Where Are The DRUIDS?

When You Need Them...

If you’re reading this, I don’t need to tell you that we’re facing an unprecedented ecological crisis on almost every front.

Whether it’s terrestrial landscapes, watersheds, oceans, wildlife, airsheds, or the climate, despite many brave and dedicated environmental advocates fighting the good fight for decades, sadly these days, we’ve got less and less to show for it.

Our favorite tool—and with good reason—is science. We cite study after study showing how logging, drilling, mining, grazing, and other industrial-scale manipulations destroy the land, pollute the water and air. Study after study calculating the economic value of ecosystem protection. Study after study proving how recreation and tourism in nature bring far more money and jobs into local economies than extracting and selling it off.

Now, I want to make it crystal clear that I believe Earth advocates must keep using science. But what I’ve seen—and can no longer ignore—is that for every study we bring up finding one thing, the industry and its government handmaidens will trot out their own report they’ve financed that just so happens to find the opposite. Since they have literally trillions of dollars–often from taxpayers—and we don’t, they’ll always get more funding than independent scientists. And if we dare point out the oversights, contradictions, or errors in their own studies, they’ll lean on partisan operatives in the media to ignore us or call us liars. And yet another forest gets clearcut, another mountain mined, another prairie drilled, another desert overgrazed.

So, again, while I think we should base our ecological arguments on sound science, it might be time to also consider some other tools in the toolbox. Even ones enviros have been afraid to touch.

Truth is, we don’t need any more studies to know that the environment isn’t only essential to life on Earth, it IS life on Earth. That our planet is made up of interconnected ecosystems that have self-perpetuated for billions of years. That the functioning of the biosphere is what ensures that we humans don’t instantly burn up or freeze to death, can breathe clean air, drink pure water, and grow nutritious food. And that the degradation and destruction of our living life support system isn’t simply murderous, it’s suicidal.

Maybe it’s time we stopped putting all our energy and resources into playing this rigged game against incalculably wealthy, powerful, and often ruthless opponents who think nothing of breaking the rules while the referees they bribe look the other way. Maybe there’s another path for those of us who share the values of saving nature to engage with society on our own terms.

Let me ask you some questions. Do you believe that the perpetual flow of a pure mountain stream is a kind of miracle? That a towering grove of old-growth cedars is pretty much sacred? That blowing up an ancient mountain is more or less a sin?

If so, then it’s probably time to admit that you might be a bit of a nature worshiper. Yet unlike the other 84 percent of the world’s population whose religions and places of worship are protected by law, cultural mores, and common decency, those of us who see nature as our higher power are left out in the cold.

Almost all of us share in the uproar when we hear of the burning of a church, mosque, or synagogue. But when corporations and governments collude to desecrate our holy wild temples, that’s called progress.

Nearly all cultures at some point had a devotion to creation, going back into the dawn of humanity when we prayed to nature gods and spirits. In the U.S. we’re most familiar with the Native American tradition of Turtle Island. And recently we’ve seen indigenous people rise up in the name of protecting tribal lands and drinking water during the Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

While pretty much all environmental activists would love to see more of that, those of us who don’t come from that culture still need a way to express our unbreaking bond with the Earth from which we’ve come and to which we’ll someday soon return.

And that, my friends, is where the Druids come in.

For those unfamiliar, Druids are thought to be an ancient order of nature priests out of Celtic and British prehistory. Unfortunately, all we really know about them comes from the dubious writings of conquering Romans who held extreme biases against the people they subdued. Meaning, the historical truth of the Druids remains shrouded in myth.

But that doesn’t matter so much, as the image of the robed and bearded Druid worshiping in sacred groves—accurate or not—took hold in the minds of poets, authors, and artists, inspiring a resurgence that’s been passed on for hundreds of years into the present day.

Cool as solstice ceremonies at Stonehenge are, few of the modern Druid’s rituals—as with other current-day pagans—seem to be about staving off imminent destruction of the land, water, and air.

But what if we crossed a Druidic veneration of the elements with an organized grassroots campaign to safeguard ecosystems?

Imagine a forest threatened with logging. A mountain with mining. A prairie with fracking. A desert with grazing. Sure, we bring out the science, the petitions, emails, phone calls, and letters, all the nuts and bolts crucial to winning environmental campaigns.

But this time, picture a few dozen people robed in forest green (with or without long white beards) walking in a procession towards a natural wonder facing impending doom. There, they gather in a circle and raise their voices in a chant: “This is hallowed ground. We will not allow anyone to defile our sacred temple.”

Do you think any corporation, government agency, or law enforcement entity wants to be on video dragging these peaceful worshipers away from their blessed sanctuary?

While this may, in part, be spectacle or even theater, what if we’re not completely playacting when we say this land can be part of our spirituality? What if the return of the Druids is really about rekindling a soul-level interconnection with nature?

What if we’re not simply fighting for the planet but fostering such a deep and abiding love for the Earth that our advocacy no longer feels like an obligation—and certainly not a burden—but a joyful spiritual practice? And what if this transcendent bliss can spread to others so far and wide that ecosystem preservation becomes inevitable?