As an anthropologist I study landscapes and the stories they tell. As an animal, I experience them, and as a human I want to share stories of these stories. I want to tell you about the soft light and the Beltane fire. About the way the Earth is covered here in a riot of wild onions living noisily alongside monasteries of new Yarrow.

I want to bring you to touch soft moss, and witness mysterious lichen as they whisper secrets of survival and resilience to pine and stone. I want them to cast their spells of belonging onto your body and into your mind. To enchant you with their knowing. To let you see their being. I want you to hear their stories so that you can move them into the matrix of your bones. Let them shape you with their memories. Let your heart, that wild beating heart of yours, remember.

You are not more than this. You are not less.

The water and the sky. The gradient warmth as the sun sinks bit by bit into this starry night. Shadow and light resting together, breathing together. Water lapping at the rocky shore with tenderness. Geese in spring frenzy, distant voices, crackling fire. I want you to feel the prayer of this, the sacred in this, because it mends the broken places in me, and I’m almost sure it will mend the broken places in you too.

Together, somehow, I believe this can heal the world.