Listening to the Spirits of Place

The Woodland Apothecary

By Diane Duckworth

Listening To The Spirits of Place

“The clearest way into the Universe is through the forest wilderness.”

-John Muir

As I feel more settled in my new Cumbrian home, far from the open skies of Colorado, I am starting to feel more connected to the spirits of this place. I have been thinking about the Japanese practice of Shinto, not as something to borrow, wear, or imitate, but as a gentle reminder of something humans have always known:

That places are alive.

In Shinto, there is the idea of kami - spirits or sacred presences that dwell in waterfalls, mountains, ancient trees, rivers, stones, and sometimes even places shaped by human hands and longing. Kami are not gods in the Western sense. They are presences. A feeling of aliveness. A reminder that the world is not made of objects, but relationships. 

And if this is true in the cedar forests of Japan, perhaps it is also true here in Whitehaven, as well as the Rockies of Colorado. Perhaps there are spirits of place that linger in the folds of all lands. Here, it may be the spirit of the old sycamore standing quietly at the edge of the woods. It may be in the spirit of castle walls, holding centuries of footsteps, whispered conversations, griefs, and celebrations within stone memory. Perhaps there is the spirit of the coal miners who disappeared underground each morning into darkness, carrying lamps and hope. Men whose labor warmed homes they would never see. There could be a reverence for them, too.

The old train vents that dot Crow Park feel sacred to me. I can imagine them breathing their steam into the forest air. Now they hold their breath, but their spirit lives on. The remnants of old train tracks on the harbour leave their imprints with iron paths carrying coal, stories, departures, and reunions. The bones of industry stitched through the land like memory. 

And then there is Colorado. How strange and beautiful to belong to such contrasting landscapes. Part of me was shaped beneath the enormous skies of the American West, where the mountains rise with such confidence they seem older than memory itself. The red rocks that glowed at sunset as though lit from within, carrying the warmth of the day long after shadows stretched across the land. 

If Shinto teaches that spirit may dwell in extraordinary places, then surely the red rocks of Colorado hold stories, too. Long before roads and ranch fences, before railways and towns, the Ute, Arapahoe, and Cheyenne walked those lands, listening to the same winds moving through the canyon walls. The buffalo once crossed the plains in thunderous migrations, dark rivers of life moving across the earth. I often wonder what lives on. What remains in the memory of the land itself. 

Perhaps places remember. Perhaps the rock remembers hoofbeats. Do rivers remember names spoken in forgotten languages? Does the land remember those who arrived looking for gold? For fortunes? For dreams? Does it remember those who were simply trying to survive?

How alike they seem, in some strange way, to the miners of Whitehaven. In Colorado, men panned for gold in the glittering veins of promise. Here in Cumbria, men disappeared beneath the sea into pitch-black tunnels, carrying lamps into the belly of the earth. Different continents. Different treasures. The same human ache to wrest meaning, warmth, or wealth from stone. And I wonder if the spirits of labor know one another. If somewhere beneath mountains and beneath the sea, the earth remembers every hand that carved into her body. Not with judgment. Only with memory. 

Perhaps the old gold mines of Colorado and the coal seams of Whitehaven belong to the same great story. The story of humanity reaching into the darkness seeking light. Maybe the earth teaches us that we do not need to choose one place over another. Maybe place is cumulative. We are a conglomeration of all the people, places, and ideas that have shaped us. 

When will we understand that the Earth itself is sacred? Not only in Japan, not only in Cumbria, not only in Colorado. But everywhere! In the Middle East, in China, in Russia, in all the Americas - North and South. In the oceans, rivers, and lakes that we are blessed with. On the prairies and deserts and moors. This Earth that we call home deserves to be honoured. It is time to notice how much we have and to give thanks.

The Woodland Apothecary Prescription

For days when you feel untethered:

Step outside and greet three presences.

A tree.

A stone.

A memory of a landscape you have loved.

Offer thanks, not because the earth asks it of you, but because gratitude roots us. Pause at the threshold. Listen. The land has been speaking all along.

With reverence and gratitude, your woodland apothecary, 

Diane