Neil Hill asks us to reach out and touch our world, and be touched by it.
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To the aboriginal people of the world, there is no false division between the living and the non-living elements of our planet.
This rock, smoothed by the ages is as vibrantly animate as any of the animals that live around it.
Sleek, smooth and sinuous like the flanks of the great whales, there is an undenying aliveness to its geological being.
I sense this as I move closer, there is a two way connection between me and this time polished sandstone.
I do not simply reach out to touch it, rather we reach out to touch each other.
There is a profound opening to our relationship with the Earth as this happens, a shift in the balance, that once experienced can never be extinguished.
This is the native way of communicating with the land, it is both reciprocal and reverent.
Photo: Sandstone at Punta Paloma. Courtesy of the author.