Voices of the Earth: The Path of Green Spirituality by Clea Danaan
Reviewed by Rebecca Laughlin, Moose Hill Farm
This book spoke deeply to me, a longtime follower of the green way. It’s uncommon to read gardening work that addresses the spiritual aspect of gardening so sweepingly; from communing with the cosmos, plant devas and power animals, to creating natural cleaning agents, Danaan covers the many ways to live in harmony with Nature from the mundane to the sublime. She teaches how to become a nature intuitive and to talk to plants, rocks, trees, rivers and wind. Each chapter begins with a personal vignette that helps to illuminate the steps on Danaan’s journey. The end of each chapter offers exercises such as mediation, journaling and art work to finely attune the seeker to a root connection with Nature. To those who find the talking to plants thing wacky, I offer the following.
I first heard plants talk to me while working in my first serious garden, in 1995. It was a memorial garden for my son Jesse who passed at 19. My mother stayed on after his service and we created his garden together. It was a place to grieve, heal and find comfort in the seasonal rhythms of Nature. It was there I heard the words in my head, “follow the plants.” Then I had a vision of myself walking down a grassy hillside to a shed, trailed by ducks. At the time I was a sales rep in New York City, living on a flat, urban tenth of an acre. Today I live on a remote country hilltop in Connecticut, trailed not by ducks but by chickens, the result of following the plants.
Susan Weed tells a similar story; the first time she heard the plants they were laughing at her for thinking they were in the right spot. She quickly moved them.
It was exciting to read a book devoted to people like me. Even though I’m living my dream, I sometimes get tired and a little lonely. Some people think I’m crazy. My husband is pushing for a hot dog cart and we miss the good money. That’s why it was so invigorating to read Voices of the Earth and get support for the path I’ve chosen and new ways to explore it. But you need not be a country dweller to appreciate this book. A vignette near the beginning describes a moment when the author is feeling slightly anxious while driving to a book signing. As she notes the trees lining the boulevard, at a stop light she takes the time to connect with those stalwarts and finds calm in their message. Nature is present in the heart of the city!
I especially enjoyed the ideas about sense of place, how one imprints on a certain geographical area, and even when uprooted from it, feels longing for that particular spot with all its flora and fauna. For Danaan, it was the evolution from her Pacific Northwest natal grounds to wife and mother of the Coloradian Rockies. For me it was traveling from my Midwestern birthplace to live my adult life in New England on Long Island Sound. After all these years, the ocean is still too vast for me and I ache for a Midwestern lake. Yet now I realize that this shift in landscape has important meaning and I’ll listen carefully to sense what it is.
The book drills down place even further; encourages you to discover where exactly you are in the vast world. For example beyond Long Island Sound, I live on a hilltop, on a ridge of a river valley, near the confluence of two rivers. I was instantly drawn to this property, three and a half secluded acres, from the moment I set foot on it. I parked, I saw, said this is it, all before I saw the house. We’re only the second owners of this house, built in 1962 to compound the very rightness of it all. Surely, this place of my vision as a grieving mother, has great significance to me now… well, because, here I am now. I’ll continue to investigate.
Finally, the last point I’d like to make is about the beauty of passing love of Nature along to future generations. The introduction of the book is all about immersing the author’s newborn daughter into the mysteries of the earth. Danaan goes on to talk about being a teacher of Nature to eager young students. I wish that I had such a simpatico childhood. Still, I’m inspired that I can continue to grow and learn in my cronehood. The education is never really over, just to let you know.
