The earth sings with many voices

What I learned about place and people through seven years of nomadic travel

For half a century I have lived in the town where I was born. Then our family was uprooted by life's circumstances, and the three of us drifted through Northern Europe and the British Isles for the last seven years. Not as pure travellers, but on a gentle lookout for somewhere new to settle.

I learned something about place and people.

That first stretch, back in my hometown, I chose to stay and try to make a life right there. To not go to the 'city' like most of my peers. I love the region. I increasingly hated the town. People have lived in the surrounding countryside for ten-thousand years or more. There are prehistoric remains. The provincial settlement I am born into had grown big on textile factories. Rich 'nobility' in need of cheap labourers. That's the simple demographics of my native little city. My lineage is poor and simple. Honest and bitter.

Looking back at, or more feeling back into, the very different places we have visited since, a new sense of place surfaced. I did have that faculty all my life, but it required the calibration of travel and time to make me aware of how important it is. A slow process that is not done yet. It is still going. It has been making me restless and sad lately. I am unsettled.

The three of us travelling, trying to feel into a place each time we changed location, has awoken something old in me, in us. A not on the surface sensibility that most people do not seem to register or simply ignore. A place has several frequencies. That's the closest word I can find. Numerous tones. A cluster, or complex chord, of humming energies that give the spot its character. The larger part of those tones cannot be changed by human settlement. They are deep and ancient. All the way down to the earth and this part of the galaxy, then rising to the continent and the region to the local spot and all the creatures residing. The overtones of the top layers are newer, subject to quicker change, and can be compelling. A single human has little influence on the deeper tones, but over time we do impact the overtones, especially as a collective. The place itself is a collective. And the things we do, the traces we leave, the energy we add, put in. The stuff we extract, all of our effort, does not stand on its own.

Registering the very different chords of the spots we've visited has been revealing. One of the reasons I think is because we moved --travelling by public transport-- from one place to the next and then really settled in a spot. Doing most of our moving on foot. And not do this modern thing of restless exploration. We basically stayed put 24/7. Remaining at least a couple of months gave us a good feel for the atmosphere beneath the surface, for the more honest frequencies, that often clashed with what the people living there wanted it to be. Especially the more idealistic and wilful inhabitants (read immigrants) went against the grain. Overriding local habits and wisdom. Importing ideas and patterns and ways judged as good or desirable. That this is not a great path to go down is much easier to see if you're not invested or attached to a place, but still willing to feel. To really look.

Those experiences were confusing at the time. It was blatantly clear those good meaning people were heading for deep trouble. It is even more clear looking back. Not a happy insight. Emotionally difficult. I can't say we made many friends. The more convinced people are of doing the right thing, the harder it becomes to accept there may be cracks in the reasoning. Despite a wide range of initiatives, and very different characters, the one thing they had in common was a drive to change things for the better.

The reason for being there, and doing, trying, what they did was an idea. Sometimes vague and unfocused, sometimes driven by sharp clarity, but based on ideas nonetheless. Ideas are in a box, in a frame. Ideas unchecked by the voices of place are ignorance.

Lately, visitors have been hanging around. I have tried to ignore the buggers. But I don't think they will leave until I have dealt with their presence. I think the ancestors are waiting for me to start listening. They speak all the time. I need to hone my listening skills.

I am worried about what the message might be. Is it a call-back? A return-to-your-roots yank at my chain? I am afraid it is more complex than that. And the peripheral crowd of the old seems to be growing. I considered ancestors to be the mums and dads of my grandparents. But this goes deeper, much further back. In all directions. A mycelium of lineages. I have tried to look past their presence, for a free passage, to get around them, find some empty spot on the horizon to bring me to a new place unbothered, but they are full circle. I will run into them whatever direction I choose.

I have been in an idyllic valley. Old forest and a stream running down the middle. A community heavy on harmony, but the underground reeked of war and centuries old conflict. A node of deep raw energy most visitors were unaware of and unable to handle. We have revisited the other end of that same valley. It had been a monastery for hundreds of years and more recently a war orphans school. I think the attic (the former boy's dorm room) was haunted and loaded with the sustained buzz of deeply unhappy children. All the activities and events in that valley burdened by the same undertone of conflict. Of rejection. A draining energy that also seemed to hook people, to hold them, lure them in.

We escaped to the Pyrenees. High up where the road ends. A place ruled by forests and mountains. Waters running off in gurgling clarity. Arriving was a relief. The harmonics, a rough and wild chord. Bands of wild boar ravaging the grounds. The river swelling to three times its size overnight. Temperatures plunging as soon as the sun was blocked by the towering rock. The people hosting us tried to be light and social and independent. They tried to change the place. Instead, the place was busy changing them, against their will. We left them to their struggle and escaped.

Paris. One of the shorter stays. But somehow that city has a harmonic base chord that is agreeable. Of course, a big city has a heavy top-layer of all kinds of trouble, but I understand why that place is teeming with life. Too much life.

Berlin was different, but similar. That whole region has an inviting atmosphere. Even after a million attempts to mess it up.

Cornwall was strange. Less human. When I learned the trees had been felled only decades ago, I could suddenly feel the land waiting for them to return. As if it were only a brief clearing. There, the ocean and the land had an agreement. Stone circles testifying. Humans are permitted to live there, but there is no room for big cities, or ways of life that ignore land and ocean. A place shared with other inhabitants.

We longed to see Somerset, to visit Glastonbury, to feel the mists of Avalon, but while we stayed in Frome the Covid clouds gathered. Despite being so damn close, Stonehenge was unreachable. We moved to the south coast of Devon and were locked down. Steep cliffs, wide ocean, narrow roads, and folk struggling with alcohol. Loudly proclaiming being the centre of the world, but strangers on their patch nonetheless. Disowned by inherited claims to the land. A soil so much older than the squabble about class and ownership.

Talking of petty arguments, I forgot our brief episode at a buddhist temple in Germany. Or the idea of buddhism on a farm made to look like a Tibetan temple. Out of place? Definitely.

Back in Holland --after a two-week symbolic quarantine in Rotterdam-- we soaked our boots in clay. A year near the coast on man-made land that lies beneath sea level. Great soil to grow onions, potatoes, and tulips. The Dutch manage to grow amounts of food, energy, profit, and essential high-tech that rivals North America despite being forty times smaller. We are intense. Another we that is not a good match for me. Windy and wet. No history and no future there for humans. That was the message I picked up.

And here we are, France, south of the Morvan. Old forest, giant old stones. A place of sorcery. A favourite settlement of Julius Caesar. People here have a strong sense of place. A long history of folk picking up that good vibe and trying to move here. A long history of locals not letting them and closing ranks. The Gauls know how to guard their treasure.

Last year we moved from the top of a forested hill to an agricultural open spot nearby. Farmland. Here, the trees have been held back by humans for a long, long time. And the difference with the woodland is palpable. The forest people of the hills are different folk. Wilder. More rooted. The ways of farmers here more and more at odds with the slowly grown ways. Shallow new habits based on ideas from another place. Incentivised by money. Implemented without listening to the chord, and creating cringing dissonants.

But what is my place in all of this? I don't belong here. Not according to the people living here. They are friendly enough, but have no doubt about us being strangers, foreign bodies. In times of trouble, I do not wish to be here. Despite the wondrous landscape and the balm of nature. It would get us killed.

So, what now? Go back? Holland is in denial. The Netherlands are at the center of the global tendency to ignore this deep message. Acting as if they listen, but driven by an idea about listening. Without allowing anything from the head down.

The hum of earth, ocean, land, and forest is rising. The atmosphere is changing. Waiting for us to listen while we still can. While we are here. The inner whispers of the old have got stronger. A change is gonna come. It is repeated in a range of languages almost forgotten. Many will be unsettled in ways more difficult than we have ever experienced. The voices say. The voices sing. Answering the call is hard. Finding back our singing voice is not done in a day, in weeks. It takes years. It takes slowing down to hear the voices. Very real voices. Benign but honest. A love that pushes us into the liminal space of transition. To make us grow up. To find our place. The one away from there. The one where we will belong. The specific place that is personal and different for each. The place that responds to you, the place you respond to. That place is calling you, it always has. But maybe we've wandered off too far. Maybe we can't hear because of the noise of our ideas. Maybe we do not understand because we've lost the ability to move, to understand movement. To be moved by the force that carries us. Maybe we are not settlers after all.

Reconnecting to that place is a collective effort. It involves large movements. Not just humans moving, but yes, it could be you will be swept along. We are birds gathering. Practicing, playing, filling the air with our swirling dance. You, too, will be uprooted and drifting for a while. Days, weeks, decades? I don't know. I do know it is time to learn the listening. Most ideas of what and where and how must be suspended to allow the deep to speak. Allow that bigger collective to move us in flight. This place is our mother. Our grandmother and grandfather. This sky is ours. These waters belong to us. But the we is widening. What is ours, is shared with others. We think they are strange, unfamiliar, hostile, foreign. Maybe it is us that have changed beyond recognition.

Many have gone before and are part of where and who we are. Listen back further, deeper into the layers.

Can you hear that wide range of voices? Can you feel the urge to move with?

They speak of new ways, of relations renewed, of a coming together unknown until now. The humming is getting louder. Take time to sit with them. Walk with them. Live with them. Ask the questions that need asking and practice the listening.....

We have spent five weeks in the Netherlands getting an overdose of people moving without moving. We have visited a row of initiatives trying to reconnect to that older thread. Some are like little seeds sprouting. Tiny and vulnerable. I feel insignificant and fragile, too. I feel failed and adrift. I feel a stranger in my home. Where do I belong? Do I wish to settle down and own a bit of soil? Is it a matter of reclaiming my place?

I have begun to doubt that. After wandering for almost seven years, I am asking myself what to do, how to be here without ownership. Can I? Am I allowed to go where the voices lead me? Am I even allowed to hear voices, full stop?

Humans are not plants that set root wherever they land.

Humans are not birds that roam the skies without effort.

Humans are not fish, we float.

We roam the surface of water and land. We walk, we move about. We can run and hide, seek and find, absorb and express. We imitate, we mirror, we reflect.

And the big question is what are we listening to? Who guides our attention? What drives our doings?

Since I can't recommend any ancestral voices directly, I will do the closest thing and recommend two women that speak of them. First two posts written and narrated by

Ellie Robins

that have the quality of a revelation to me. She's found words for something deep in the undertow.

And then the announcement of a yearlong course by my dear friend

Jenna Newell Hiott

that I can wholeheartedly recommend if you feel the tug of ancestry too. She is such a gentle guide and voice in these matters.

This moment needs your deep weirdness and your intellectual rigour

Who are your imaginal ancestors?

Introducing Sacred Roots, A Year of Ancestral Healing