Being grounded is not a good thing if you are a teenager. It means that your parents think you messed up enough that you need to be punished, to stay home. Some weeks in my life, when I am out every day, I wish somebody would ground me because I need to stay put.
Being grounded as an adult means having a clear sense of who we are, what we are doing, and where we are going. It's about balance. It's about understanding realistic possibilities and finding a way to deal with what is not possible. In a way, grounding a teenager is an attempt to provide time for them to do the same thing, even though it can feel like a power struggle.
The theologian Paul Tillich referred to God as "the ground of our being." His idea helps us understand that there is a relationship between the ultimate Being and our being. His phrase gives a hint of action in the gerund form, so that being--ours and divine Being--are not static or passive. And he says that God is the foundation of life.
Which gets me thinking about land. Land is more than the place we walk. Land shapes us.
If the place where we are walking is rough, we have to watch the ground, taking care where we put each foot so that we don't turn our ankle or fall. Though we may be focussed on where we are trying to get to, walking requires attention to the land beneath our feet.
Landscape is not just something we look at. The escarpment is a feature we look up at, admiring the strength of rock. But it is also something we climb. It is a place from which we gain a different perspective of the land, seeing the relationship of places. In this area where forests dot the landscape and treed fence rows shape sight-lines, we don't get long vistas except at the top of a hill. Drumlins and escarpment provide a way to see more and to see relationship.
Walking the side of a river feels different. Here we are closed in by trees or hillsides, surrounded by the music of moving water, the changing light and action of a flowing river. It is peaceful but not still.
Waterfalls engage us. Many of our towns and villages grew up around places where water fell because the settlers used water to drive their mills, to spin fiber and weave, to grind grain, to cut lumber. The mills are gone, but the waterfalls remain pouring water over a drop, carving rock, making music. Watching water fall tugs at us. The everchanging yet similar patterns speak to us.
One of the features of our area is shoreline, places where water and land meet. Some of these are sand beaches where each wave moves the grains, pushing and pulling. Some are shale where water washes over the rock and winter ice splits it. Some places, the shore has been protected from erosion by piled rock. Along the length of Lake Huron and the curving shores of Georgian Bay, water and land are in conversation, interacting and changing with the seasons.
Long tracks of forest provide shelter for animals. These quiet spaces invite a rambling walk, a long ski. They may be tapped for maple syrup or logged for wood, but they are complex ecosystems providing home to a huge variety of creatures.
Wide swamps harbour deer and ducks, frogs and turtles. There are creatures who make their way through the ponds and fallen trees and hummocks, places a person finds it hard to pass in summer.
As a farmer, we speak of working the land, as if we choose what is going to happen to the fields. This year, that is clearly not the case. The ground is saturated so some land did not get planted. For haying, we have had to attend to the level of moisture of hay, ground, and air. This year reminds us of what is always true: harvest is a partnership with the land.
In our culture, we speak of land ownership, parcelling off pieces and assigning them to a person or organization. But land is more than what we hold. It engages us even as we influence its shape.
Cathy Hird is a farmer, minister, and writer living near Walters Falls.
