Regenerating nature

WhereTheHorsesSing This Article and Photo by Bear Guerra courtesy of Emergence Magazine

Where the Horses Sing
by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
“If we are to become partners with the Earth, living our shared journey, we have to once again speak the same language, listen with our senses attuned not just to the physical world but also to its inner dimension.”
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee is a writer and Sufi teacher whose work focuses on spiritual responsibility in our present time of transition. In this essay, Llewellyn witnesses a growing wasteland that parallels our increasing detachment from the reality that spirit and matter are united.

Recalling the deep knowledge of land and water that was once interwoven into the lives of all of our ancestors—and the ways in which Western civilization has marginalized those who continue to maintain this deep relationship—he seeks the threshold that could bring us back to the place where the land sings: to a deep ecology of consciousness that returns our awareness to a fully animate world.
OPEN ESSAY

From the makers of the film: “We’ve made the film free to view because we want the important messages of land regeneration, nature connection, and living more simply to reach as many people as possible.

We hope you’re as inspired by the story of Hinewai Reserve.. as we are. Please feel free to share the link with anyone you feel would be interested.

Enjoy the film!”

Fools & Dreamers: Regenerating a Native Forest is a 30-minute documentary telling the story of Hinewai Nature Reserve, on New Zealand’s Banks Peninsula, and its kaitiaki/manager of 30 years, botanist Hugh Wilson. When, in 1987, Hugh let the local community know of his plans to allow the introduced ‘weed’ gorse to grow as a nurse canopy to regenerate farmland into native forest, people were not only skeptical but outright angry – the plan was the sort to be expected only of “fools and dreamers”.

Now considered a hero locally and across the country, Hugh oversees 1500 hectares resplendent in native forest, where birds and other wildlife are abundant and 47 known waterfalls are in permanent flow. He has proven without doubt that nature knows best – and that he is no fool.