Black trumpet mushroom #Craterellusfallax

Sacred Ground

One of the nice things about having “roots” in a place is that you start to develop a deep knowledge of your surroundings the longer you live there. For instance, within a few miles of my home, I now know where to easily find a huge variety of delicious nutritious, “wild” seasonal fruits, veggies and mushrooms. I live in the sticks and am fortunately surrounded by hundreds of acres. I've been hiking this area for two hours (give or take) a day for close to 14 years. Whether or not you’re religious, it’s not hard to understand how many native/indigenous populations came to consider their ancestral lands as “sacred” after thousands of years of forming connections to a particular place. A nearby rock face, stream or meadow wasn’t just a pleasant view, it was rich with transgenerational stories, history and interactions that made the land an integral part of their self-identity. These were not folks who moved to a new home in a new area of the country every few years to work their way up the corporate ladder.