Introduction
If you pay attention, if you learn how to pay attention, the land and nature are always speaking to you. But sometimes it is not always easy to hear the message. For too much in busy, modern life, it is easy to miss the subtle messages. For it is true that sometimes nature roars. But equally the land and nature can whisper. And you can miss the message if you are not listening, if you do not know how to listen, if you do not know what you are listening for.
And what the land says and how it speaks can differ in locations. And how you hear the message, how you receive it, is also different based upon your own connection and history to the land. And if you are ready to hear the message.
The Roman Barrows
For some time I had been wanting to set off to see the Roman Barrows in a field a few miles from me. Sometimes I am forgetful of the Roman presence on the land around me. There is seemingly little trace of it, but it is there. The Anglo-Saxon presence, the hovering of the middle ages Danelaw line just north of me seems to be more of a constant presence in historical memory.
From childhood, it seemed it was easy to tune into the messages of wild landscape. The open reaches of tallgrass prairies and flinty hills, of the rugged Rocky Mountains—I longed imagined or indeed actually felt like I could speak with the land, hear its story, its messages, and connect.
What was more difficult for me was to connect with the less rugged and wild landscape of England. There it seemed like everything had an obvious imprint of human touch ( and while even my wild landscapes of childhood may have had human in put it was less obvious) England felt like a garden. nd it seemed like England was more of a cultivated garden. The wild spaces, indeed, nature itself, seemed to be remote and unreachable. Nature was groomed, managed, clipped and ornamental. And I lamented that there was no connection with the land, that the land did not speak at all in the ways that my prairies and mountains had.
The whisperings of ancestors
I used to imagine my ancestors—the people who had made the choice to leave their homelands and venture to the New World—and what they would think of me back in an Old Country. A place one or more of them had left. What would they think of me back here—the places that had left? But then in their stories it is not always clear why they left. Did they leave with regret? Ambivalence? Was it a choice forced by circumstance, the need for survival or safety, making it less a choice than a necessity? In truth, I know only the fragments of their stories. And some of this remains unknown to me. Perhaps not unknowable, but at the moment not known. Could I even hear the whispers of my ancestors in the landscape? And could I ever connect to this land—this land that seemed paved, cultivated, tame and silent?
It was only slowly, over time, that I found the way to hear what this land was saying. Beneath the cultivation, the pavement, literally under my feet, was the land. And the messages that it had to offer.
There was a quiet stillness in the way that it spoke, offering up the mysteries of its still untamed places in a glimpse here and there.
Changing and unchanging land
The land of the 21st century in some ways is far different from what my ancestors would have known, far different than the land, the towns, the woods, the hills, that they would have left. And in some ways, it is the same, for there are also things that are timeless and unchanging. It was looking for these things that my ancestors’ whispers seemed to urge me to find.
And so it was slowly that the land began to whisper to me, that I began to understand what its messages were and how to seek them. The places that had seemed frozen and disconnected were teeming with life. It was about learning how to connect, how to see. The fold of a hill that hid a road, an old growth tree with bumpy roots that now and again broke the surface of the earth, the scent of bluebells in the spring, the way an old wood weaves together overhead and underfoot for a complete delightful community of plants.
Journey to the Roman Barrows
And so I made my way to the Roman Barrows, wishing to hear its subtle messages, to bask simply in the sight of the old and ancient human formed mounds in the rolling golden landscape. Human formed and yet of such age to seem to be part of the natural world. And indeed, it was in a way an older and almost forgotten community made their way of being EarthWise, of connecting with ancestors, part of the expression of the landscape.
For connecting with nature is not only about nature, it is also looking at the ways over time that others have sought and found and expressed their ways and knowledge gained of being Earthwise.
Clues are left in the naming of roads, rivers, towns and fields. In the shape of a field, which may curve to preserve a far older pathway or sacred space. Of a road that follows the ancient bends of pathways that also wend their way around and to sacred spaces.
There are foot paths to and around the Roman Barrows. They mean walking through the footpaths across fields, where animals still graze and crops still grow. It is about seeing the rise and fall of the land, of the low river near the barrows, and the lift of the land going north from them, into quiet hills.
Someone chose this location a very long time ago, nearly two thousand years ago, to mark the resting place of ancestors. To build visibly into the landscape a memory and a presence. Was this space chosen for high visibility in the landscape? For easy access near the busy roads and rivers? Because it was a favourite location of those whose memories and lives it now encased? That is not known. There are some secrets that the land and the location do not yet reveal.
Conclusion
And that makes it well worth another walk, a mini-pilgrimage of seeking if you will, to the Barrows. To sit and listen to the birdcall, the lift of the wind in the nearby hedgerows and trees, to observe the sparkle of the ribbon of river that runs at the foot of the barrows. Each footstep taken on the old paths, each breath of air taken in on the way, each appreciative view of the hills and fields and barrows, taken in time, taken in contemplation, bring me closer to the land, its messages and the continued whispering of my ancestors.