We tell new myths upon the lines of our bodies.

Each curve, each meadow,

each arc of skin supports us to feel

our thunderous, magnetic bodies:

bodies of voluptuous love … carriers of bliss.

Have you noticed that some landscapes and weather patterns evoke emotion in you that others don’t?

Perhaps you feel completely free and wild at the ocean. Maybe you feel peace and serenity in a meadow.

It’s because in your body, you carry landscapes.

And those landscapes connect you to your true home—your inner home. Your spirit’s home.

It’s also an ancestral home that lives within the marrow of your bones and drums through your blood. It all lives within.

When we connect to the land around us and feel its spirit, its soul, we’re more easily able to feel land’s spirit alive within us.

For example, where you live becomes part of who you are.

You’re impacted by the terrain and it informs the words that fill your mouth, becoming the soil which affects the way you experience and see life.

When I lived in the desert, I felt direct/raw with my words. There was no hiding there among the basalt (as much as I might’ve sometimes wanted).

When I lived at the edge of the forest, I found sanctuary. My words were verdant, mysterious and swayed with the oaks. Secrets stayed buried there and my view of the world was filled with earthy wonder.

And now, as I live literally steps from the ocean, a crisp fluidity has entered me and my words ebb with rhythmic currents of the day. Salt sticks to my skin and winds bring constant change.

…but the forest and desert still live in me.

Each of these landscapes have formed me, my “voice.”

It’s the same for you, too, wherever you find home and have found home in the past.

There’s a magnificence and power with the land; it gifts this to us when we attune to its heartbeat.

And when you get really quiet, you can feel that heartbeat in your body…

When you get to that place, words flow through you.

A volcanic purging. A crystalline prayer on an icy lake. A vast, tundric poem that belongs to the sagas.

Your saga. Our saga. Earth’s saga.

Land offers this to you.

Today is Earth Day, and it’s a beautiful opportunity to sit with Her.

To feel Her in your blood.

To allow a landscape to penetrate you, make love to you, wake you up.

And if She does this for you today, bless Her. Thank Her. Love Her back.

Happy Earth Day.

Happy Writing.

Happy Always.