Spring’s coming, and I know a lot of pagans will be wanting to get their fingers good and grubby again or just get in touch with Mother Earth, so here we go.

Of course, planting things is always a good way to get in touch with the earth.  There’s something you can do to make it even better, though: xeriscaping.  Xeriscaping is the art of planting only things that can survive in your native climate and soil.  This means a huge reduction in the amount of water, fertilizers, and pesticides you’ll need to use.  Eartheasy has a great page on xeriscaping here.

You can also pick up trash.  There are adopt-a-highway programs.  Personally, when I go out on walks I try to remember to take a bag with me to put trash in that I find, which I can dispose of later.

You also can reduce the output of trash by swearing off products created to be disposed of, up to and including feminine products.  Remember this about disposable plastic products: a moment in the hand, forever in the land.

Instead of buying stones that may have been mined in earth-harming ways and definitely have/had to be shipped long distances, why don’t you find out what kind of rocks are local to your area?  You might make some pleasant discoveries.  If you live in the US, the Roadside Geology books can be very useful.  I was finally able to put a name to the rocks in my area - and I later learned that one of them was the same type of rock used to build Stonehenge!

Something that’s stuck with me from the Bible is how the Jewish culture began to shift from sacrifice of livestock and crops to more spiritual sacrifices after Solomon’s temple was destroyed.  Long before Christians disavowed temple sacrifice altogether, Jewish writers were urging people that what the Lord truly wanted was repentance, fasting, and prayer.

It’s a beautiful sentiment, and one that I believe is extremely valid - firstly it required that one act from the heart, and secondly anyone could do it at any time - rich or poor, able to travel or not, temple or no temple.

Which leads me to my next point: offerings to nature spirits.  I’ve seen some of the suggested offerings, and quite frankly they befuddle me.  Put yourself in the shoes of a nature spirit for a moment: which would be a more meaningful gesture to you: some tobacco, spare change, and a biscuit - or the removal of human litter from your domain?  Personally, I think it would be the latter.  Anybody can leave their stuff behind, but too few people are willing to clean up stuff left by other people.  Then when you consider that the coin was probably made from metals that were unethically mined, the biscuit from flour that was unsustainably produced, and the tobacco riddled with pesticides, it almost seems insulting to leave these trinkets behind because in essence, you damn the spirits with faint praise.

Or here’s another suggestion - create a compost bin or pile and dedicate it to Mother Nature or whomever.  Every time you make sure your refuse is going back to the Earth instead of chucking it into the trash, you’re making an offering of your time and feeding the Earth as well.

Some people suggest planting flowers and such - which is fine and good, but I think there’s a caveat they’re missing - choose plants that will grow without altering the soil and without any more water than what falls in your area.  I can’t imagine nature spirits being particularly pleased with a flower or tree that takes more than its fair share of resources.

The bottom line is, when it comes to making offerings to nature spirits, I think we need to ask ourselves what would really matter to them.  We’ve already thrown out enough enough beer cans and cigarette butts to give them all the shiny trinkets, alcohol, and tobacco they could ever want.

I’ve noticed that many pagans who consider themselves of an Earth-centric persuasion seem awfully hung up on forests.  You only have to type “pagan fore” into Google before it starts giving you suggestions that start with “pagan forest.”

However, the forest is only one biome out of several: desert, tundra, grassland, and aquatic.  (Some people divide the biomes a bit further, but this is good enough for the purpose of this post.)  Typing out “pagan desert” or “pagan (any biome that isn’t forest)” doesn’t give any suggestions.

If one is to really honor the Earth and nature, shouldn’t all of it be honored?  The sagebrush steppe (my native habitat) is no less natural and full of wonder than the forest.  It has flowers, shrubs, birds, and even bunnies.

I see people extolling the wonder of the mountains and forests all the time (particularly in pagan music), but the rest of Earth’s majesty gets the short end of the stick.  Just do a search for “pagan art” and see how much of it depicts slender, white, conventionally-attractive women in or near a forest.  It’s almost as if there’s a subconscious idea that the only place nature truly exists is in a forest.

So what’s the dealio?  Do Earth/nature oriented witches just not happen in places there aren’t forests, or are we learning to romanticize forests and ignore the wonder and magic of the other biomes?