Reconnecting with our Earth Mother

‘The more high-tech our lives become, the more nature we need’

Richard Louv, author of The Nature Principle

In the space of days my inner pendulum has swung wildly from joyful connection to a jarring, jangling place of disconnection and then back again to the peace I always find in the loving embrace of nature.

My outer journey has taken me halfway across the world from the Findhorn Foundation spiritual community in northeastern Scotland to California’s dramatically beautiful and sunbaked Owens Valley, an odyssey of some 53 hours involving four buses, two taxis, three flights and two car rides with friends.

At either end were people I love dearly who value meditation and quiet contemplation, often sitting in sharing and caring circles and checking in to see how others are doing on their great adventure through life - and offering support or encouragement when needed.

In between I experienced a startling reminder of how so many live their big city lives, my travels punctuated by nights in a hostel in the heart of Glasgow and another on the noisy and traffic-clogged flightpath to Los Angeles international airport.

The low point was unquestionably the optimistically named BackPackers Paradise Hostel which was commendably cheap, offered free champagne, impersonal service and a stuffy and untidy room crammed with bunk beds and noisy travellers with a total disregard for the few trying to sleep. Whenever I glanced around me in the wee small hours I saw faces illuminated by the glow of their smart phones, tablets and computers. All were connected to their technology but completely disconnected from each other.

The drive-through tree gives an idea of scale

Is the universe showing me the true extent of Nature Deficit Disorder, I wondered? And what can I do to help? I caught glimpses of the stress, anxiety and hopelessness that seems to envelop so many when they live the lie of separation and become disconnected from the natural world of which they are an intrinsic part.

Sweaty and sleepless, I tossed and turned in my creaky bunk, feeling sadness that so many are deprived by choice or circumstance of the sort of daily early morning ritual I take for granted, walking in nature and giving thanks for the great gifts that that meditative experience bestows upon me. Without that walk my day never seems to flow quite so smoothly and joyfully, and my mind is invariably busier and more agitated.

On the very rare days I don’t walk, I try to spend time with a tree and begin to understand why many of the world’s major conflict zones are places denuded of their natural vegetation. At last science and spirituality are in agreement and crediting trees with the ability to calm, inspire and accelerate healing.

Maybe some plants in the backpackers lodge would have helped. One hostel dweller talked incessantly to himself, sometimes laughing at his own jokes, and I initially thought he was completely loopy and then realised he was only verbalising aloud what often goes on silently in my own head, unheard by those around me.

Be careful not to cast that first stone!

As unpleasant as aspects of this journey were, I valued the chance to see how others live and to remind myself of my own urgent need to balance big city busyness and technology with more nature time.

Three years earlier this was demonstrated so forcefully when I embarked on a Californian epic I think of affectionately as my Carmageddon to Redwood Heaven adventure. I spent several weeks walking and occasionally hitching between Hollywood and Los Angeles and the towering redwood trees to the north of the state. It was a symbolic journey from my earlier life as a motoring journalist to walking pilgrim, and where better to begin, I argued, than LA - the epicenter of car culture where I was once a university student in years long gone by.

The grove of bristlecone pines are around 4,800 years old and they're still alive

Highpoints included communing with the towering redwoods that are the tallest trees on Earth; meeting General Sherman, a giant sequoia that is believed to be the planet’s biggest tree by volume; and visiting a bristlecone pine grove that is home to ancients that were already two thousands years old and more when Buddha and Christ walked among us.

An analysis of one bristlecone pine that was cut down in 1965 proved it to be 4,844 years old - imagine counting all those tree rings!

That 2012 journey also ended with another memorable highpoint - meeting wilderness rites-of-passage guides Gigi Coyle and her partner Win Phelps, and helping out at Three Creeks, the property they care for that is a green oasis in a parched desertscape framed by the magnificent Sierra Nevada mountain range.

I somehow knew I’d be back and there was a great sense of coming home, such as I also experience every time I return to Findhorn. With the day cooling from temperatures in the high 30s we sat in a circle outside and spoke from the heart while frogs plopped in the pond, swallows swooped on insects and a lone bobcat patrolled his domain and looked entirely at home in his glossy tan-coloured skin. I felt a deep peace enveloping me and gradually, gratefully, let go of the stress of the past couple of days.

Happily I’m now ensconced in a tent instead of a bunkbed and it feels like incomparable five-star luxury as I celebrate the overwhelming presence of wild nature and feel the interconnectedness of all life vibrating in and around me.

My prayer is that many many more can reconnect with our Earth Mother and share such gifts.

The hot, harsh world of Death Valley

And the contrast of Three Creeks little more than an hour away