Embracing Kinship in the Face of Climate Chaos
A podcast with Leah Rampy
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Episode Description
This conversation with
, author of Earth and Soul, emphasizes the importance of connecting deeply with the Earth amidst climate chaos. By exploring themes of kinship, responsibility, and deep listening, we uncover ways to foster relationship with nature that can lead to sustainable solutions for our planet.Learn more about Leah HERE.
Buy Leah's book, Earth and Soul HERE.
Learn more about Daniel and his latest books HERE.
…
Leah Rampy is a writer, speaker, and retreat leader who weaves ecology, spirituality, personal stories, and practices to help others deepen their relationship to the natural world. She is the author of the award winning Earth & Soul: Reconnecting amid Climate Chaos and a frequent speaker on spiritual ecology and leadership in these uncertain times.
Leah co-authored and co-facilitated with Beth Norcross the six-part video series on The Spiritual Wisdom of Trees: Insights from Our Elders in collaboration with the award-winning film maker Jane Pittman and sponsored by The Center for Spirituality in Nature. Leah and Beth are co-
authoring a book, Discovering the Spiritual Wisdom of Trees, to be published by Broadleaf Books in April 2025.
She has led over a dozen pilgrimages to sacred places in the US and internationally for the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation where she previously served as the Executive Director and continues as an adjunct staff member. She is the founder and leader of Church of the Wild Two Rivers, affiliated with the Wild Church Network, that meets regularly to deepen spirituality through time in the natural world. Leah also offers retreats through Friends of Silence, a nonprofit honoring the work and intent of the late, well-loved author, Nan Merrill.
Through Shepherd University’s Lifelong Learning Program, Leah teaches classes on ecology through the lens of current writers. Her essays on living more fully connected to Earth in these uncertain times have appeared in the Anthology of Appalachian Writers (Barbara Kingsolver edition), The Cardinal Anthology Vol 1, and Soul Food; Nourishing Essays on Contemplative Living and Leadership. She is a member of West Virginia Writers.
Leah holds a doctorate in Curriculum from Indiana University. She has extensive leadership experience as an executive in Fortune 100 organizations and in nonprofits and has offered executive coaching and consulting to individuals and organizations through the business she founded in 2001, Illumined Way, LLC.
She lives with her husband in a cohousing community in Shepherdstown, WV, where members collaborated to build and now to run their village with a focus on community, environmental responsibility, and Earth care. She co-founded Save Our Soil, a volunteer organization to promote soil health, local food, native plants, and regenerative agriculture in the Eastern Panhandle and beyond. The Rampys have two adult children who live in Virginia, and two dogs who live at home.
Chapters
0:11 - Climate Chaos and Kinship With Earth
12:16 - Journey of Soul and Responsibility
29:32 - Exploring Animacy and Kinship With Earth
43:48 - Nurturing Community and Earth's Dream
54:02 - Listening to Urgency and Hope
1:02:59 - Embracing Conversations in Challenging Times
Transcript
Daniel Firth Griffith: 0:23
What's that like in autumn?
Leah Rampy: 0:25
Oh well, right now it's unfortunately pretty turn my phone off here, pretty darn dry. But it's a beautiful time of year now that we've had a lot more gorgeous leaves than I was expecting. Yeah, we're in the eastern panhandle. Most people know Harper's Ferry and we're about 30 minutes from Harper's Ferry, so we don't quite have that mountain sort of feel. The Blue Ridge and Shenandoah Valley are sort of tailing out there where the Shenandoah comes into the Potomac.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:08
Right.
Leah Rampy: 1:10
And we're kind of in between that and then maybe what people would think of more of the Dolly Sods and that area. That's stunning.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:20
Yeah, anywhere in Appalachia, I believe in the autumn is a gorgeous place to be. I think this autumn, though, has been quite trying, from hurricanes to drought, and it seems like everything in between.
Leah Rampy: 1:34
Yes, yes, I was reading that I think it was just today or yesterday that Asheville finally got their drinking water back.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:43
Wow.
Leah Rampy: 1:44
So very challenging times in terms of drought and in terms of too much water.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:53
Well, it speaks to the conversation at hand, which I think we'll get to in time, of course. But yeah, this year the drought historically. My wife and I we farm full-time, at least that's our day job. We always joke and this year it didn't rain from the end of February till July, like not an inch, not a drop Dew left. I always commented earlier that the dew left in. I think it was April. We didn't see dew, so just all precipitation just vanished. All the farms around us, even us ourselves for quite a period, were on hay in like June. None of the farmers got first cutting hay really. Second, cutting hay was quite poor and then July was pretty wet, like it to some degree saved the entire year's production and nourishment and food. You know food production and harvesting and then it didn't rain again from basically August till Helene, the hurricane.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 2:58
I like in your, in your, in your book I guess we can jump into it, the subtitle. So many authors are talking about climate change and whatever. You just went out and you were like climate chaos. No, it's just chaos. There's no other way to describe it. How can you have one of the worst droughts in recorded history and then one of the worst hurricanes and flooding events in recorded history in the same year, really in the same month, and so it's a.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 3:25
It's a crazy time.
Leah Rampy: 3:26
Yes, yes, definitely chaotic, and I think it doesn't serve us to pretend that this is anything but chaotic and a chaos we're going to keep living into for our lifetime and beyond.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 3:45
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's so. You were so kind. You sent me a copy of the book, which I've either read or listened to in its fullest. I didn't do both I didn't listen to the full audio book or read the full book.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 3:59
But I got it done and I really enjoyed it and I think what I would like to discuss and obviously this conversation can ebb and flow, it can extend, it can emerge in any ways and typically I have an idea for a conversation we get to about 1% of it and then we just go emerge off in some other way and it's wonderful and fine.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 4:18
So I fully expect that. But something that really struck out about to me, at least as I was reading your book and sitting with these thoughts and even digging into some of your other work online other podcasts, conversations, speeches, whatever it was that you have been given in the past leading up to this is the idea that so much of the climate chaos or climate change conversation has to do with problems and solutions, has to do with problems and solutions, and science is not antithetical to your writing In the slightest. You have some chapters about, you know, forest biology and ecology and fungi and all these other things. You talk about extinction, you know, in the introduction which, by the way, was news to me, and if I can just highlight that really quick and I believe I'm going to get this right correct me if I'm wrong, correct me at all if I'm wrong at any point, but I think you said that in the last 50 years we've caused 7 million years worth of extinction.
Leah Rampy: 5:20
That is to say, we've eradicated 7 million years worth of evolutionary emergence, or something that will take 7 million years to get back's right. That's how long it would take us to um, to repopulate to the level of flourishing that we know now, which is stunning, isn't it?
Daniel Firth Griffith: 5:31
I mean it's just, it's inconceivable, really it inconceivable, yeah, yeah, especially because even even today, like pre-history, is 10 000 years ago. So how do we get to 7 million? How does the human consciousness extend that far? I mean, it's truly stunning. I guess we could talk about that too. But maybe first, in face of all of that, in face of all of these problems and solutions, you don't distance yourself with any of the problems or solutions, but rather you center yourself, at least from my perspective, on the idea that relationship, kinship, turning inwards, turning back to the land, these things also matter, and maybe these things matter primarily. Can we start there and see where the conversation emerges?
Leah Rampy: 6:15
Sure, sure. Well, I would say yes. I mean, you have clearly listened or read your way into where I'm coming from, which is that it is important for us to be fully present to what is and see it as it is and not try to turn away or plug our ears to and I do. I do understand why there are times when we need to do that, and there are certainly many times when we want to do that. I'm suggesting that, as a way of life, though, we can't keep looking away from the reality that is around us. It's that what contemplatives call a long, loving look at the real. So we have to see what's before us. We have to see what's before us. We have to see what's dying, what is at deep risk, where loss is surrounding us. And, of course, some people can't help but see that If you're anywhere near a mountaintop removal or clear cutting of the forest around you, or when the farmland that you have known for generations is now being used for Dollar General or any other mass consumer, you know mass consumer ways of inviting people into a different space than what it has been. I mean, you are living in that loss day by day.
Leah Rampy: 7:55
So I do think we have to look at it, we have to honor it, and it comes out of love, right? So if we have connected to the living world around us, then we have to honor what those losses are, because we realize that we are kin and that's a word I know you use as well, and maybe not an easy one, because, if you're like I am, you didn't grow up with that as a way of thinking or as practice. And so it does take a conscious decision, it takes a conscious intention to honor this world as a world of gifts, as a world of kin gifts, as a world of kin, and it's a heart and soul grounding in that that will allow us to have the capacity to hold that even as our hearts break. So that, I think, is an important place to start. And it's that relationship where we can draw on the wisdom that earth holds inherently and honor that. Earth has a lot of agency. We're not really called here to um impose our will on this, on these living beings.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 9:22
Yeah, it's um, I. I want to do two things real quick. Number one earth and soul is the title of your book. It's in the show notes. If you enjoy this conversation, please pick up a copy. We'll get into more at the end how maybe it's best to do so, um, but I, I don't want to let that uh lapse from the earlier conversation. Uh, and then number two I that I love that long loving. Look at the real. Um, I think it's really hard to see the real in our modern times because either one it it's too scary and I'm speaking very simply, just it's too scary, um, but also, too, it seems too big. It seems too big, but I think what you're getting at is something exceptionally smaller, which I think the mainstream climate change narrative is petrified of is small action, the turning of oneself back into akin with Earth.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 10:18
That's a very small action.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 10:20
Action, right, we're not, you know, building a 2000 acre solar farms like they're doing outside of DC, here in the East coast, turtle Island, like that's a very big thing.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 10:30
But what you're talking about is very small as it's perceived popularly. But on the other hand, it's not small, it's not small at all, it's actually monumental, it's massive, right, and so it's a way of thinking. And so maybe a question for you that you can help us unpack is, given the rearing that I am obviously of a different generation than you, but I think for the last three or four or five generations this rearing of thought where humans are separate from earth and we started to call earth the earth, right, in our fairy tales it's a little bit more magical, but in the real world, real things, it's not magical. The earth is over there, we are over here, we are here to dominate it or to move it forward, or to maybe do good work for earth, but never really giving her animate capacities, as you were saying, agency. So what does that thinking look like in the modern sense, and what might we start to look at as ways of different thinking that might impact this as a first step towards kinship.
Leah Rampy: 11:35
Yes, well, that's a very rich question. Maybe it's helpful if I say a little bit about Earth and Soul and that title and my sense of that.
Leah Rampy: 11:48
Because I think it lays the groundwork for where you're going here. So I got halfway through the book and I was pretty sure that Soul was in the title before I stopped and said, oh gosh, if that's in the title, I better define what I mean by it. That's in the title, I better define what I mean by it. That took me on a journey of some months to try to articulate what I really felt and then how I understood soul as I was using it. I've come to say that it is the essence of who we are. It speaks to the gifts, the unique gifts that I have been given, that you have been given, and the connection, the way those gifts connect to this broader world of kin. So if I begin by deepening my understanding or maybe, said differently, peeling back the layers that have encrusted my soul, gifts, perhaps because of expectations, the culture in which we live, the culture in which we live, perhaps ways we've been chastised to not do certain things We've layered over this true essence of who we are to try to accommodate. So that's a journey I think that we're all invited to, probably for our whole lifetime, to reveal those gifts, and that's a going inward and a going deeper, and there is a call to connecting more deeply with this living world around us in ways that are beyond mere scientific understanding.
Leah Rampy: 13:42
Although I'm all for that, I think that can lead us to awe and wonder as well. I'm simply saying there are more ways to connect than through our thinking minds, through our logical understanding, that there's a connection of heart which brings us into compassion of our senses, and that's a journey as well. And the important thing is because words fail me, I'm describing that as two journeys. In essence it's a single one, because any of those, either of those, as I deepen my understanding of this breadth and beauty and awe and wonder and perhaps terror of this world around me, I can't help but also deepen my soul connections, and the same is true of deepening my sense of who I am called to be and what my gifts are. They are in connection to this world, because that's how we are made. So this is the invitation that I'm suggesting that we all attend to, so small or big. In some ways you might say it's simple and very difficult.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 15:07
So I have not worked this out. So I'm going to give it to you and maybe you can do it for me. We'll see. I don't know, maybe it's not for us to be worked out, maybe we'll just play with it. There's this idea of being born into a problem that we then feel like we must solve. That seems to continually and I don't mean this positively, but continually regenerate that problem anew with every generation. So what I'm saying is this you and I didn't create industrialism. You and I weren't the ones to mine fossil fuels from the earth, from the earth.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 15:46
You and I aren't the ones in power legislating the termination of Alaskan wild lands for oil production? Right, you and I are not responsible for any of these things. Yet you and I, I think and correct me if I'm wrong feel responsible to write books, to have conversations, to lead pilgrimages, as you have done, to lead retreats and courses and educate, talk, write all these things about those problems, maybe in particular or in some universal sense, but you and I are not the ones that created those problems, but we feel responsible for them. I think that's a fine aspect of society, of community, of being kin with each other, sharing those burdens, sharing that grief. What is the appropriate level of response within this new mindset as earth, as animate earth with agency, earth as kin with us, us as kin with our earth, maybe as earthlings? What is the role or maybe the speed of that change Like? If we act too fast, we could reignite a problem, and if we act too slowly, a burning problem continues to burn.
Leah Rampy: 16:59
Yes. So that's a big question and I agree with a lot of what you've put into that, this sense of responsibility that we should own it, we should act. I, particularly in my generation, feel a real responsibility because I see all the ways we have contributed to the challenges that we face today, that we face today, to the fact that we've slipped away from that 1.5 degree that somehow is going to try to allow us to maintain some semblance of the world as we know it. We did that, I think, through ignorance, both intentional and unintentional, and I think we also got there through hubris because we thought we knew how to fix. Fixing is coming out of that rational understanding of human superintelligence and that we have the answers and therefore we can fix a forest, for instance, or we could fix something that would replace a forest. So if we clear, cut a forest, maybe we can create a machine, maybe we can create a machine. The challenge, I think, in that moving too quickly is we move from this narrow understanding that we have, or that humans have, and we aren't listening deeply to the living world around us, and I think that's what indigenous peoples had so much wisdom around is how could you live collaboratively with this living world so that when you are in a forest you have the opportunity to thrive, and so does the forest and so do all the beings there.
Leah Rampy: 18:56
But my concern is exactly around that level of speed. You know we can move way ahead. I have a friend who says that you know, we can move faster than grace. So we can move way ahead of what we know. You know we can move ahead of grace because we just want I mean it may come from good intentions I want to help. I'm not listening to the wisdom of the living world. Likelihood is that I am going to actually do some significant harm. There's a saying I don't know where I got it years ago, but it struck me a burning patience has taken us thus far. I like that idea of a burning patience. How can I be fully attentive to what's invited? That is the process, I think, of discernment. But discernment is not ours alone to do. Discernment comes in community, and by community I mean other humans and all the living worlds around us. So you know, that's one of these.
Leah Rampy: 20:10
It's easy to say it's hard to live, right, you can write that down and then it's like oh well, that's great. So what do I do. Yeah, now what? So for sure, one thing I think is that I don't know, and I want to be clear about that. I don't know what is yours to do. I have lots of ideas of things that I have found, you know, helpful, that I think are that's not yours to do. What is yours to do and I think you know I'm not suggesting you personally on that, because it seems that you have found and lived into a lot of that in your life it's a very particular, it seems from the outside, a very particular definition of the way that you want to live in the world. That is not business as usual, right?
Daniel Firth Griffith: 21:05
Yeah.
Leah Rampy: 21:07
So we each have to find that. And that comes to your question about how do we solve big problems. You know, we do what's ours to do. We do what's ours to do. I hope I bring my gifts and you bring your gifts, because this has got to be done in community. We don't have the wisdom and we sure don't have the fortitude to do this alone.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 21:36
A good friend of mine is an Oglala pipe carrier with the Lakota and he often reminds me he's a very thinking man. He often reminds me because I get lost in these things. We have a young family. Lord willing, I have a long life ahead of me. There seems like there's a lot of work to be done and you can get lost there. I think a lot of people get lost there, they get overwhelmed and I'll happily put myself in that boat, happily as in honestly, and he often reminds me he's done a lot of work.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 22:06
He's written a whole book on Sitting Bull, the Tonka Yotaki, and the journalist asked him why did he continue to fight? For maybe about 10 years, about a decade. He fought the reservation system in the Great Plains. He ran into Canada with his family and his people to the Blackfoot Nation, was harbored there for a while Some interesting stories there and he continued to run and fight, I think for about 17 to 20 years, because it was inevitable. His people were starving, the bison were leaving. We know the story of genocide here in Turtle Island and he was asked that question why did you continue to fight?
Daniel Firth Griffith: 22:50
And it is believed that and this gentleman, my friend, holds that it is true. It is believed that he looked at the uh reporter, the journalist, and he said, and he leaned in like any person as he would. He leaned in and he said, because I'm human, that that's why you know, and of course the depth will only be understood by him in that moment, and we, all we can do is extrapolate, and maybe I apply it improperly here, but I don't think it's inappropriate, um, to be human like I'm. I'm doing on earth what I was put here to do. I have these gifts, I have the position, I have the leadership of my people. I'm being a human. That is why I did what I did and I think a lot of people that I know, people that surround this regenerative, agricultural, holistic or rewilding conservation, you know, eco, botany, whatever, whatever you want to call the greater thing of earth matters.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 23:55
I think we feel like something has to be done and that's fine, but in the feeling of that we lose our true purpose. What am I actually here to do? Because I think what civilization industrial, commercialized, capitalistic civilization does so well is convince us. See, I want to get this right it convinces us that if what you are doing does not have large effects, if the product you're selling doesn't sell X amount of volume. If the courses that you're teaching aren't sold out, it's not valuable. But your personal genius is the opposite, right?
Daniel Firth Griffith: 24:36
What Tadaki Otake Sitting Bull was saying is that being human is enough. What Taki Otake Sitting Bull was saying is that being human is enough. Living, your gift, is enough. And to me, and again as always, correct me if I speak for you inappropriately, but to me that's what you're getting at. It's that the turning inward, finding yourself as kin, has massive ramifications but I think is often overlooked in our world of capitalistic industrial mentality or worldview where, again, if you're not building a 2,000-acre solar farm, you're not actually achieving a resolution to climate problems and climate change and climate chaos.
Leah Rampy: 25:15
That's such a lovely story. Thank you for sharing that. It's not one I've heard, so I appreciate you passing that on. What showed up for me as you were talking is that part of our understanding is the actions we're doing are for the sake of what? And I'm saying that because the something must be done can come from. Something must be done because I don't like the change that's going on around me. Something must be done or we won't be able to continue to live as we have lived, and I'm pretty comfortable with this. Something must be done, or whatever, but it's a come from place. That may be ego driven or it may be thinking out the long-term ramifications, but it's a particular come from place.
Leah Rampy: 26:27
That is not the same as I am so deeply grateful for these woods that surround me. I love these woods because I have come to know them and, I feel, to protect them, because they are living entities in their own right and they deserve to live. So my sense of it is that I can only really stay the course. Worse, in one of those come from places, you know, because in the first instance I want it, because I want it and I like my comforts. And when it doesn't happen? What? Who do I become? You know, I'm angry, I'm frustrated. It's it's probably not the best version of me, certainly not a heart and soul version.
Leah Rampy: 27:44
If I am coming from this deep connection, then I can sustain that, just like it would be if it were my son or my daughter that we were talking about. You know, I'll walk through fire for them. You know, because I love them that deeply and I am so grateful that they are in the world. So that's just what that's. What showed up for me, you know, is we've got to get clear on where we're coming from for the sake of what are our actions? And it's why I sometimes have difficulty with the word sustainable and how it gets used, because I feel like sometimes we're using it to. I just want to sustain what I have.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 28:33
Yeah, well, you see it a lot in agriculture. There was a large period of my life where I did a lot of speaking at conferences and such, and I think those are perfectly fine entities. I just found that it was adding inspire or have great transformation happening within the conference walls, or something in the sense that we have to fix the climate or we won't have agriculture. We have to fix the climate because the grasslands need it. And yes, I think agriculture is a wonderful animate force in the world around us. I don't see it as foreign or alien and, in addition, I think the grass deserves to have agency in its own way. So, yes, these things are fine in their own sense, but I think, asking the deeper question fix it for the sake of what? Or for the sake of what?
Daniel Firth Griffith: 29:40
I love that, while we might have the particular vision to regenerate a field or a grassland or meadow, that field, grassland or meadow might actually have other problems that we can't scientifically see Right, and so not that we have to dive too unbelievably deep there. But I think one question that I would like to pose, or one moment in this conversation that I would like to have to sit with you with, is the idea of animism. I think, when you're thinking about kinship, so many of us say, yes, kin cousins, humanity. I have kinship with humanity, but you're calling us into something a little bit deeper than that Kinship with earth as earth, kinship with the grass, kinship with the birds and the cows and the elk and everything else in between. What level does animacy, or maybe what is your understanding of animacy or animism? How does that play with this understanding of kinship and what does that really mean in regard to having relationship both with ourselves as ourselves and ourselves in this collection, this collective earth, as you mentioned?
Leah Rampy: 31:31
Because I did not grow up in an environment where that was understood. I am creating an intention for myself to use different language as I interact with the beings around me, to recognize that there is a life way beyond what I can possibly understand, and that life whether it can be called intentional in the way that we like to speak of that as humans does lean toward life, and it leans not just toward competitiveness, but there's multitudes of examples of collaboration, and it leans toward diversity and toward balance and toward, you know, I'm going to say wisdom, and that's whether you're talking about you know, crows that take their nuts into an intersection and let the cars run over them so that they've got a nutcracker in place, or whether that is these amazing relationships, let's say in West Virginia, that we have between flying squirrels and the red spruce tree and the fungus that grows at the base. There's something there and it's something beyond an other, as we define other and when I say other, I think you've already brought that up We've othered earth. We put a small e, not just for the soil but for everything. We put a small e and we do say the and we do say the, and we haven't recognized this incredible, wondrous, miraculous being. I'm going to say that that existed long before we came into view One of the things that I mention in the book and I just do a little, you know, very few pages on it, because I don't have either the knowledge or it wasn't the whole theme of the book, but the cosmic story.
Leah Rampy: 33:31
I think that history of the cosmos that was given to us, you know, in beautiful illustration by Thomas Berry and Brian Swim and those people who took science and said this is a story that we have only just come to understand. And this belongs, this history belongs, in our understanding of this world in which we live, in our understanding of this world in which we live. And if we spend just a small amount of time with the cosmic story and see ourselves as humans, as just this tiny little fingernail of time, I think that helps us understand that there is this life, there is this life, there is this life, there is this amazing planet that has been brimming with life. Yes, mass extinctions, five great mass extinctions, and still came back over immense time that I can't begin to comprehend. So, yeah, so I'm just going to say I honor people like Robin Wall Kimmerer, who wrote the Amazing Braiding Sweetgrass, enrique Salmon, who speaks of concentric ecology, of concentric ecology.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 35:06
I feel really unqualified to say very much more because I do feel like I'm such a beginner in this. Yeah, it is strange how much our culture, this dominant culture, is not reared in the understanding of animacy like true kinship. In the own books that I've written, the podcasts or or speeches, it's probably the number one critique that I get animacy doesn't, it doesn't make sense, animacy doesn't matter. Um, you know all these things, it's always about animacy. And uh, there's not that I'm picking on him in any way, but there's this, this writer, um g Chesterton, actually, and he writes about animacy in this one paragraph. And it's just, it's so hard. It's not that I get angry, I get disappointed because he has so many other great points, but he writes that animacy doesn't make sense because it's humanity imagining trees with legs. But trees don't have legs. And I just want to shake him out of the grave and be like no, no, no, no, no, no, I don't need trees to have legs. Right, I'm saying that trees have agency. You know, all the way from Eric Bjorkman's work that's, you know, inspired Suzanne Simmer, to everyone in between, like trees have agency.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 36:21
This is clear. You write about it in your book. I mean you brilliantly. I don't know if it's chapter one or chapter two. You can correct me or or solidify my understanding. There's a whole chapter on connections. In the very beginning, like before we get into kinship and everything else, you're like, we have to look at this animacy, this agency, the connections in the world around us, and it's, it's infinite. I mean you could have written I don't know if, maybe you, but like I feel, like the the conscious kinship scientists of today, from Robin Wall Kimmerer to Suzanne Simard and everybody in between, I feel like we can write volumes and volumes and volumes of our emerging understanding of this connection in the world all around us. And every time there's agency there, right, like in simard's work she talks about uh douglas firs and uh birch birch, right, yes, paper birch yeah, paper birch and how they exchange these nutrients and and that's all interesting right.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 37:18
But to me the most interesting part is when the flow of nutrients switch or the degree of photosynthetic cover that is to say shade cloth put over one of them, actually changes behavior of the other. So it's not like there's like a sink mechanism in the sense where there's an empty vesicle and just fills with water. When it's done filling with water it's just over. But rather there's an agency there that actually helps both the vesicle, in the sense where there's an empty vesicle and it just fills with water when it's done filling with water it's just over. But rather there's an agency there that actually helps both the vesicle in the water or both of the trees, passing carbon in the soil through the mycorrhizal food chain or soil food web or wood wide web or all the terms we can use to describe this.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 37:55
It's actually intelligent, meaning that there are decisions being made that can only be attributed to something like the human mind, or rather, I would like to say the dismantling of the human mind is something that's actually unique. Right that we have this intelligence, me and you, because earth has intelligence.
Leah Rampy: 38:19
Sure. Where did it come from?
Daniel Firth Griffith: 38:22
No, it was just.
Leah Rampy: 38:23
We're just just, we're just special in that way, don't you know?
Daniel Firth Griffith: 38:27
I don't know when there's so much there and so, you know, I I hope that.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 38:33
Well, I guess what I hope it does is it gives me hope that, regardless of how you were raised, as you turn inward, no matter the culture you're from, the color of your skin, the stories that you hold or the stories that you've lost, as you turn inward and start to capitalize earth, take away the word the and start to actually acknowledge and attend to the agency of that which surrounds you. All, you see, is this animate agency, this kinship, this connection, this relationship. It's just inevitable, it's an inherent truth, if you will.
Leah Rampy: 39:14
So I'm so glad you said this and you see me smiling because it just this conversation delights me. My colleague Beth Norcross, who founded the Center for Spirituality and Nature, and I have just finished writing a book called Discovering the Spiritual Wisdom of Trees, and it will be out on Earth Day next year, this coming year. So if you don't want to talk about animacy and kinship, just don't get the book, as you can tell from the title alone where we're going to go with that, where we do go with that. So there are so many other beautiful stories, like you're talking about Suzanne Simard and the Birch and the Fir. But you know Peter Voleben's new book on the power of trees. He talks about the old beach forest, for instance and this one delights me where in those established forests there are trees, perhaps on the edges or for whatever reason, of terrain that get less moisture, less rainfall or that are less able to access sun, and so you would expect that those trees would be significantly poorer in health. They're not. So what is going on? Well, other trees that have more are giving away to those in need. Now I don't know that the tree sat down and held a council about that and said why shall we do that? But it is apparent that when everyone in the forest is healthier, then everyone is healthier. Right, the whole forest is healthy because the individuals are healthy.
Leah Rampy: 41:04
Well, there's a lesson you know that we just have a hard time with. So that's one thing I wanted to say, because you brought up. It gives me hope. And gosh, I'm sure you get asked. I get asked all the time. So what about hope? And for me, the hope lies in the capacity for this living earth to be able to respond in ways beyond my imagining the possibility that you and I and all who are trying so hard to understand how we connect earth and soul could leave little breadcrumbs for people in the future to find and that they, along with this amazing world, might be able to weave their way to a more encompassing view of togetherness, to a way where there is mutual well-being as a premise for how we live, how we live where we understand that first version of not survival of the fittest. But I believe there is, for beyond my lifetime and beyond my knowing.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 42:56
Yeah, I wonder. I would like to see your opinion on this. I wonder how much it is of our time today to leave those breadcrumbs as much as it is to try and attempt to resolve the issues of today, because I think we can get lost in the latter and never actually complete the former, while at the same time I don't see industrial capitalism's global greed going anywhere, not until it collapses, and so it seems to me like the breadcrumbs for the future are almost of equal, if not potentially more. And that's the question Is it potentially more? Is it just equal to the actual solving of our problems today? What do you think?
Leah Rampy: 43:43
So you know, I rely on Joanna Macy's wisdom for a lot of this. She gives credit for people who are doing holding actions, and that that may be what some of us are called to do. I am called to stand here in this place to hold what I feel is important and notice I'm not saying against, but to hold what I feel is so important, what I love, what I honor, what I feel grateful for. I am just called to hold it because it makes way, it makes space for others who are dreaming new dreams. We need the writers, the poets, the artists to give us glimpses.
Leah Rampy: 44:30
I don't think we can paint what the future is going to look like, but we can paint ideas and possibilities and glimmers that allow us perhaps to adjust our actions in ways that are more resonant with what is already being invited by earth. So I'm going to say so that we can align ourselves with earth's dream. So I think it's both. I think they both have to happen, and we have to honor each other, uh, for what our gifts are that we bring in this time.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 45:11
Yeah, those individual gifts that you spoke about earlier.
Leah Rampy: 45:14
And that's not to say we don't do it in community, because you know, this is to me. This is the time right now. Well, let me give you an example. Um, I was, um, I was on a radio show called the Climate Buzz out of Asheville. I was supposed to be on it a couple of days after Helene hit. I was also supposed to be there doing a retreat and doing a book talk. So when, a couple of weeks later, I was on this show called the Climate Buzz I was on this show called the Climate Buzz.
Leah Rampy: 46:10
We were in this conversation about how important community was. Go to the top of a long upward road that was now covered with dozens and dozens and dozens of falling trees to check on a neighbor. Over and over and over again, it was the community that was in support of each other. Now, I'm not making light of FEMA or sending aid or anything like that. I think that's incredibly important. Sustaining comes from taking care of each other, this willingness to come into community and, yes, it's sad that it seems to take a disaster for us to step forward, sometimes to be in that level of community, but we're going to need it for this journey ahead. You know the climate and the biodiversity loss and ecosystem loss is going to be losing a lot of protections, and the protections were probably minimal to begin with, and that just is that's. That's an intention of a new administration, so we're going to have to have each other to do what we're called to do.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 47:32
Yeah, it seems like the digital age allows us to feel very connected obviously, case in point. Well, at the same time, maybe disadvantages us to the actuality of true connection, in the sense that you might appear to be well-connected but actually you're not connected at all, Whereas in past eras, where our stress and our danger was very much more physical than anything else, right, Like Tyson Yucca Porta in his new book the Aboriginal Australian man. What's the book titled? Oh, it'll come to me, it doesn't matter. He writes about how his people used to understand when they were playing in the river where the alligators were.
Leah Rampy: 48:16
Oh yes, so they felt safe because so they felt safe.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 48:22
Yeah, exactly Right, it's not the absence of danger, but maybe it's the physicality and long-term relationship with that danger. Right, there's an interesting thing he's playing with there, and if you're interested, just read the book. Of course, he does it much better than me now, but I sometimes think about that. You know, it's like as soon as the digital surroundings exterminate themselves, whatever that might be a power outage, and all of a sudden, you know, neighbors are visiting each other for butter and bread or whatever it might be, or obviously helene horrendous situations that brought people together.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 48:56
It is strange that the very earth, uh, very earthly demand that health requires relationship in community seems to do very bad at coexisting with the created, the human created industrial world that surrounds it, and it's very hard to have your feet in both camps. At least I have found it, and it seems to be true outside of my own experience.
Leah Rampy: 49:22
You know another example of that I was just giving it this Sunday, when I was on a call, on a call um, my husband and I, a couple of years ago, visited Canyon de Chelly, and I don't know if you know that incredibly beautiful area, but you know it was very deep, deep Canyon walled, um, and you can only visit at the uh, you know, at the invitation and with the guides who are today. And so we were in a Jeep with our guide, who and two other people, two other guests, and one of them said wow, this, this is such an amazing place. It must be incredibly dark here on a moonless night. And, you know, because the canyons are rising up, you would be lost forever. And Bobby, our guide, said oh no, oh no, I grew up here. I've been walking in day and night for my whole life. You could drop me anywhere in this canyon and I would find my way home.
Leah Rampy: 50:30
And that just landed for me like what a different relationship to the darkness, where we are putting in lights all over the place and harming many creatures in the process. But we're putting them in because of our fear, because we haven't gotten to know the dark, and there's metaphor that abounds, I think in that getting to know the dark, but it just so struck me at the importance of knowing the land, the sky, the earth, the trees, the dark around us. Close in, yeah, like, really like really being within the ecosystem where we live, like really being there, knowing that we are of it and within it and not it's out there right, yeah, you mentioned earlier that this, this fixing, we were talking about fixing for the sake of what at the point?
Daniel Firth Griffith: 51:37
but you're, you're made the comment something around fixing like this, this health in the forest, right, this great, this grateful love for the existence of this thing, like, like that, that whole conversation. It's an outcome of relationship that if you act too fast and you start giving the forest a voice, you unnecessarily it's not its voice, but just your voice projecting over the forest you can really do some damage very quickly to some very large degree. That is the world we live in, good or bad intentions. It's fast action where we're just, you know, putting our own voice over the land. But that takes a lot of time. You, you can't force relationship. You can't learn the language of trees by visiting one time Another dear friend of mine, taylor Keene.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 52:33
He's an Omaha and Cherokee historian and I've made this comment a couple times with this podcast because it's paralyzing. It gives me chills every time I think about it. But he said his people the Omaha have been in Oklahoma for 800 years, people the Omaha have been in Oklahoma for 800 years. And he looks at me one day and he says when we have questions about the land we have to go to the Pawnee because they've been here for 3,000.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 53:00
Like we don't even know what Oklahoma calls herself. And he jokes. He's like don't tell me, you're a sixth generation Oklahoma rancher. Like you know nothing. We are here for 800 years and we know nothing. The Pawnee for 3000 and they know a little bit more, and so there's a 10 year that's required and a lot of talk.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 53:18
I feel it doesn't matter which space, the green energy to the green agriculture and everything in between, is talking about change fast, and I think there is a place for that conversation right, like if today you are abusing land, maybe we should change fast. And I think there is a place for that conversation right, like, if today you are abusing land, maybe we should change fast and stop right. So that's a fine example of that. But generally speaking, especially when it comes down to fixing systemic problems, health in the true sense, right Of the forest being the forest in its own way and its own understanding of agency, that takes a lot of time right, 800 years is nothing to the age of the forest, as the Houma would say it.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 53:55
Right, and the Pawnee at 3,000, like they're just beginning to know the forest's name or the land's name or the plains name. And so I think what we have to start allowing our hearts to focus on is the hope found there. Allowing our hearts to focus on is the hope found there that being a part of that 800 year history or 3000 year history being that 80 year part right of living out your gift is what you were supposed to do, it's what you were called to do and living it out as well as you can right, but never forcing that 80 years or those 3000 years to be 30 seconds because of some diesel engine or something like this.
Leah Rampy: 54:33
No, I think that's right and that has to do with, you know, at least having the humility to say you know, I've done my best to listen. It's I have to make a decision at this point. I don't know. I've listened as well as I can. I'll do the best I can at some point, but I also wanted to bring us a good time. I will probably not get this quote quite right, but Bayo Kumalafe, who's known to say something along the lines of times are urgent. We must slow down, which is, you know, other wise figures have said versions of that for many generations. You know it's so important, we have to go slowly.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 55:18
Yeah. Yeah, it is an interesting to the world that we were born into. It seems like a paradox.
Leah Rampy: 55:25
Yes, yes, yes, and it is urgent. I mean, we don't want to minimize that, and I don't hear either of us saying well, just sit back and relax because things will be all right. That's not the message. It is urgent in the sense of tipping points that are all around us. I was listening to a podcast on the Amazon, and there's so many portions of the Amazon that are just so right on the point of drying out and losing their capacity for retaining that moisture and therefore not being able to create the weather that we know that they need to be a rainforest and the fires and we could go on and on about that in so many different places. I think we only have the Congo now, that is, in the last year was a carbon sink instead of an emitter of CO2. So it is urgent, which means we better get ourselves in a deep listening mode. That's what I'm saying, instead of like I better run quicker, I better slow down now and start listening.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 56:49
Right, yeah, there was was this one organization. We stood a lot more ecological or agricultural consulting and monitoring than we do today. But during the height of that work we were approached by this one organization who was, uh, trying to build a tree-based carbon market of kind, where they were trying to help farmers establish and nurture silvopastures in open, barren, just purely grass fields and more non-brutal environments which should have been a little bit more savanna, a little bit more forested. Anyways, at the very outset of the work of the potential partnership it was a little bit encouraging to me because establishing silvopasture, as somebody in the field like it's very costly endeavor. It also takes away production for a period of time.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 57:35
Now, oklahoma, oklahoma state or university of oklahoma, I can't remember one of those organizations put out research maybe a decade ago that claimed that a 30 increase of tree-based canopy cover over an open meadow actually increases the overall carrying capacity of that landscape for herbivores. I think it was about 33 percent, it was roughly 30 percent increase, 30 percent increase of forage as well, which doesn't make a lot of sense because herbivores can't eat leaves in the top of oak trees. But it's, it's the, it's the come, the community, the conversation, the collaboration, all of those, and so helping farmers transition to more forested environments that are still obviously ecologically and agriculturally productive. It made sense and then, when we started diving into the proposed solutions that this organization wanted to help farmers with, was they?
Daniel Firth Griffith: 58:29
they only wanted farmers to plant fast growing trees like trees that were mature in about 15 years, which is unbelievable, unbelievably fast. And I asked him. I said, well, okay, I get that from a carbon sequestering perspective right.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 58:46
So trees sequester carbon when they grow and as soon as they stop growing, they really stop sequestering that carbon and when they fall over they release a lot of it. So like, to some degree I get the idea of what you're saying. But like, can we plant some oaks? Like, what about some hickories and some oaks? Right, this is a dry, mixed oak biome here in the piedmont of you know the appalachian mountains, can, can I plant some oaks? And they're like no, no, no, no, you're not allowed to plant a single oak.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 59:13
And I was like well, what trees do you want us to plant? And they told us, and they're all non-native, genetically modified, fast growing trees. And it's just like, okay, I get your science, but I want my children to see oaks. I don't want them to live in a world without trees, because that's what you're advising, right, trees that are mature at 15 years. They fall over after a very short period of time, 60, 80 years at the most. They'll live. And so there is a balance there. Right, there's an immediacy, an urgency that our climate requires, and at the same time, there's a deep listening. There's an oak planting that has to happen for future generations, and I'll never forget about that. They ended up getting quite mad at us for the questions. They didn't even want to entertain the idea that you wanted to plant an oak. Well, it's just singular minded, right? It's what we've talked about this whole time.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:00:12
Whereas listening right it's very difficult. It's the easiest thing in the world to do and it's also the hardest. Um a dear friend of mine. I'll stop rambling after this, but a dear friend of mine always says that, uh, acknowledging that trees talk is easy, attending to what they say is a little bit more difficult.
Leah Rampy: 1:00:29
Well, amen to that, yeah, amen to that. And isn't that so interesting that, on face value, you would think this is such a lovely idea to create this kind of forested farmland productive area where you could also have the trees, and then to not have any native trees among them. And, of course, somebody wasn't listening to Doug Tallamy, I think, and his book about oaks. I think he'd have a lot to say about that. I find that you know his work just so fascinating because it's back to the conversation we were having about those interconnected, you know, biodiverse areas that support each other, and so the chickadees would not approve of that plan.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:01:24
No, no, no, they wouldn't. I don't know what they. I lost track of them. I don't know what they're doing today, but listening I like that. Well, leah, I don't want to take all of your time today, but I do want to provide you an opportunity here at the end. Earth and Soul Reconnecting Amid Climate Chaos your book and in your work. Where might people find your book?
Leah Rampy: 1:02:02
Where might people find you and connect with you, and there's information about Earth and Soul is available wherever from you know your local bookstore to bookshoporg, to other large online organizations, and there's also information Discovering the Spiritual Wisdom of Trees is up for pre-order now, and you'll be hearing more about that when it gets a little closer to April of this next year and that can be pre-ordered or learned about from your site.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:02:37
That's right.
Leah Rampy: 1:02:38
And it's available now in most of those places as well. So that and I'm on Instagram and I'm on Facebook and I'm on LinkedIn, and those links are there on my, my website, and so will this conversation be at some point.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:02:56
So yeah, wonderful. Is there anything else, anything on your heart that you want to share or converse about?
Leah Rampy: 1:03:04
Well, you know, I wrote this book because I really wanted to encourage people to be in conversation, not because I felt I had all the answers, and so I'm really appreciative of conversations like this. That helped me stretch and helped me think about what I understand For me, how do we live in these times, these times on the edge, and still be, not still be? How do we live deeply alive and connected in these times on the edge? And that's what I hope that others are in discussion. I also will say I'm happy to zoom in if there are book groups who are reading Earth and Soul, or even when we get to discovering the spiritual wisdom of trees. I'm happy to be a zoom in, to be in conversation, because I just I love this idea that we think about it and we stretch into the possibilities and together help each other understand how we might live.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:04:08
Yeah, I think conversations um they've they've been pushed aside for a little bit, and I don't know why. I don't even want to know why, but it it does feel like that's necessary, Like the listening and then the conversating. You know the conversating, yeah, so it's a pleasure to be with you.
Leah Rampy: 1:04:27
Thank you so much and thank you for the work that you are doing both in the podcast world and in the hands-on world.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:04:37
Yes, absolutely Thank you.