Update, September 2026: Much of this still holds, and the practice has developed since I wrote it in April. The current version, with 4 plain words and a frame of arriving and returning, is in How to Read the Land the Way You Read a Sacred Text. The Tree Had Grown Around the Barbed Wire shows one encounter running all the way through.
New Mexico was not supposed to change anything.
I arrived at Ghost Ranch in June 2025, reluctant and already exhausted. Five days of in-person group work was not what I wanted, and I had just returned from the final leg of my Camino in France. I needed quiet, and I had agreed to very little of it.
What I did not anticipate was the Land itself.
The red rock formations at Ghost Ranch carry a quality of presence I had not planned for. The silence available in that landscape, even inside a group retreat, was different from anything I had known in Paris or on the pilgrimage paths of France. It was the silence of a place that has long held things, inviting me into its mysteries.
I found myself going still in a way that had nothing to do with technique.
That is when I understood, in my body rather than my mind, what I had been teaching about Earth-based Lectio Divina. The living world was not waiting for me to study it. It was waiting for me to stop.
Why Reading About Nature Is Not Solving Your Disconnection
Most people drawn to nature or ecospirituality share a particular problem.
They have read the right books, followed the right voices, and understand, intellectually, that the natural world is alive and relational. They value nature. They care about it deeply. They still feel the gap between themselves and connection.
More information won't close it.
Earth-based Lectio Divina is a practice, not a concept. Pagans and animistic practitioners have been working with this pattern for decades, and Julie Bond’s work on Druid, Pagan, and nature-based Lectio in Polytheistic Monasticism: Voices from Pagan Cloisters, edited by Janet Munin, traces it clearly within these traditions. The structure does not belong to any single religion or spirituality.
The practice takes its structure from Guigo II, a twelfth century Carthusian monk whose Ladder of Monks named the four movements still recognized today: Lectio, the slow reading until something stops you; Meditatio, staying with it until it moves through the body; Oratio, responding from whatever has surfaced; and Contemplatio, releasing all effort to simply rest in what is present. Guigo described it plainly: reading seeks, meditation finds, prayer asks, contemplation tastes. That sequence is the skeleton we are working with. The text has simply changed to something much older.
From this framework, we understand that nature is our holy book.
Everything within the natural world can be seen as words inviting Lectio Divina—stones, shells, leaves, twigs—each one a word in creation’s text. For those of us in animistic and nature-based traditions, the sacred is present in the natural world, which means the natural world is where this practice has always belonged.
We are not adapting someone else’s practice.
The traditional form of Lectio Divina discovered something that predates any single religion: that sustained, attentive engagement with any living presence can lead to transformation. For those of us working within animistic and nature-based traditions, the text has always been the oak, the crow, the wind moving through tall grass, the particular quality of light on a spring morning in the high desert.
We are recovering our own.
How to Practice Lectio Divina in the Living World
The four movements of this practice follow the same arc that Guigo II named in the twelfth century and that eco practitioners have been working with ever since: receive, deepen, respond, release. In the traditional form, those movements are called Lectio, Meditatio, Oratio, and Contemplatio—read, reflect, respond, rest. What changes in an earth-based practice is not the sequence but the orientation underneath it. The living world has agency. Encounter is mutual. Reciprocity is not optional. Those three premises transform each movement from a technique into a relationship.
Each moment below carries an inner posture, the interior orientation that makes the outward practice possible.
Arrive. Go outside. Let your attention settle on one presence, whatever draws you or whatever you choose. Not “it,” but rather this oak, this crow, or perhaps this river or that patch of moss by the wall. Stay with one being rather than scanning.
Inner posture: I do not extract meaning. I allow encounter.
Sense. Now the boundary softens. What is this presence doing, swaying, holding, decaying, emerging? What does it stir in your body or memory? Let associations arise naturally without forcing interpretation.
Inner posture: I am not separate from what I am noticing.
Respond. In animistic practice, what we receive from the living world creates an obligation. Speak aloud or inwardly, gratitude, apology, curiosity. Offer something small, such as breath, touch, water, or even a promise of return. If you have been holding a stone, a leaf, or a fallen branch, return it to the Earth at the close of your session. The object returns to the natural world carrying something of what passed between you. That exchange is not a metaphor. It is the practice completing its own cycle.
Inner posture: I am in relationship, not observation.
Rest. Finally, release all effort. Sit or stand in stillness. Let awareness widen. Allow yourself to be held by the place rather than holding yourself apart from it.
Inner posture: Nothing to do. I belong here.
Why There Is No Wrong Way to Begin
Here is what I most want you to hear: there is no right way to do this practice.
Most people who come to ecospirituality carry an anxiety about doing it correctly, about whether they are spiritual enough, knowledgeable enough, or sufficiently attuned to the natural world. They are waiting for permission that no one is in a position to give them. The living world does not require expertise.
It requires presence.
What the practice asks is not that you arrive correctly. It asks that you arrive at all, then stay, then return. Repetition is where depth lives, not technique. The text of creation is inexhaustible; you will never run out of words to meet. A single encounter is an introduction.
Relationship requires sustained presence across seasons.
The tree you visit once is a stranger. The tree you visit across a full year becomes something else entirely: a teacher, a witness, a presence that holds your seasons the way you hold its. This is what Ghost Ranch gave me in that landscape of red rock and vast silence.
Not a new idea. A reminder.
The living world has been speaking the entire time.
This practice is not about understanding it more clearly. It is about stopping long enough to hear what has always been present. Carry it with you simply: Arrive. Sense. Respond. Rest. Return.
Or shorter still, closer to the bone: read the land, feel the relationship, offer your response, rest in belonging.
Begin this week. Go outside. Find one presence that draws your attention. Stay longer than feels natural. Notice what notices you back.
That is the whole practice.
Please share questions, anything you learned, or perhaps something you tried as a result of this practice.
Do You Want to Walk Together?
Spring is on the path. The route is waiting.
If this opens something you want to keep exploring, go outside today and sit in one spot for ten minutes. Return tomorrow and sit again. Notice what becomes visible on the second visit that the first one could not hold.
If you want something more structured, the September 2026 Contemplative Walking Retreat on the Le Puy Camino in France is built around this exact principle. The practice is not scheduled alongside the walk. It is woven into every step of it. Seven days of walking the GR65 in a small group, with enough silence and enough return to let the path teach what it actually has to offer.
Start outside. Start today.
The earth is not waiting for you to enroll anywhere.
I didn't realize this is what I've been doing lately, but I appreciate the validation. Reading this will help me deepen the practice. (And Ghost Ranch is a place I love, too. I did a pilgrimage to the Monastery in the Desert and spent a few days at Ghost Ranch resting and absorbing that Christ-soaked place.)
Thank you for this reminder, and for sharing this beautiful practice.