How Does The Land Shape Our Identity?
I was in Churchill, Manitoba a few years ago on a family trip. It’s a small northern town on the shores of the Hudson’s Bay. The landscape is rough and rugged with exposed quartz and granite boulders and colourful wildflowers, moss, or lichen spotting its vastness or tucked into rocky crevices. While walking, I was struck by the patterns of yellow lichen that grows on the rock. It was like someone made the land their canvas for an abstract painting and took a paintbrush and splattered yellow paint all over it. I realized then, I have spent my life standing on land without thinking much about it. The land doesn’t just exist beneath us. It shapes our identity: how we live, what we eat, what we do, and what we value is a direct result of the place we call home. The beauty of the land is not in the individual features by themselves, but in the interconnected relationship between all living matter. Since lichen is made from a fungus and one or more algae, it illustrates that two indiv...
