A narrow old street runs its way perpendicularly across the road which leads visitors down a steep hill to the main marina of the lake. If I went right on that older, unpaved lane, there would be an old farmhouse and its possessions soon up for auction, or so a large sign announced to passers by. Where a left turn at that crossroads would lead me I did not know.

I decided to find out. I drove my car a short distance down the gravel-covered, deeply-rutted road and parked it in a small makeshift lot created, presumably, for those who played frisbee golf nearby. After that point, I began to explore on foot. Although there were a number of new, affluent houses built along the road facing the lake, I understood that this little backroad was quite older than their construction and surely predated the construction of the lake itself (the lake is, in fact, a man-made one). I realized that I had ventured into this area of the park before but I arrived there in a more round-about fashion by hiking through the woods. I recognized the bizarre metal structures at which the players of frisbee golf aimed their plastic discs and the plant whose fall foliage comes in shades of striking pale pink and yellow. I came upon the stone remains of a long-gone residence as well as the Yew and Holly trees the owners of that building planted.

I followed the road as it emerged from under the newer highway built overhead. The bridge seemed like a portal, marking a transition into a different place entirely, a place existing before the lake was dug and the creek dammed to fill it, when the area was not a state park but forest and farmland. I came around a bend and heard the sound of moving water, then I first saw what I have come to call the Raised Road. It was blocked off to motor vehicles by a metal gate and shortly after that a stream was to be found flowing across it. I was greatly intrigued by the unusual sight of a stone-paved road, raised up from the natural forest floor by a number of yards, twisting itself through the trees, and so I decided to pass the gate, cross the water and investigate. As dusk barely began to tinge the horizon, I followed the strange road. From the higher vantage point the road provided, I observed the patterns of the many low, dry-stacked stone walls which divided the forest into something of a labyrinth and the impressive presences of many huge boulders. It seemed like a very enchanted place in the deeply slanted evening sunlight. The road led to something rather conventional enough, a green watertower, but even now knowing the practical purpose for the road did not dispel its liminal quality...and apparently I am not the first traveler there to notice this quality; I found the words "Angels Live Here" scribed in black marker on a squat metal box near the tower.

I've also discovered the foundations of buildings which have not stood for decades, the ruins of stone wells, stairs which no longer lead anywhere but a few feet above the leaf-strewn ground, and once paved roads which amble off and disappear as Nature takes back what is Hers. I've found the skeletal form a of Grandfather oak with trunk too wide for me to reach my arms around, a tree no less impressive because it no longer sprouts green buds in the spring. I've had encounters with White-tailed Deer, bats, skunks (who luckily didn't seem to mind me being in their immediate proximity!), Great White Herons and Great Blue Herons, Ospreys, Zebra Swallowtail Butterflies, turkeys, a Great Horned Owl, Luna Moths, toads, pheasants, and other creatures. There are definitely places in my own locality with a unique presence. The land has its own character which has then been layered over and intertwined with its history of human and animal interactions.

Something that has been largely lost among modern Pagans is the concept of the spiritual landscape. If we look to the beliefs of the ancients, we find that their spirituality was inherently tied to the land they lived on. They could point out specific geographic features where events from their mythologies occurred. The Greeks believed their Gods resided on the summit of Mt. Olympus. The Sioux and Cheyenne tribes leave offerings at Bear Butte, South Dakota because they regard it as the spiritual center of their universe. The ancient Egyptians likewise left multitudes of offerings in the form of clay vessels at the city of Abydos because they believed it to be the burial site of the God Wsir (Osiris) and entrance to the Underworld, subsequently leading the Arabs to refer to it as "Omm el Gaab" or "Mother of Pots."

Can many of us say the same of the land on which we currently live?

David Abram delves into the place-oriented nature of indigenous peoples:

The singular magic of a place is evident from what happens there, from what befalls oneself or others when in its vicinity. To tell of such events is implicitly to tell of the particular power of that site, and indeed to participate in its expressive potency. The songs proper to a specific site will share a common style, a rhythm that matches the pulse of the place, attuned to the way things happen there — to the sharpness of the shadows or the rippling speech of water bubbling up from the ground. [. . .] Different gods dwell in different places, and different demons. Each place has its own dynamism, its own patterns of movement, and these patterns engage the senses and relate them in particular ways, instilling particular moods and modes of awareness, so that unlettered, oral people will rightly say that each place has its own mind, its own personality, its own intelligence.1

Author Marian Green highlights a disturbing trend:

Some new followers of the old ways are being diverted into a new cult of pre-written rituals, with stage directions, props and scripts, so they appear more like amateur dramatics than heartfelt, natural wisdom and spirituality evoked by the very ground we stand upon. A great deal of stress is being laid on 'pagan' beliefs, worship of ancient Gods and Goddesses often quite alien to the land where the newcomers are living. [. . .]
    Some critics of the New Age movement have accused its seekers of being able to design 'pick and mix' religions or philosophies, by taking myths from one land, deities from another, ritual practices from a third and ideas from all over the place. Sometimes this is true. However, witchcraft has to be linked to the land you are in now. It is by creating a personal bond with the earth beneath you and the sky above you that you can discover your own magic.2 [emphasis mine]

A landscape is sacred because of its peculiarities, because of what distinguishes it from its surroundings. It is the specificness of the space which engages us. Places do not call out to us because they are generic, it is because we acknowledge something unique or special about them:

All landscapes have a history, much the same as people exist within cultures, even tribes. There are distinct voices, languages that belong to particular areas. There are voices inside rocks, shallow washes, shifting skies; they are not silent. And there is movement, not always the violent motion of earthquakes associated with the earth's motion or the steady unseen swirl through the heavens, but other motion, subtle, unseen, like breathing. A motion, a sound, that if you allow your own inner workings to stop long enough moves into the place inside you that mirrors a similar landscape; you too can see it, feel it, hear it, know it. 3

 Almost two hundred years ago William Wordsworth lamented that he could not engage the world as ancient pagans did. He longed to experience Nature as full of Gods, brimming with the sublime as the sensuous:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The Winds that will be howling at all hours
And are up-gathered now sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not, Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. 4

So we pattern ourselves on them. As North American Pagans we might choose to (or fervently wish to) visit Stonehenge, Glastonbury Tor, the Parthenon and Pantheon, the extensive temples at Karnak, Ireland's sacred wells, the ruins at Knossos, etc. in order to satisfy our desire to truly experience the energies and atmosphere of a sacred place. Yet, we have forgotten that both they and we are human beings with essentially the same capabilities. We are not genetically, physically, or biologically incapable of experiencing the universe as they did. Although being saturated in modern Western culture can be a significant hurdle to overcome in engaging the earth in a manner akin to how our ancestors and indigenous cultures did, we still possess the same potentials. We have to encounter the land firsthand. Otherwise stated, Joseph Campbell advises that "every land should be a holy land. One should find the symbol in the landscape itself of the energies of the life there. That's what all early traditions do. They sanctify their own landscape"5

In his wonderful book Seeds From a Birch Tree, Clark Strand comments:

In America, as we come to the end of the 20th century, it is questionable whether we ever really see nature at all. Most of us live our lives behind walls. We drive nearly everywhere we go. We work in temperature-controlled environments. When snow falls, we salt our driveways to melt it right away. Few if any of us know the names of more than twenty birds or flowers. 6

 There is a lovely Pagan fantasy some of us indulge from time to time: the tradition of the village wisewoman and cunningman. These were the knowledgeable and kindly folk that lived somewhat removed from the little Pagan hamlets of Pre-Christian Europe. They provided many services to the local villagers, and often embodied the role of the local herbalist, midwife, spiritual counselor, diviner, shaman, etc. for their respective communities. They knew the names of all the plants in the area and what ailments they could treat, and they had a knowledge of all the animal activity in their neck of the woods. The historical reality of such a tradition was probably a lot less glamourous than what we would like to imagine, but we still look back to this somewhat fictitious tradition with nostalgia. Afterall, wouldn't it be wonderful to find yourself as a wise and respected individual in a heathen Utopia? We will point to these individuals and their Craft as our spiritual ancestry, but can we not also follow in their footsteps by learning the lay of the land, the plants and animals of our localities? Can we not also recognize the sacred landscape swelling under our feet and branching directly overhead as well as the places of power located across the ocean?

All contents (unless otherwise noted) are copyright Desirée Isphording 2004, 2005 and may not be copied, modified, or distributed without prior express permission.