Before we read books, our stories were located in the landscape - each hill and river, rock and pool was storied - part of the living, mythic landscape and web of 'songlines' or story-lines that criss-crossed our localities, and which helped us locate ourselves within the sacred landscape. The stories and 'lore of the land' were passed down, the paths trodden, the places honoured annually through ceremony and pilgrimage. Traces of these ancient practices of reciprocity with the land survived to inform traditions such as 'beating the bounds', which are still upheld in some places across the British Isles today.

 

Here in the West, we have almost forgotten what it means to 'belong' - to be rooted firmly in a place; to know its stories and history as well as our own, to feel the river in our blood and our bones bound to the stones beneath us. Our increasingly mobile lives mean that these days, most of us will not die in the locality where we were born, and more and more of us move many times in our lives and commute long distances daily.

 

We have forgotten that person and place are intertwined, that the relationship is mystically reciprocal - that we are biologically, chemically, energetically, physically, emotionally and soulfully enwebbed with our habitat - whether we like it or not. As a result, we can feel unrooted and anxious in an increasingly bewildering world.

 

Local folktales, myths and legends hold old knowledge about land and landscape. They offer age-old insights and map intuitions and understandings of place, passed down through untold generations. They are a great place to start, but the journey will ask more of us: practices of presence, forays into archaeology, history, art, poetry, pilgrimage and ceremony and who knows, listening deep to the land to bring forth new stories.

 

The enquiry is into relationship. Who am I in relationship with this place? How are we entwined? If everyone on Earth remembered this way of relating, we would not be facing the ecological collapse of our time; we do not destroy that which we love, that which we know is our life support system.

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