Elephant Speaks:

Aboriginal Australians and African Elephants walk the land, Whales swim the oceans; generation upon generation follow lines invisible to modern human sight. Tuning into the electro-magnetic webs and genetically memorised routes of Dream Lines and Ley Lines, there is a calm certainty of where these indigenous ones are in the present, where they have come from and where they are going.

 

Modern urban-effected mankind, in contrast, can be seen in the landscape with high-tech gizmos to abate the potential panic of being lost. As soon as the printed map appeared it drew in the outsider to scuff up the terrain of a route unknown to them.  Earlier explorers relied on the stars to orientate and guide; current day technology relies on man-made extra-terrestrial satellites.

 

We are seduced by ‘elsewhere’ - whether it is ‘place’ or how we ‘do’ things. Interests in ancient, native, indigenous cultures are almost always with the ones ‘over there’. It’s almost seen as something not quite interesting enough - for anybody with anything about them - to explore, to know the ways of the ancient ones who walked where every day we now walk. Even if those routes are now covered with tarmac, land like all matter holds memory. Awareness of our connection to place (the realms of the ‘seen’) enhances our connection to space (the realms of the ‘unseen’).

 

 

In your journal, you may wish to reflect on the following:

 

•             What lies at your feet?

•             How has the land you live, work and pass through daily been lived on over time?

•             Who has lived there? How have they lived there?

•             Are you aware of any past disturbances of behaviour asking for a sense of peace? 

•             If so, how may your current day behaviour appease the past?  

•             How may you begin a new cycle of connection with the place you live so it is in good shape for future                    generations? 

•             What natural signs surround you to guide you – both in ‘place’ and ‘space’?

 

Wherever you live now, you have connection to that place. However transient you may feel you are, you have roots to a web that crosses time, place and space.

 

Create connection to the memory inherent in your place, so to ground you.