An Tobar

White flowers suspended in the branches of a tree, fragments of sky fallen to ground. An upturned stump, a gaping black pit held in its roots. A doorframe of branches, a path from here to somewhere else, take another step and it disappears never to be seen again. This patch of forest near my house has become a place where I walk, to see the contents of my brain poured out, and to find a point of focus to bring it all back together.

While walking in this forest I was reminded of two bodies of superstition from where I grew up. The first is that there are places - trees, rocks, the corner of a field - that are avoided because they belong to beings from another world (na daoine sí, the good folk, faeries if you absolutely must), and there are superstitions about how those beings will take their revenge if they, or their places, are disrespected. The second is that there are places - usually water sources - with healing properties, places that people afflicted by some illness would go to for healing, or to pray to some saint to which the place is dedicated.

I don’t believe in these superstitions, but I want them to be preserved. More than preserved, I want them to live. I want to find the practices relevant and to contribute to their preservation, to remember the story and find the practice beneficial even as I reject the beliefs. Together these bodies of superstition describe a land with agency and woven with stories, a land that should be respected and that we are subject to rather than one we have dominion over.

I emigrated a long time ago, so this is not the same land that gave rise to those stories and traditions. I’m a guest here where generations before me have been colonizers and refugees. Did those prior generations carry the same stories and traditions and look for them in this unfamiliar land? Did they find them? I think I see them but I also think the act of looking for them is half the battle. I think looking for them, paying attention, is an act of care, for the environment and for myself.