Land Healing After Fire

Sunday the 23 of June, I am hitchhiking to the site of my cabin, when I see a hawk circling above. I know it is a sign to me of reassurance from the Spirit world as I am about to do a healing ritual for the Land and my heart following the Forest Fire outside Nederland, Colorado. Not long after that sighting, my friend and neighbor, Serene, shows up unexpectedly, offering to accompany me. What a surprise! Most friends whom I invited said they would be thinking of me that day and couldn’t make it.

So, on this cold and cloudy mountain day we walk the Land together. She, through her presence makes it possible for me to stay present and not lost in an emotional tidal wave for the loss of my cabin, my community of tree friends and my way of life. (She supports me and takes photos of the process, photos which appear here.)

It is my intent this day to offer healing to the Land and to my heart and to participate in the yearly Earth Exchange bringing acknowledgment to wounded Earth places.

We arrive to find the flowers already doing their healing part beneath the bare burned trees, once my community of friends. The blue Penstemons now covering the open area where the driveway had been with a welcoming carpet of delight. The last time I was on the Land in 2016, the soil was left blackened by the heat of the 1400-degree fire with only the blackened trunks of evergreen trees you see here present.

Today, I feel drawn to call the Spiritual Directions on the spot where I used to hang my pink hammock in the summer between two Ponderosa Pine Trees.

I stand remembering the joy of coming out for moments in between my work to lay in the hammock and look up to the branches and presence of the trees against blue sky.

Calling the 6 directions I then kneel to speak, “Dear Mother Planet Earth, please receive these prayers and actions for healing and ground them in this place.”

I bring a healing ministration, following the directions for Land healing recommended by the Center for Nature Research, at Perelandra-ltd.com I use their Essence of Perelandra, which holds the electrical healing energies of their garden, and then pouring it onto a teaspoon I ask Spirit to shift and gift them to the Nature Spirits of this Land.

I can palpably feel the vibrations of the Land rise.as the Essence is received.

The next day I bring two quarts of a special Biodynamic Preparation Stir which I had done with the Y on Earth Community the previous afternoon following my time with the Land. I spread it around all the new growth aspen trees (2 to 3 feet high) and the new growth evergreen trees (only 4 inches high). I can feel the Land being openly receptive to this gift for the soil and grateful for the attention. Nature is so ready for our human care, love and appreciation.

Then I turn, and it was so difficult to see the empty space above the foundation of the cabin …NOTHING there, when there had been so much treasured life in that space.

I am sobbing as I remember my precious life there in the cabin.

I realize it is important for me to continue to forgive the circumstances that led to the loss and to acknowledge the level of pain I still carry after three years since the Forest Fire took my way of life, my life’s documentation work of 50 years of photos and writing, and my relationship with the trees, my community of friends, and the Land itself.

Going on with the healing I wonder what else needs attention, and I realize it is my own need for a home place to truly be alive again and live my own life.

I feel drawn to the special “Home” prayer rock that exploded in the Fire, pieces of which I had left behind in despair at the cabin entry. I found the beautiful smooth blue rock in the 1980s in the Northwest when looking for a Home and had carried the stone place to place since. I take the pieces up to the spiral prayer circle above the cabin site and lay them out making prayers:

I pray and ask each rock piece to hold my desire to again have my way of life with the Earth, in nature and the mountains, on a road I can hitchhike and supporting my work for the Earth (I am Director of the nonprofit, Our-Sacred-Earth.org).

I now feel my healing ministrations are complete. I thank and release the Directions as I had learned to do from women of the Celtic traditions….and thank the Goddess for Her Presence in the process and thank Gaia for receiving this healing.

As we leave the spiral, my friend points to the nearby Pasque Flower in its “wind” form and I realize it is giving its own gift to my healing … as the Pasque Flower tincture is for healing trauma. So, I make a tincture of its wind blooms when I get home.

The spring of 2016 before the fire, there had been 100 blooms of Pasque Flower in a circle around the cabin—an incredible phenomenon since none had appeared there to my knowledge when I moved in four years before.

As I leave the cabin site, I realize, see and learn that Land and a place can begin again from scratch, just as I must continually do. It is my teacher and inspiration.

With Blessings to all Wounded Places and Wounded Beings, and with gratitudethat Earth Exchange as a collective and supported practice continues to be very important in my “inner healing bag“ which I carry through life with things I’ve learned to utilize in healing work and which are precious contributions to our ongoing Earth Life.