, in relentless entrepreneurial spirit, showing the world what I’m up to, a life coach publicizing her life in the modern currency of display.

As I looked out at the lighthouse, impossibly perched on an outcropping, with the Hudson River endlessly fleeing into the distance, my mind, ever that of the writer, ceaselessly cast out lines describing the view and my feelings about it.

I remembered childhood daydreams and long afternoons reading Victorian novels, ones filled with empty space and few characters. I could see myself installed in the lighthouse as its keeper, a dented tin teapot boiling water on the stove, me curled up in a window seat, holding a tattered book, feeling the solitude swirling all around me, a near-tangible companion.

I longed suddenly for the days before the internet, before this incessant drive to always be plugged in. I longed for the days before electricity, even.

Days and nights filled with inconvenience, maybe, but also full of the presence of something deeper.

Full of a presence that I sometimes worry I have lost, that the world has lost.

Until I sit, alone on a wind-blown day, the screeching of gulls swooping overhead, and I realize that true solitude is always here, waiting for me to visit.

Maia Macek is a Personal Liberation Coach who, after connecting with her own calling through a series of personally defining triumphs and mishaps, now guides her clients to unleash their true gifts, so they can live a life better than they even realize they deserve.

Editor's note: I'm so pleased that #365StrongStories gave me a chance to meet Maia (I saw one of her thoughtful Facebook posts and knew I wanted to include her voice in the project). My community and I would love to hear your story too. Apply to become a #365StrongStories writer! Submit to #365StrongStories