There's more than one way to look at the earth. For instance, a desolate desert playa can be a vision of Hell or the ultimate stage for the Burning Man art festival. Strange vapors rising from the ground can cause alarm or inspire the ancient Oracle at Delphi. This site focuses, most of the time, on the scientist's ways of seeing the Earth. But I like some of the other ways, too.
Early one Sunday not long ago, I visited a hot spring on the California coast that is only exposed during especially low tides in the predawn hours. Along with a dozen strangers, I soaked in a deep, rocky bowl of water that fumed with sulfurous vapors and subterranean heat, while the full Moon set over the cold Pacific before us. The sea crept in and covered the spot by sunup, then we clambered off in our different directions to join the civilized day. The experience was powerful and elemental, to say the least. I knew the spring lies practically on a major earthquake fault, but geology was secondary that morning.
It's fun to imagine things as they were before science. Science isn't natural, it's a recent and highly artificial practice—logical, mathematical, skeptical of the senses. And because much of the scientific frame of mind has leaked out into the rest of society, we have to work at forgetting common sense, too. Maybe that's not fully possible, but the exercise has to get us closer to prescientific, real life.
Real life depends on following hunches, on knowing your own internal state, on keen awareness of the senses, on recognizing other beings and discerning their motivations. This is more like how other animals live their lives, and it's how we must have begun as a species. Without the long training that scientists undergo, the natural human tendency is to believe what we perceive and to see what pleases us the most. Visions make sense, and dreams and revelations are acceptable ways of acquiring knowledge. (If you don't believe me, visit my colleagues the About UFOs Guide and the About Urban Legends Guide.)
Before the landscape was seen as a puzzle to be analyzed or as a possible source of dollars, humans had more elemental ideas about the lands they inhabited. Volcanoes and earthquakes are clear evidence that the Earth is animated, like us and like the animals. The sea rises and falls like slow breathing. The soil seems to be a sort of living thing, too, giving life to plants and receiving the bodies of the dead. On the face of it, the world and everything in it is alive.
Dramatic rock formations, picturesque hills, deep canyons, and dark ponds arouse emotions and sensations—and to persons of heightened awareness, they pulse with significance, even personality. Stories arise and turn to myths, and as groups of people live in an area for generations their beloved homeland fills with spirit and meaning. I believe this is inevitable: the affectionate bonds we develop with the land arise from our deepest nature as a species that depends on affectionate bonds among people.
So when we learn that prehistoric people around the world moved large stones into regular arrangements, held ceremonies in underground caves or in artificial chambers, and had elaborate stories about the landforms around them, it feels familiar. We are a species of stories, and we love a mystery.
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