My earth altar

Bringing nature indoors

If you’re like me, you’ve had the experience of wandering through the woods and finding a treasure underfoot. The bristly burr of a chestnut, the remains of a bird nest, maybe a shiny piece of mica or a particularly pretty pinecone. Anything might catch your eye, and beg to go home with you. It’s a way to bring nature indoors, to cherish the gifts that present themselves to us.

Years ago, I decided to keep my found treasures in one place, a small table I’d picked up in a thrift store. I christened it my “earth altar,” because it feels sacred to me. The earth altar always sits next to a door leading to the outdoors. It’s a way to connect inside with outside. I’m careful to put only “discarded” items on it, i.e. empty seed pods, animal bones, anything that will do no harm if I pick it up and keep it.

I stole this idea from a Waldorf school I visited long ago in Clearwater, Florida. Waldorf is an alternative form of education that’s holistic, experiential, and very nature-based. Waldorf kids get a lot of free time to explore outdoors. The school I visited had a “nature table” just inside the front door. It was a lovely little collection of shells, stones, odd-shaped twigs, fading dandelion flowers. Every day the display changed, depending on whatever treasures the children found outside and brought in to add to the table. I like to think that those kids grew up to be adults with a strong connection to nature, people who care about what’s happening to the Earth.

In contrast with the constantly changing Waldorf nature table, my earth altar is more static. It changes only when I add something new to the display. Whenever I look at it -- which is frequently -- the altar reminds me of beautiful, wild places I’ve been. Experiences of awe, moments of joy and discovery. Each object is a talisman that means something.

There’s the set of bighorn sheep bones, bleached by the sun. I collected those in a sandy canyon beside the Green River in Utah, on a paddling trip. There’s a magnolia seedpod and a tiny turtle shell, no bigger than a walnut. There are, of course, a bevy of bird feathers: crow, bluejay, mockingbird, hawk. A paper-thin wasp nest holds a place of honor, as does the discarded exoskeleton of a cicada.

A lot of the items I can no longer remember where, or when, I found them. That’s okay. They still evoke a sense of the past persisting into the present. They remind me of how long I’ve been in relationship with the natural world. They’re all treasures.

Now I have a dilemma: Last week, I made a fantastic find beside the creek on my land. It was nearly buried in the leaves, and at first I thought it was a hunk of styrofoam belched up by the creek. But no! As I carefully picked up this huge turtle shell (it’s the size of a tennis racket!), I thought of the animal that once lived inside such marvelous architecture. That creature lived here in these woods, died on the banks of this stream. I carried the shell home like the precious work of art that it is.

The only problem: It’s too big for my earth altar. Where to put it? It needs an appropriately venerable spot. Looks like I need to go thrifting, and find another small table.

What if you set up an earth altar in your home? Where would it be? And what would be on it?