Bone Memory

Aurora on Dartmoor. Devon, England.

There is old memory in all of us. Or perhaps what I mean, is there is human animal memory in all of us. Call it ancestral, call it instinctual, call it past life. It comes from the same place. Bone memory.

I witnessed this in my daughter when friend and author, Sylvia Linsteadt took her up to the ancient bone lands of Dartmoor, where the crone mother presides over bog and changeable mists. Where young foals and lambs test their new legs.
We could not hike far. It was more of a wee ramble over stone and grass, avoiding prickly gorse, and foot-snaring holes.
Sylvia recognized the cuckoo’s call fist. Unmistakable. Just like the famous clocks. Cuckoos are good luck. To hear the first cuckoo of spring is incredibly fortunate. Indeed, other hikers stopped to listen and look for this rare blessing.
Of course we left the songbird offerings. My 2 year old daughter, understanding the magic of the moment then requested that we all take hands and dance a little fairy jig in a ring. She doesn’t know about fairies, or dancing jigs, or May Day dances, or any of the customs of her heritage, but there she was, directing us in a little dance. When she was finished, she requested we lay down on three separate stones, and close our eyes.

If you know anything about fairy lore, hearing a magic bird, dancing on the moor, and falling asleep on a rock is most certainly the beginning of an otherworldly tale.

She knew. Bone memory knew that here, in this land, as the newly born foals wobbled near their mothers, here is where you dance. Here is where you lay your mortal body against the ancient stone. Here is where some part of you remembers: yes, this. I know this. I am this. This place is in me. I recognize this land, because I am eternal, and all my grandmothers are alive within me.

Let Yourself Be Dreamt

Do you remember the first time you felt claimed by the Earth? By a place? A particular seaside cove? Grove of aspens? An entire land?

Do you remember the first time you were named as beloved by something other than human? The dragonfly perhaps? Or the wolf? Or the orca whale? Where did they find you? In the wilds? In a book? In a dream?

Have you touched that intelligence that is so "other" there are no words to translate it's voice, and yet you hear it, with the tuning forks of your bones, and the antenna of your hair.

What if we could court that feeling? That encounter? What if we could lean into our own belonging?

This is what my dreamwork is about. It's the love language between deep ecology, poetry, and the mythic. The vehicle is intentional dreaming with bees, or serpents, or the Earth, but the material is your own chthonic relationship to dandelions, stars, pavement, dew, dust, creeks, wastelands, badgers, alligators, horse maidens, bardic heros, murmurations, and wildfires.

Let yourself be dreamt.