Findhorn

"During the 1970’s, some magazine articles and books began reporting strange tales of a spiritual community in northern Scotland where enormous vegetables were growing on near-barren land. …When the scientists arrived at Findhorn, what they found were some pleasant elderly English and Scottish folks living in caravans, scraping what appeared to be arid beach soil and producing country-fair prize-winning vegetables. Their soil analysis showed mostly sand and a little manure and seaweed compost but no nutrients significant enough to produce these kinds of crops. The scientists were gobsmacked. During interviews with the community members, it became evident that a great experiment had begun. Nature beings had come forward and revealed themselves to this group of humans with the desire and intent to begin a program of reintegration and rehabilitation between the different kingdoms of life. It was because these people held an attitude of receptivity and were truly dependent on the land in this wend-swept and isolated landscape that they were thus approached. Years of silent meditative practice had made them sensitive to the more subtle side of life. Spirits of the plants and soil and wind began communicating messages to the group about how to grow crops, not just with physical inputs but also with mental, emotional, and spiritual inputs.

If you were reading this account in an ethnobotany treatise or anthropology course, all the elements would fit right in until you get to the 20^th century white-folks part then you might halt abruptly" (Redden, 2005, p. 1). The possibility of spontaneous communication with "various nature beings" (2005, p. 1) while working is simply not part of modern lexicon.