Before we read books, our stories were located in the landscape - each hill and river, rock and pool was storied - part of the living, mythic landscape and web of 'songlines' or story-lines that criss-crossed our localities, and which helped us locate ourselves within the sacred landscape. The stories and 'lore of the land' were passed down, the paths trodden, the places honoured annually through ceremony and pilgrimage. Traces of these ancient practices of reciprocity with the land survived to inform traditions such as 'beating the bounds', which are still upheld in some places across the British Isles today.

Here in the West, we have almost forgotten what it means to 'belong' - to be rooted firmly in a place; to know its stories and history as well as our own, to feel the river in our blood and our bones bound to the stones beneath us. Our increasingly…