The Wild Hunt (https://wildhunt.org/category/features/pilgrimages/page/2)
Sheri Barker takes a detour to visit Gettysburg, the site of the pivotal battle of the U.S. Civil War, and considers the effect of the conflict on the land, its guardian spirits, and the state of the nation today.
“Nobody shushed the room. The lower house lights did not dim. There was no call to order. Energy simply shifted between us and within us, and the hush was total.” Meg Elison writes of her magical experience inside the Skyspace installation at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.
Sheri Barker visits Tse’ Hane’, or Newspaper Rock, in which more than 650 petroglyphs have been carved by members of numerous Indigenous cultures over the past 1500 years.
The horizon promised forever, with the land in between rich with life and beauty. The Divine Mother was present everywhere in those fertile fields, hills, and mountains. The endurance of the land and the creatures and spirits who dwell there filled me with awe.
The woods around my home in Arctic Norway were few and far between, mostly small birches barely taller than your average adult. Here in Åland, I met with real woods: tall bone-white birches, spruce, thick pines, bushy walnut groves. This vibrant life was everywhere, and all the while I was searching for graves.