"What about us?"

When I was very young I would have breakfast and look out across the field from the kitchen window and I could see in the early morning mist our local herd of Elk having breakfast with me. Grazing in the field along side our cattle. It was awe inspiring even as a child.
One day a neighbor and his friends received permission to exterminate the entire herd. There where never any Elk in our woods or field after that day. Never again did I see them, for they left no survivors so the herd could carry on.
When I was older, an adolescent, we hiked above Golden Silver falls. A mile past the top of one of the falls was a valley with a long abandoned orchard around it. Around the base's of old apple trees I found many elk bones, and in the middle of the valley was a heard of Elk who must have lived there in that valley since the last ice age. This was there home...
I walked out into the middle of the field and the Elk got spooked. Instead of running away from me, they charged. I stood perfectly still and they ran past me as I stood in the middle of their stampeding herd. It was incredible. To smell them and feel the rush of the wind off their bodies as they charged past me.
This valley took on a nearly mythical character for me, it inspired me so much I think it actually led me towards the study of nature based religions. I went back there 5 years later to find that the entire forest around the valley had been clear cut and a large muddy logging road had been carved right through the middle of the field. Many years earlier, before I was born, a man had homesteaded there and had died in a gun fight with men who where attempting to poach the Elk. They burnt down his cabin, there was nothing left but the apple trees he had planted which fed the Elk. There was nothing left, the trees the apple orchard, the bones, the Elk... all gone.

A few years later I returned to my families cabin after a long absence. A friend of mine and I had made a rock medicine wheel behind the house in a little clearing. I went back to give offerings there and to meditate. As I walked through the woods, I found that the spot was gone... and so was the forest. The entire hill was clear cut, nothing was left but stumps piles of timber, an axe and a bulldozer. I was enraged... I picked up the axe and had my vengeance on the bulldozer.
As I grew up my interest in shamanry grew, my interest in spirituality and transpersonal psychology grew, as did my interest in entheogens. As I worked with entheogens more and more I became more and more focused on personal healing and growth, to focused. At some point self improvement and even healing work can be a self centered and totally narcissistic endeavor.
Sitting in my friends living room working with the medicine of the night, the room had transformed into a valley superimposed on the room itself. A Deer appeared next to me and walked into the space that I occupied, sharing the same space as my head. I harmonized with this Deer allowing it to move my head and use my thoughts to communicate with me. "What about us?" It said to me.
My healing and personal growth and my interest in "shamanism" at the time as it had been presented to me in modern day neo-shamanism had provided for me a narcissistic and humanistic disconnect from the natural world. It was unintigrated with how I lived my life. I became aware that the way I lived my life perpetuated the loss I saw as a younger man and as a child in the natural world. Habitat and lives completely destroyed that would never be the same again.
How was I living my healing? Animism had not even begun to enter my mind at the time, I was too focused on "shamanism" and my own personal healing and growth as well as others, but I had forgotten the other than human persons. The Deers spirit let me know right there and then that not only did I have to commit myself to protect, heal and serve the lives of humans but all of life, all of nature, all persons. I committed myself to that moment, and from that point bioregional animism began to form. I saw that this was the next stage of my healing and growth, because I was a part of this place and a part of these other than human persons as well. I saw that it was not only just about me but also not just about my species.

This is where I feel bioregional animism reaches out past the marketed neo-shamanic work shops and the spiritual tourism to other lands, not to mention the office space of the "shamanic therapist". It shows us that our relationship with place, how we relate to place has an impact on that place and ALL of the persons of that place as well as other places. It encourages responsibility in how we live our lives, and empowers us to tread lightly on the Terra. In this way bioregional animism as a place based practice helps us ground and center our spiritual practice in place, in the soil beneath our feet and helps us look around to our immediate surroundings, not just the up and out that so many practices ungrounded and centered in place encourage.

As an exercise, stop for a moment and recollect moments where you have interacted with nature in your past, make a list of these moments. Now find out or ask what has happened to these other than human persons, these places since then. Take a look out how you live, take a step back and look at the relationships, the interconnectedness of events, how your actions participate in the destruction of people and places, and see also which actions do not. What changes could you make? What actions could you take, how can you live as an animist giving respect to your relations? This is the grounding and centering of BRA, it is not a creative visualization of being one with the earth. It is action, it is changing the way you live to match that which you know, what you believe in. It is animism in action. Keep in mind that by doing so as an animist you have help from those relationships you make with the land and with human as well as other than human persons that wish like you to live in a healthy world. This does not have to be your lone stand. We are one and just knowing that helps us to be well.

Addendum: Ironically and tragically the day after writing this I was driving past one of my old work places. Behind the house I worked in for a year was a side hill with a nice stand of timber on it, a very healthy forest. This forest was my co-author, my teacher and my confidant. I would sit with tobacco and tune into the spirit of the forest and ask it to help me round out how to communicate bioregional animism to others. I could literally feel this forest guiding my thoughts and feelings. So much of how people know bioregional animism now comes through the synergy of my spirit mingled with the spirit of that side hill. This forest is now gone, laid barren, clear cut and wasted. Bioregional animism was this forests final breath.