Between two particles of soil,
small invisible relations
rise and fall, feast, party and toil -
complex cultures, cities, nations...

Slow dancing in the world's embrace,
entwined with what we hold most dear -
when all is gone without a trace,
the soil will know that we were here

The earth forever calls us home, and the "ground" of any true culture lies in the soil. It's that in-between common world of civilization and wild nature, that place where relationship is formed. It's where our human hands and feet marry mineral and plant, there in the world of microbes and insects, sun and rain.

Watching the storm
move across the continent – 
a massive swath of land engulfed
on the radar – the worst of it is red and slow.

When the world threatens to consume you and your mind becomes a place cruel and cold, remember the day that you stood under the Douglas fir in the late afternoon, the way the light was saturated a deep amber so thick it had weight.

In this dawning of a New Year, greeted by the luminous full moon, who drew so close to Earth and opened our hearts with her beauty, ONE wishes you awakening, blessings and resolve in 2018.

Thank you for your instruction to stand strong, to be exposed and seen in all your irregularities. My strength is to be like you in these ways.

All living beings and elements have multiple dimensions—physical, emotional and spiritual. Likewise, the Amazon region holds all these dimensions and possibly more, within its animate entities like plants and animals and inanimate ones like minerals.  

by Timothy P McLaughlin

I waited and waited a great while
before I knew enough
about listening
to hear the bright ones
speak,
and only faintly at first,
so I wasn’t sure if anything
had happened at all.

By Rachel Baird

I am writing from the Holy Isle
Just off the eastern shore of Lamlash, 
Isle of Arran, Scotland.
During Green Tara prayer hour
I let the waves of chant wash over me and quickly moved into a lucid dream.

My mother was holding me looking at the waves when suddenly a huge wave broke over us. The shock and sound of the wet spray gave me a baptism I never forgot. I grew up on two islands, one urban,the other rural, and at a very young age I was diving into the waves and buoyed up on their crests, or watching reckless teenagers jump into the East River trafficked by tugs and cargo ships headed out to sea. 

By MR Baird 

I have descended out of the Northwest
Back into civilization
Sounds of cars and jets,
Weed eaters now hurt my head,
I don’t belong here anymore
Now that I think of him,
That stag,

By Emerson Gale 

On  March 10th I spoke with Sally J. Mark, “Sal” about how to share the truth of plant sentience. Initially, I wanted to interview her to learn about the Music of the Plants devices from Damanhur,www.musicoftheplants.com for which she has been facilitating workshops around the country. 

By Timothy P McLaughlin 

Here, in the wild, where there’s almost no chance
of another human stopping through,
where there’s no hopping round
patterns of perception or acceptance, 

By Kate Gilday

I pause before stepping into the forest, halting to listen, to take in the beauty before me, and breathe in the fragrance of the evergreens welcoming us with outstretched branches.  In these few moments, before entering this wild place I ask permission to step onto and off the path ahead, to wander among the trees and through the streams we will encounter.

By Timothy P. McLaughlin

In the effort to become more like water,

I’ve taken to walking the dried arroyos of New Mexico.

Gliding along their twisting, sandy trails,

following the water’s worn tracks round trees and brush

and endless rock,