Every landscape I have lived in, I have come to love. Each place I have lived holds a piece of my heart: the wild grasses, living skies and badlands of the prairies where I grew up; the limestone cliffs, bamboo forests and white sandy beaches of Taiwan; the cedar and cottonwood forests and pristine rivers of my current home. We internalize the energies of the places we live. We weave our identities with the Earth through the intimate relationships we form with the elements, the features of the land, and the more-than-human kin we meet there. In the resonant words of Atkins & Snyder (2018), it is my experience too that “the landscapes we inhabit also inhabit us” (p. 20).

I live on a steep, forested mountainside above the Kutenai river valley in the Pacific Northwest, where the forest is peopled with cedar, birch, fir, pine, larch, and yew trees. Seasonal streams and clean mountain spring water pour from the body of the rock. Located on the traditional, ancestral and unceded homeland of the Sinixt People, the land has a rich history. I often find myself imagining what the land was like prior to colonization, when it was cared for and tended by the Sinixt People. I am ever more aware of my privilege in being able to live here and feel grateful for the opportunity to love and help steward this land. My partner and I respectfully call home, “Cedarwood.”

Photo of the Kutenai River and the city of Nelson taken from up on the bluffs looking down at the valley. — Kutenai River

Since moving to our home in the fall of 2019, I have been engaging in practices to form relationships with the land and more-than-human kin. These experiential practices support me to cultivate intentional relationships with the natural world and involve observing, embodying my senses, expressing gratitude and cultivating reciprocity. This can look like writing a gratitude poem to the forest; decorating the spring with colorful flags to honor the water; praising the stinging nettle’s beauty as I water them; or sitting with a yew tree to soak in her ancient and mysterious presence. These practices are grounded in the ancient eco-psychological premise that humans and the more-than-human world are interconnected and interrelated and that our health and wellness are inextricably linked.

I begin with daily walks and observation, intuitively wandering towards what I am attracted to and sitting in quiet presence witnessing the plants and wildlife. On spring and early summer days I hike up the land behind our home to the seasonal creek that flows beneath the freshwater spring. The creek dries up by midsummer, yet the forest floor remains lush with violets and wild ginger. When I was a youth growing up on our family farm on the prairies, I was drawn in the evenings to the dugout behind the garden to listen to the melodic and soothing chirps of the frogs. Each time I return to our family farm, I visit that dugout, sitting alongside and finding myself in the beloved presence of this place; the frozen water snow-covered in winter, and bright green with algae in summer. These are two of my “visiting” places: places on the land which I perceive as sacred and which I feel a connection with. I return regularly to visit them, connect with them, just as one does with a human friend. Visiting in the different seasons of the year, I become familiar with the rhythms of a place. What animals live here, and how do they behave seasonally? What plants are native here? Can I identify them? What medicines do they hold? What are the weather and precipitation patterns? How does the air and the ground smell and feel in each season? For example, a fresh snowfall in winter in the mountains is like a magical canvas revealing the tracks of rabbits, deer, elk and bobcat. This gives me a better understanding of who I am sharing the land with. Who I am walking with.

My relationship to the landscape also includes a strong sense of water. A few years ago, Marilyn James, local Sinixt matriarch, shared a teaching with Kutenai Art Therapy Institute faculty and students about water. She invited us to go to any nearby source of water—whether a river, lake, or stream—and to introduce ourselves to the water, particularly when we find ourselves somewhere new. She taught us to share an offering with the water and to bring our gratitude, our questions and our concerns conversationally to the water, just as we would to a friend. In this way, we can start to form a relationship with the water. I have integrated this potent land-based reciprocity practice where I live. I make offerings of gratitude to the water, plants, and animals. I walk with gratitude in my heart when on the land. I take the time to stop and say, “Thank you,” when passing the seasonal creeks, the awe-inspiring natural spring that provides us with fresh drinking water, and our human-built water reservoir.

We can also connect with the land through movement and creative practices. I have learned to go for a walk with an intention or question in my mind and, paying attention to my senses, I move towards what attracts me. This may be a tree, plant, animal, or landscape feature that captures my attention. It could be birdsong or the way the sun filters through trees. Once I find a spot that feels right, I gather natural materials I find on the ground in the surrounding area and begin to make. When my creation feels complete, I sit with what I’ve made and write about what I see. I often find unexpected meaning or distil an answer to my inquiry through the symbols, themes and metaphors arising in the artwork and the synchronicities I perceive around me.

As a practicing ecological art therapist, I notice these practices deepening over time. I sense that it is not only my desire but my responsibility to establish an authentic reciprocity practice with the places in which I live and work. As a settler residing on these stolen lands, I acknowledge my responsibility to honor the Sinixt “law of the land,” as described by Marilyn James, Sinixt matriarch, (Morin, 2020) as our responsibility to care for, protect and honor the land, air, water and more-than-human beings who live here. I open myself to learning from the wisdom immanent in the land. I ask permission from the land and, in doing so, work towards establishing a trusting bond that supports me both in my personal life and in the creative healing work I do with clients. As I deepen into these practices, I notice a deepening sense of place, belonging, and interconnectedness with the land and beings here.

Asking Permission: Synchronicity as a Form of Communication from the Earth

The pandemic precipitated a fundamental change in the way I practice art therapy. It gave me the opportunity to deepen my ecological orientation as an art therapist as I intentionally took sessions out of the studio and onto the land. Due to the need for social distancing, I responded by setting up a seasonal outdoor studio in the semi-forested area behind my home where sessions could continue uninterrupted. Around the same time that I started seeing clients on the land where I live, I began working with a practice of asking for the land’s permission to do creative therapeutic work with people here.

Gradually, I began to experience a beautiful synchronicity in the response I sensed from the land. On one particular day, I went out on the land to make nature-based art and was exploring the question, “How can I be gentler with myself, while deepening my relationship with the land and my land-based practice with clients?” It was a fall afternoon. I set out into the forest behind the house, walking rhythmically, and allowed myself to move intuitively. As I walked through the forest, I felt myself drawn towards a sunny spot on the hillside (I am always following the sun!). I noticed an appealing mossy zone in a sunspot. I remember having the sense that the forest felt enchanted somehow. When I saw the elk prints and the elk trail, I had a felt sense that “I was on the right path.” That I was where I desired to be. I chose a secret hideout, an enclosed cozy space at the base of a cedar tree where bark wrapped around and hugged a small cedar sapling. I gathered soft materials to create with, layering the enclosure with birch bark and lichen, and bordering it with rich, dark green moss. Standing back to look, a cozy, flexible, gentle nest was revealed: a soft holding place to lay my inner criticisms, self-judgment, and the high expectations I can place on myself. I felt held, grounded, and content with this creation—touched by what it revealed about my needs.

Later that night after dark I felt a desire to visit my eco-art creation and returned with a headlamp to the hillside. While searching for the spot where the nest lay, I came across a deer antler laying on the ground, just feet from where I had been working that afternoon. I have long felt a bond with deer, an animal I formed a relationship with as a youth on the grasslands of Alberta. I was filled with wonder and delight to find this treasure that revealed itself to me now upon my return but which I had not seen during the day. I intuitively felt that this gift from the earth was intended as an amulet, a response and an affirmation from the land that I was welcome, that I belonged. I was so moved. I sat down on the earth and wept with awe and gratitude for this message.

Eco Dreaming

Not all land-based practice necessarily happens in nature. It can also occur within our own psyches. I began working with a practice during my eco-psychology training called Eco Dreaming, a process which stands upon the premise that the Earth is alive and in relationship with us. Eco Dreaming requires that we intentionally ask for and be open to receiving messages from the Earth. I practice this by first going inward and connecting with Earth’s energy in whatever way it comes to me. This usually entails relating to either Earth as the land or a vision of Earth as the archetypal mother, Gaia. I bring her voice alive through spontaneous writing, or by connecting with and asking Gaia for a message before going to sleep at night, then capturing my dreams in my journal in the morning. I might compose a specific question that I am hoping to receive guidance about. Or I might ask for open-ended support about what to pay attention to or be open to at the time. The message might come through in a phrase, symbol, narrative, image, or metaphor. Paying attention to my felt sense of the dream is essential for deciphering the meaning or message coming through. Creating art about the dream can also aid the meaning-making process.

There is a network of wildlife trails that crisscross the mountainside where I live. When I first realized that we share this land with a herd of elk that regularly travel through, I was mesmerized. This powerful image rooted into my psyche, stimulating the imaginal and numinous in me, and then surfaced in a potent dream that has stayed vividly within my consciousness since I received it.

It's autumn and I am out hiking up the land by myself. It's steep, and the forest is an intriguing and beautiful landscape to me, holding much mystery. I feel a combination of exhilaration and fear when I go deeper into the bush alone, as I know there are wild creatures here such as bear, bobcat, and cougar. Suddenly I notice that a herd of elk are running down the mountainside towards me, and I am in their path. I am filled with terror. But the elk do not trample me as I fear, instead they begin to gently move around me. The next thing I know, the elk are gathered in a circle around me, and I am standing in the center. It's weird and mysterious. At first, I am confused, but then I tune into the felt sense of peace I am experiencing. There is nothing to be afraid of. The elk do not want to harm me. I feel supported. I feel a sense of belonging, as a part of a community. In the next scene I am being carried on the back of an elk down the hill. She delivers me safely “home.”

Examining the dream through an eco-psychological lens, I intuit that the dream contains a message from the land and the elk. The message is that my partner and I are welcome here on the land. There is a very clear sense that the dream is a reminder of our interconnectedness and inter-relationship with the beings whom we share this land with. I deeply appreciate this message which I perceive as validating the intentional work I have been doing to integrate land-based and reciprocity practices, asking permission of the land and beings, and building relationships with the trees, plants, and creatures. The dream is also soothing, reflecting the ways that I have been healing the deeply ingrained "fear of the wild" through gratitude, trust and remembering my inter-being with the natural world. I am also keenly aware that the dream is a reminder of our responsibility to protect the forest and all its community members in the face of the ongoing clearcutting, mining, and pollution which are devastating ecosystems. We don't “own” this land. We are stewards. With gratitude I fall deeper in love with this place each day I spend here.

These words from Potawatomi author and botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013) capture the essence of my lived experience in honoring my relationships with the natural world:

Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond. (p. 124)

References

Atkins, S., & Snyder, M. (2018). Nature-based expressive arts therapy: Integrating the expressive arts and eco therapy. Jessica Kingsley Pub.

Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants. Milkweed Editions.

Morin, B. (2020, September 11). The Matriarch. National Observer. https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/09/11/meet-marilyn-james-warrior-and-matriarch-sinixt-salish-peoples

Author Bio

Laura Andrew, BSc, DKATI, RCAT

Laura Andrew (she/her) is an artist and a Canadian Art Therapy Association Registered Art Therapist with a decade of experience. She weaves a trauma-informed, relational, ecological, and strengths-based approach in her workshops and individual/group sessions. Laura also teaches and supervises at the Kutenai Art Therapy Institute. Her works centers around ecological art therapy and land-based healing. She's passionate about using creative practices to deepen ecological identity and our relationships with the natural world. Laura believes in the transformative power of expressive arts for personal growth and societal change. Outside of her practice, she enjoys snuggling cats, painting, growing food, knitting, and walking in the cedar groves near her South Slocan home.

https://www.lauraandrewarttherapy.com