Back in 2011, when I was still living out in the country, I wrote a blog post about how Gardening is Good For the Soul. In the piece I reminisced about my grandmother who tended a garden up the hill behind her house in West Virginia, working a half acre or so every season until she was well into her late 80s.
In that older blog post, I also shared the emotional pain I felt at a time when I couldn’t even bend over to tend to a small area about 5 feet by two just off the front porch where my husband and I lived while raising our family, many years before the time on the little farm.
This was when I was sidelined by a complicated kidney surgery that left the right side of my body in extreme pain, and there were so many internal stitches to protect and allow to heal that I wasn’t allowed to do much for weeks.
I’ll be honest and admit that I didn’t miss the housework as much as missing the outside work. Dusting and sweeping have never brought the same joy as planting a seed and seeing it sprout, then bloom into a gorgeous flower. 🙂
After I recovered and throughout many more years, I continued to get great satisfaction from gardening, whether on a small scale or something larger. Most likely because from the time I was a little kid, I always wanted to be a farmer, and for almost twenty years I got to do that. Well, not in the sense of acres of crops and all that, but I did get to play farmer on a little piece of East Texas that was fondly referred to as Grandma’s Ranch.
It was just five acres, but it was my five acres of heaven as long as I lived there.
Whether it was tending to my flowers and vegetables in my gardens, brushing and working with my horse, throwing hay over the fence for the critters – there was a goat and a sheep as well as the horse -mowing and clearing brush, I was so incredibly happy and contented. The first few years we lived out there after my hubby and I retired from our 9-5 jobs, I thought I’d get so much more writing done than I’d been able to squeeze into weekends and evenings, but that didn’t happen.
I’d go out in the morning to take care of the animals and check the property and pretty soon two hours or more had passed and I still wasn’t inside at the keyboard.
Until recently, I’d not known that there’s a term for people like me. People who love the dirt and the trees and the flowers and the animals. But there is.
Ready?
We’re all Earth Mages.
According to novelist Smoky Trudeau, an “Earth Mage is anyone who sees the wonder and magic in nature. Not just in the magnificent…”
I’d never heard the term Earth Mage before. Probably because I’ve never played Guild Wars, where there’s a character by that name. At least that’s what my kids who play the game tell me. But when I read about it in a post on Smoky’s blog, I knew right away that I am, and always have been, an Earth Mage. I love everything about being outdoors. The fresh air. The trees that sway in the breeze. A sky so brilliantly blue that it is almost blinding. The thunderheads that will form late in the afternoon, filling the sky with interesting images. Sunrises and sunsets that can stop a person in their tracks.
According to Trudeau, an Earth Mage notices all the little things, too. Like a toad that hops across the road, startling your dog. Or the brave little wildflower that blooms in the middle of the tall grass at the side of the road.
Unfortunately, other than her author page on Amazon and Goodreads, there are no active links to a website or blog, so I couldn’t find a link to the piece I read. My bad for not snagging it when I first read her blog, but since I can’t even find a blog for her, it’s doubtful that a link would go to the actual piece.
Regardless, I wear the badge of Earth Mage proudly, even though I have no special powers like the character in Guild Wars.
Here, now, living in a house in a small city, there isn’t much gardening happening, and certainly no big animals to tend to, although chickens are allowed in the neighborhood. With the price of eggs being what they are, I’ve been tempted…. but… I know my limitations, which are many now. I rely on a cane or walker for assistance, so the chores associated with caring for chickens are too challenging. That means I continue to buy eggs at the store and pretend the price tag doesn’t matter.
There are a few flowers in pots on my deck and porch, and am thankful that my kids and kids-in-law are so willing to help me with the planting.
Going outside every day is still so important to me. It’s hard to imagine a time when I won’t be able to go out for a short walk every morning. Someone recently suggested that I get a treadmill for exercise, and I let her that walking isn’t just about the exercise. It’s all those things I mentioned earlier about the pure joy of experiencing the wonders of nature, even if those wonders are just little things now, like that lone wildflower in a field.
Turns out that Trudeau isn’t the only one who believes there’s incredible benefit to being an Earth Mage. An online search can turn up many references to psychologists, writers, and researchers who share the same conviction.
A recent editing client, Rebecca Ratliff, has an emphasis on the benefits of being out in nature in her book, Cancer’s Wake Up Call: A Warriers Path to Radical Healing. While we were working together, we quickly realized that we had that shared interest and through our mutual research discovered that spending time in nature has numerous benefits for mental health, including stress reduction, enhanced cognitive function and improved mood.
We were so pleased to find documentation to support our beliefs. It’s one thing to espouse an idea and share theories, but they need as much substantiation as possible. That’s something I learned eons ago when first working as a journalist.
That’s all from me for today, folks. Thanks for reading and do come back again.
