Spirits of place.......altars in the sand, and desks at the ocean...

November has always been known as a liminal time, and here in Mexico where I have been planted since last week is no different. I am here just weeks after Dios De Los Muertos, and before Christmas, which is a big deal here in Mexico. 
Stores still have bright packages of candy sugar sculls, but now they are sitting beside Christmas decorations, and as I meander around in hot weather I myself feel deeply held in this in between time, having left the cold and rain my body has not yet caught up to the fact that it is 30 degrees here in the shade! 
My skin drinks in the moisture and is blindsided by the time change and heat, leaving me hazy and feeling in-between, as I come back home to the place that we have been coming to for just over 20 years now.
A place that carries the deep traditions of the people who live here and the place that I am a guest on...

​Over the years this stretch of beach has become a sacred place for me, as I have done many, many ceremonies and walked in-between many times over the years. All through my shamanic apprenticeship and initiation into our tradition I was required to, regardless of time or place, stop what I was doing and sit with spirit.

I make mention of this because this place is not mine, I am a visitor here, and before I was really able to drop into my strange and different spirit work, I needed to first make contact with the spirits of this place, to introduce myself to them, and and seek permissions.

The first thing I was asked to do, was to learn the songs of the Sand, Ocean, and beings here, and then find my own and make it as an offering to them....

Now 20 years later when I visit here, it is like coming home to old friends, and the first thing I do is to go walking in the early morning hours to say hello and make offerings...
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Usually we {the spirits of this place and I} play together for awhile, and I create a small altar out of her flowers, bones and feathers enjoying the beauty having a bit of fun before getting down to work...
The sand becomes my altar, and the mountain my temple, my desk sits with a view of mama Ocean and working begins to slip into a liminal place where I no loner am sure I am actually "working"....

I know many of you reading this are also world travellers, adventurists with wild souls and a desire to live life to the fullest, so I would like to share the idea that the paces we visit, also holds "spirits of place" and that if we can remember this no matter where we go and honour this by remembering we are guests, not only will we be more often then not be held and welcomed, if the spirits are honoured and asked, we will be held in an altogether different way!
Having said that if we ask and the spirits say no, we need to respect this and move on....

"Fog shrouds the land. There is just this rock in the half darkness and the surf, rising and falling with a thunderous roar, reminding me how tenuous my perch is on this tiny island.
I am new here, on this shore at the western edge of the continent, new to how the land appears and disappears in this place with the tides and fog.
No one knows my name here, and I don't know theirs. Without exchange of the barest recognition, I feel like I could disappear in the fog along with everything else...

So I sought out an elder, my sitka spruce grandmother with a lap wide enough to hold many grandchildren.
I introduced myself, told her my name and why I had come.
I offered some tobacco from my pouch and asked if I might visit this community for a time.
She asked me to sit down, and there was a place between her roots.
Her canopy towers above the forest, and her swaying foliage is constantly murmuring to her neighbours.
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I know she'll eventually pass the word and my name on the wind...."

From the book Braiding Sweetgrass by:Robin Wall Kimmerer

Right now is also sea turtle hatching season and we are on a stretch of beach that has the sanctuary on that that releases the baby turtles into the ocean each year in November.
The reason for this is because baby sea turtles typically follow the light moon into the ocean, and mother sea turtles lay their eggs accordingly so that full moon is perfectly round in the sky just as her babies hatch!
However with the advent of artificial lights made and used by us humans both mother and babies have become confused and so both laying patterns and baby turtles are all over the place.
Baby turtles come out of their shells and follow the lights, sometimes out onto the roads or into hotels unwittingly, mostly being eaten by night time prowlers looking for a snack!
This is why it has become so important that the sanctuary is here, run by volunteers that sleep in shabby shacks in hammocks for weeks at a time staying up all night sometimes to make sure that the turtles find their way to the ocean.

These turtles are also beings of this land that we are visiting, and although it is fascinating to behold them, leaving them alone is also just as important.

Even on vacation if we honour the spirits of the place we are visiting, we can still stick to our value systems, show respect for the spirits, and keep to our spiritual practise, even if for a short time it no longer looks like the one we might do at home....
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Blessings and love from sunny Mexico
Nikiah