Slowly, peace came. Here I was free, unbound by duties and responsibilities, free of contempt, disapproval and strife. I was all the earth’s, and it was all mine. On an impulse I lay flat on the ground on my front, and listened to the river rush and the wind whisper in the tussock grass.

I stretched out and pressed my palms flat upon the dust, and let the life force of the earth flow into me. I breathed in the clean, wild odour of the soil, and with all my body soaked up the quiet strength of the stones. I felt comforted, cleansed and renewed. I closed my eyes and thought of firestone power.

I felt a tremor run along the ground, and there seemed to be a movement in the earth, a secret influence deep within, that pulled at me. The feeling shocked me. I knelt up, alarmed, and brushed the dust off my clothes and hands. Then, half afraid and wondering, I put my palms flat on the earth again. The power was there, pulsing beneath my hands, unmistakable. I looked along the valley, estimating where the old mine was. It was westwards, surely, far from here. Yet the power hummed, flowed in the stones and dust, vibrant and alive and strong.

I don’t know what made me do what I did next. Curiosity perhaps, or madness. Or maybe it was destiny. But I decided to follow the power, to trace it to its source. I stood up and took off my boots. I wanted my feet bare on the ground, close to the force and form of the earth. My hands shook. A part of me was terrified, guilty that I should even try this thing; but in my heart I was calm, and what I did felt right – very right – and good. So I removed my boots, stood up straight, and looked along the valley.

The power still hummed, moving upwards through my feet, my limbs, up through my body and lungs and heart. It ran through all of me, ringing, and not for all the world could I have stopped it. I started to walk, my eyes almost closed.

Never had I been so conscious of the earth, of the toughness and fragility and flowing life of it. I realised for the first time that the stones were not dead, nor the dust devoid of life, nor the waters vacuous. Our earth lived. It lived and breathed and sang and flowed and ached, in every tiny part. And its singing called to me – whispered, hummed – through the skin of my feet, through my whole self, until with all my being I was attuned to it.

I ran then, following the power, ran with joy and a wild, winging certainty, right into the heart of everything I loved. And there was no earth, no cold, no dust nor stones nor water rushing past; but only this joy, this singing, awesome flight straight into the soul of God.