So we saunter toward the Holy Land; till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, so warm and serene and golden as on a bank-side in Autumn.
Henry David Thoreau, "Walking"
 

THE MYTHIC LANDSCAPE
a Wisdom of Experience

 


Our first conversation is with Nature. We believe the  soundest foundations rest on bedrock, and that the bedrock of American wisdom lies in the mythic depths of the landscape itself. The original of Beauty we seek is the Native perception of Nature as Home.

To the larger world, America once stood for a paradise regained of mountain forest and Indian stream: the freedom of land, the wildness of land, the sacredness of land. Everything we are begins with nature, and it is deep in conversation with the living landscape of woods and water, fire and sky that we set our foundations. In Nature we seek the beginnings of wisdom.

 
IMG_1468 IH porch dawn bright 10.18.jpg
 

Look deep, deep into nature, and you will understand everything.

Albert Einstein

Et In Arcadia Ego

 

"Even in Arcadia, there am I." Where life and death at last are one, there is the wisdom of Paradise. At Innermost House, we seek a woodland wisdom among the enduring facts of nature: the oneness of dawn and dusk, of spring and autumn, of growth and decay, ultimately of life and death. Through this Mythic Landscape we seek to explore and express a deep, underlying unity of experience. We invite Native peoples, hunters, farmers, conservationists and naturalists everywhere to join with us in search for the wellsprings of memory and meaning. Our purpose is to regain to the individual an original and universal relation to Nature.

Visit Our Virginia House Project
in America’s Historic Triangle

 
 

There were no temples or shrines among us save those of nature. Being a natural man, the Indian was intensely poetical. He would deem it sacrilege to build a house for Him who may be met face to face in the mysterious, shadowy aisles of the primeval forest, or on the sunlit bosom of virgin prairies, upon dizzy spires and pinnacles of naked rock, and yonder in the jeweled vault of the night sky! He who enrobes Himself in filmy veils of cloud, there on the rim of the visible world where our Great-Grandfather Sun kindles his evening camp-fire, He who rides upon the rigorous wind of the north, or breathes forth His spirit upon aromatic southern airs, whose war-canoe is launched upon majestic rivers and inland seas—He needs no lesser cathedral!

Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa), Santee Dakota, The Soul of the Indian