Care and protection of the land, trees, and soil have been human responsibilities for millennia. When deeply connected, we effectively participate in caring for the world around us.
Cultural Burning
By participating directly with experienced indigenous elders, we can become steeped in profound practices of deepening our connection to the natural world.
Under such tutelage, we will be guided into and through environments, learning observational skills that are based on feeling the state of the environment and the intimate relationships between all of its parts. We will learn when to choose where and how to burn particular areas while safeguarding others. We will participate in actual burns, learning how to set-up for and implement fire according to ancient wisdom (and informed by contemporary science).
Search for workshops around Australia and in other countries that are conducted by indigenous elders who are adept at cultural burning and related matters and ceremonies.
If you have grasslands, dry forests, wet forests, and/or other areas that you think may benefit from cultural burning, or you wish to participate in one of the growing number of Australian cool-fire workshops, contact:
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Land Care and Tree Care
Land and tree care which are intimately related, are integrated with both cultural burning and fire-mimicry practices.
Adepts of land care dedicate their lives to understanding the needs of environments and their inhabitants, including humans. Those seriously interested in land care embark on lifelong apprenticeships of always learning more from country and from other experienced humans.
The impulse to care for land and trees is innate and natural.
If forests, jungles, and savannas are left alone – to be “wild” – they quickly overgrow and become tangled, congested, unhealthy, and neglected systems.
They also become dangerous fire generators!
Through the activities of intelligent humans and large herbivores, woodlands are tended and kept in balance and good health. Indigenous peoples constantly care for the regions they live in, and familial lore and responsibilities are transmitted across generations, resulting in a more or less continuous caretaking influence.
Caretaking the land is serious business on physical, cultural, and spiritual levels.
Forests are kept thinned so all the trees can grow well.
Well-tended food trees produce higher yields for people and animals.
Well-tended cultural and sacred trees grow to majestic proportions, connecting people to the heart of life.
Soil Care
Many modern practices of plowing, chemical fertilizers, industrial agriculture, exposure of soils to sun, wind, and air, and the general exploitation and neglect of garden soils, are fast bringing the world’s nutritious topsoils to a state of exhaustion.
Mulching, mineralization, and light seasonal burning of woodlands and grasslands helps to revive and keep topsoils rich and healthy.
Envisioning Fearing No More 