Travel Changed When I Started Listening to the Land

I have never really been an all-inclusive kind of gal.

There is nothing wrong with lying on a beach with a drink in your hand, turning your brain off for a week and letting the world disappear for a little while. I understand why people love that. I understand why people need that in this rat race of life.

But for me, adventure has always been the thing that lights something up inside my body.

I have always been pulled toward the unknown. Toward the road that goes nowhere. Toward the ancient stones with no explanation. Toward the city I do not know, the language I cannot speak, the path that makes absolutely no sense to the logical mind but somehow feels like it is calling my name.

And the more I have walked a spiritual path, the more I have realized that travel is not just a get away anymore.

It has become a pilgrimage.

It has become ignition.

It has become a conversation between my body, my intuition, the land, and something much older than me.

After my divorce, I took my first solo adventure to the Amalfi Coast in Italy. At the time, I do not think I fully understood what I was doing. I probably thought I was being brave. (scaring the poop out of my mother) I probably thought I was proving to myself that I could go somewhere alone and survive it.

But now, looking back, I understand that trip differently.

That was not just a vacation.

That was the first time I heard my own voice without anyone else’s life wrapped around it.

That was the first time I began to understand the power of being alone in a place I had never been before, trusting that some part of me knew exactly where to go.

There is something that happens when you travel solo after your life has fallen apart.

You cannot hide behind someone else’s preferences.
You cannot distract yourself with someone else’s mood.
You cannot hand your intuition over to the person beside you and ask them what they think.

You have to listen.

You have to feel.

You have to make choices from somewhere deeper than convenience.

And maybe that is why solo travel became such a sacred teacher for me.

Because when you are alone in a foreign country, standing in front of the sea, walking through an old village, staring at a church, a ruin, a mountain, or a road you cannot explain your attraction to, there is no one there to tell you what it means.

You have to let mama earth speak.

Over the years, I have travelled to places that felt less like destinations and more like thresholds.

Scotland.
Glastonbury.
Somerset.
Hawaii.
Ireland.
The Hill of Tara.
Ancient sites.
Sacred wells.
Stone circles.
Volcanic land.
Wild coastlines.
Places where the veil feels thinner.
Places where the body gets quiet before the mind understands why.

And what I have learned is this:

The land remembers.

I know that may sound strange to some people. I know not everyone thinks this way. But when you begin to embody a more spiritual life, when you begin to trust your intuition, when you begin to quiet the noise of the world and listen with something other than your ears, you start to realize that not all history is written in books.

Some history is held in stone.

Some history is held in water.

Some history is held in the bones of the earth.

Some history is not dead at all. (often in a parallel universe right beside you)

It is waiting for someone to stop long enough to feel it.

We do not talk enough about ley lines. We do not talk enough about the energy of land. We do not talk enough about how certain places on Earth seem to hold a frequency, a memory, a message, or a warning.

We are taught history in such a flat way.

This happened. It was right or wrong, good or bad.
That was built. By who?
These people lived here. Alone?
Those people conquered there.
This monument took decades.
That temple was built by slaves.
This civilization disappeared.
That mystery remains unsolved.

But what if there is more?

What if some of these places were never just monuments?

What if they were calendars?
Portals?
Ceremonial sites?
Energy points?
Maps between the Earth and the stars?

What if our ancestors understood something about the relationship between land, sky, body, and spirit that we are only now beginning to remember?

So many sacred sites around the world are aligned with the cosmos in ways that still leave people questioning how it was possible.

Stonehenge is aligned with the movement of the sun, especially around the solstices. On the summer solstice, the sunrise meets the stones in a way that still draws people from all over the world to witness it.

The pyramids of Egypt are wrapped in layers of mystery, astronomy, death, rebirth, and ancient initiation. Some theories connect the layout of the Giza pyramids with Orion’s Belt, while others debate that interpretation. But whether or not every theory is accepted, it is impossible to stand before these structures and not feel that they were built with an awareness of something far greater than ordinary architecture.

And then there are places like the Nazca Lines in Peru.

Massive figures carved into the desert floor.
Animals.
Plants.
Geometric shapes.
Beings that feel almost too strange to fit neatly into our version of history.

They can be seen most clearly from above, which immediately opens the door to questions.

Who were they made for?
What were they communicating?
Were they offerings?
Were they maps?
Were they messages to the gods?
Were they connected to the stars?
Were they connected to beings beyond this world?

I do not claim to have all the answers.

That is not what this is about.

But I do believe sacred sites ask better questions than most textbooks do.

And maybe that is part of their medicine.

They pull us out of arrogance.
They remind us that we do not know everything and text books are often incorrect.
They humble the modern mind that thinks it has everything figured out because it has Wi-Fi, science, and AI.

There are things on this Earth that cannot be reduced to a paragraph in a text book.

There are places that must be felt.

There are stones that seem silent until you stand in front of them with your heart open.

There are mountains that will not speak to your mind, but they will speak to your bones.

And this is how travel has changed for me.

I do not just go somewhere to see it anymore.

I go to listen.

I go to be open to change.

I go to ask, “Why am I being called here?”

I go to feel what my body does when I step onto certain land.

Does my chest open?
Do my ears ring?
Do I feel grief?
Do I feel joy?
Do I feel pressure in my head?
Do I feel like I have been here before?
Do I feel like I am being shown something?
Do I feel like I am remembering something I was never taught?

This is the part of spiritual travel that no glossy brochure can explain.

Sometimes the most powerful moment of a trip is not the photo everyone else wants.

Sometimes it is standing alone on a hill with the wind ripping through your hair, suddenly crying and having no idea why.

Sometimes it is touching a stone and feeling your whole nervous system go quiet.

Sometimes it is walking away from the tour group because your intuition tells you to stand somewhere else.

Sometimes it is not the guide’s explanation that stays with you.

It is the feeling.

The pulse.

The knowing.

The strange sense that the land has recognized you.

And now, as I prepare for my next pilgrimage to South America, I can feel that same pull again.

Peru has been calling.

Not just as a destination.
Not just as a bucket-list adventure.
Not just as Machu Picchu, Rainbow Mountain, Lake Titicaca, the Andes, or the Inca Trail.

Something deeper.

Something ancient.

Something cosmic.

Peru carries stories that stretch beyond ordinary history. It carries the memory of the Inca, the mystery of the Nazca Lines, the sacred relationship between mountains and sky, the worship of the sun, the reverence for the Earth, and the understanding that the seen and unseen worlds were never separate.

The Andes feel like a spine of the Earth.

The Nazca Lines feel like a message written to the heavens.

Machu Picchu feels like a place where stone, sun, mountain, and spirit were never meant to be separate.

And Lake Titicaca, often spoken of as a sacred birthplace in Andean cosmology, also known as one of the Chakras of the Earth.

I do not know exactly what this trip will show me.

That is the point.

Pilgrimage is not about controlling the revelation.

It is about being willing to receive it.

It is about allowing the land to speak in its own timing.
It is about letting your plans be interrupted by intuition.
It is about understanding that sometimes the real reason you are called somewhere is not revealed until your feet are already on the ground.

This is what awakening has done to travel for me.

It has made the world alive.

It has made the Earth a teacher.

It has made sacred sites feel less like ruins and more like libraries.

It has made intuition my compass.

It has made solitude feel less like loneliness and more like initiation.

And maybe that is why I keep going.

Not to escape my life.

But to meet more of it.

Not to run away from myself.

But to find the pieces of me that can only be remembered in certain places.

Because some parts of us do not wake up at home.

Some parts of us wake up on a mountain.
Some wake up beside the ocean.
Some wake up in the desert.
Some wake up in front of ancient stone.
Some wake up under stars we finally remembered to look at.

And some wake up when we are brave enough to go alone, get quiet, and listen.

The world is not just a place to visit.

It is a living archive.

And when you begin to travel with your intuition open, you realize the Earth has been speaking the whole time.

Most of us were just too loud to hear her.

Michelle Palma

Purple Moon Healing Group