The Breathing Land

[yldann]

When listening to nature rather than interpreting it, one may begin to catch the notes of a Song. It is an all-encompassing song, and it is interwoven of many individual sounds -- There are the sighs of winds in the branches of trees, the birds trilling for a mate, dogs barking or people talking in the distance, and even the sounds of motors. The rivers of ancient sunlight that are the concrete road systems crisscrossing the land, as well as the metal beasts that roll upon them, their not-quite-living exoskeletons allowing the lifeforms within to better match the insects, add to the hum, which encompasses everything and leaves nothing out. The Song ebbs and flows, and is reminiscent of the sound made by the ocean as it sings together with all the creatures within it. After a time, it will begin to sound like breathing -- the breath of the world.

Refocusing now upon the Small, the minute details of the ground come into view. The dirt is never solid and even -- it is porous and irregular -- chaotic. The dirt is pockmarked with holes where all manner of tiny creatures live and make their homes. Leaves, tree seeds, mushrooms, and flowers adorn the dirt, spreading their life along the tiny ridges, and sprouting in a wild array of life. The life breathes... The breath of the large and the small puts water and oxygen into the air refreshes it.

The land itself breathes and sings, but the green things on the land help it to breathe better, and perfect the exchange between the ground and the air. The green dances together with the tiny creatures and the mycelia at their roots... These allow them to absorb food they couldn't possibly otherwise use. They breathe out the water, which comes back to them as rain, which waters them and waters the streams that support them. The rain goes into the ground. and the green things grow...

Thus, the land breathes in and out... If we assist the land to breathe and sing, it is good.

I realize that the people who used to be the sole inhabitants of this continent were not perfect. However, I think they recognized the cycles of the breathing land better than our own people do.

There is an area of the United States called "The Breathing Land". At least it was called by this name several hundred years ago. Now it's called Rockcastle County, Kentucky, but underneath the veneer of 'civilization', the land still lives and breathes...

The natives of this land gave names to places and natural landmarks that described their prominent and beautiful features. For example, "Allegheny" meant "tall mountains," "Appalachia" meant "the land of tall trees," and "Ohio" meant "beautiful river" in the languages native to those areas. The tribes of Applachia gave the name Kain-took-ee (The Breathing Land) to a certain area of the Appalachian mountains where there were many caves with the unique quality that they would ... breathe.

From http://www.rkci.org/library/gsp/rvb/1967_05.htm (edited for English and comprehension):

South of the Ohio River on the western slopes of Appalachia was an area of land that was considered to be common hunting ground by the nearby tribes. The tribes referred to this territory as "The Breathing Land". In one language native to the area, this area was called Kain-took-ee. The air moves in and out of these caves in such a way that the earth seems to breathe.

This air movement occurs when a cave has two or more entrances at various elevations. The temperature within the caves varies from forty-four to fifty degrees Fahrenheit, while the outside air temperature varies from one hundred above to twenty below zero.

The minimum outer temperature (-20F) causes the air inside the cave near the upper entrance to cool and move downward from the higher entrance to the lower one at approximately six miles per hour. The maximum outer temperature (100F) reverses this air movement. As the air inside the cave warms, it moves from the lower entrance to the higher one. When the outside temperature equals the mean temperature inside the cave, the breathing stops. The air movement is related to gravity, air volume, and temperature, and the height of one entrance relative to another. Colder, contracting air moves downward with gravity, and hotter, expanding air moves upward against gravity.

The moving air is laden with nitrates, which are deposited over a long period of time on the floor of the cave and along the "arms" of the cave. High concentrations of nitrates are found in most of these caves. Caves that have only one entrance have low levels, as do very wet caves (from which the nitrates are leached out).

The breathing land... How much more beautiful that name is than "Blow-holes" (which is the name the settlers gave the same caves). I truly think that our people need to become a bit more poetic... And to do that they must begin to listen to the breathing land.

The following is a poem from From http://www.thylazine.org/archives/thyla9/thyla9b.html by someone who was very distressed by what he calls "Disappearing Landscapes". Whereas the Native Americans were distressed by the abuse of areas like "The Breathing Land", this person is equally distressed by the loss of his ancestral farmlands.

"Exploring

Not the mountain ranges
or the ridges the explorers followed
in the major scales of things.
But the humbler folds and creases,
the unnoticed rises and falls.

I'm talking of the rise and fall of the breathing land,
the sub-soil, small faults,
the subtle falls across the lawn,
this is where the pine tree grew,
the line of sight to the sea.

You could be the first person to dig here,
this dark soil may never have been uncovered,
mounds raised for dams and diggings survive,
new trees grow, a shape is unearthed,
suddenly you know something
you didn't before,
in the minor range perhaps
moody, almost nostalgic,
but still can't explain."

The best some of us can do is to resurrect the breathing land where we live - to allow our surroundings to breathe as much as possible, to sing and flow as much as it can under the circumstances.