There are those who say we do not own the land but are
only stewards in our lifetime. I tell
you now, those people are wrong. They do
not have vision. They do not understand
that we ARE the very land upon which we walk.
We pull our nutrition from it, and in turn when we die, we give it
back. The very plants and animals raised
on the land have turned its once inanimate ingredients into a walking and
breathing mural. We in turn consume the
mural and become the walking land.
The animals know what most humans do not: We are one with the land, the only difference
being one of degree. We come from the
soil; we return to the soil. My
ancestors’ blood has soaked back into the clay on countless occasions—red rivers
blackening the hungry soil—only to bide its time, seek me out, and spurt back
into life in my own veins. There is a
real connection here. They lived and
died so that I might live. And die.
This is why many people who leave their birthplace feel a
real disconnection for a long time.
Sometimes they can forge a new connection in their new territory. Sometimes not. It depends upon how deep their roots have
gone and how sensitive the living are to the vibrations of the dead around
them. It depends upon whether or not
they can unite in an erotic embrace with the new land around them.
There are those with a dark agenda who understand this
only too well. They seek to sever the
connection between the living and their ancestors by displacing them from the
land in order to rule the world. They
know the secret love affair between man and the soil, and they seek to destroy
the union. The man without a country is
a man adrift in a sterile sea. He has no
roots, he has no lifeline, he has nothing to love and nothing to protect. When he loses the land, he loses his blood. When others attempt to take what is
rightfully his, if he gives it away without a fight, he has given away his own
life.
This is not about ownership of “property.” This is about birthright. So be careful that you do not hand away your
birthright. Be careful that you do not
whittle away the solidity beneath your own two feet in slippery slopes and tiny
degrees—all for the shiny baubles of the merchant. The land in which you were born and upon
which you walk and live and move and breathe, is your connection to not only
this life you live now, but to your ancestors and ultimately deity itself. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Vita mutatur non tollitur.
