Most of the pagan traditions that have been widely adopted in the English-speaking world were developed in or for Northern European landscapes. The Wheel of the Year was built around a British climate and a British agricultural calendar. Norse Heathenry emerged from Scandinavian geography. Celtic traditions are rooted in the specific landscape of Ireland, Wales, and Scotland. These origins are not problems — they are exactly what gives these traditions their texture and vitality. The problem arises when practitioners in very different landscapes try to observe these traditions as if they were in a different place, and find that the land around them is not cooperating.

Bioregional paganism is the practice of developing spiritual relationship with the specific land you live in — its particular ecology, its actual seasonal rhythms, its native plants and animals, and the spirits of place that have inhabited it for far longer than any human tradition. This is not a rejection of inherited traditions. It is their completion, their grounding in the actual earth beneath your feet.

The first step is simply learning where you are. What watershed do you live in? What are the native trees of your region — not the ornamentals and imports but the plants that belong here? What birds pass through on migration and which ones overwinter? What does the ground do in the different seasons? This is the biography of your sacred landscape, and until you know it you are honoring an idea of the earth rather than this specific, living, particular earth.

Next, develop relationships with specific local beings: the old tree in your neighborhood, the creek that runs behind the park, the hill that catches the sunrise. Visit them regularly. Bring offerings. Learn their seasonal changes. Ask, in whatever way feels right to you, for relationship. The spirits of place are real, in my experience, and they respond to genuine attention.

You can hold both the inherited traditions and the local practice simultaneously. Honor Brigid at Imbolc and also honor the first snowdrop that pushes through the soil in your garden. Work with Odin and also befriend the crows who have learned where you leave offerings. The traditions from elsewhere provide vocabulary and structure; the land where you live provides the living content. Together they make a practice that is rooted in something real.