The Living Landscape

The stone skeleton stood against a blackening sky. Rain approached and each of the few, February visitors left except for the guardian of the site and me.

I stowed my camera, pulled out the low Irish whistle purchased earlier in the trip, and sat with my back to the wind. Tentative notes fluttered out as I thanked the ancestors who called me here, back home, to `Eire.

A few heavy raindrops fell but as I poured gratitude into the sweet notes, the cloud split and went around the Poulnabrone Dolman and the sun erupted. It was as if the ancestors and nature spirits returned gratitude for me noticing something more than just a popular tourist attraction.

It is a living landscape into which I walk whether in Ireland or the sacred mountains of the Blue Ridge where I live, move and have my being. Every day I am nurtured by a spiritual communion with the land, water, plants and animals–the living landscape.