The Soil Remembers Us

In the mountains of Kashmir, an eco-village nurtures ecological and existential regeneration.

**Pyend**, a thatch-roofed local version of the gazebo at SAGG Eco Village in Kashmir.

There was a time when, along with the scent of apple blossoms, the wind in Kashmir carried balance. People lived close to the earth’s pulse. Beneath the feet, soil was kin, a witness, a quiet teacher. Land fed people, and people knew how to return the favor.

Kashmir is still breathtaking, but today it carries invisible wounds. Decades of unrest, careless development, and borrowed ideas of “progress” have strained both people and place. Rivers choke on dams and plastic. Mountains are cut for stone and highways. Forests are sacrificed for transmission lines and “economic development.” Farms are sprayed with poison in the name of “medicine.” The soil grows tired — like a mother who senses her milk is no longer pure. Kashmiri youth, once rooted in craft and culture, drift between disillusionment and escape.

The crisis was as much existential as it was ecological.

I came to understand that the crisis was as much existential as it was ecological; we were “educated” but had forgotten how to belong.

*Youth in a training session with Fayaz Ahmad Dar.*

Centuries ago, Kashmiri mystic poet Sheikh Noor-ud-Din Noorani warned: “Ann poshi teli yeli van poshi” — food will last as long as forests last. It was not poetry alone; it was systems thinking before language caught up with that idea. For generations, people lived within limits, taking only what they needed. The balance held — until it broke.

By the turn of the millennium, “education” and “development” arrived. Villages lost confidence, land lost fertility, and young people lost patience with a future stripped of dignity. Chaos followed. Lived wisdom was replaced by dependence: dependence on jobs, schemes, and extraction.

Right: Wuer, a mix of herbs and spices used traditionally in winter as an immunity booster, is one of the products made at SAGG.

In 2010, I returned to Kashmir after years away from my homeland. I did not have answers, but I did have a question: What if healing the land could also heal people?

What if healing the land could also heal people?

SAGG Eco Village became the answer to that question. Sagg is Kashmiri for “watering” or “nurturing,” and SAGG Eco Village is an experiment in remembering. The land where SAGG now stands was once barren, a dry foothill — cracked earth, thorns, scattered rock. Yet, beneath the dust something stirred: memory, perhaps.

We did not arrive to develop the land; we arrived to listen. With local mud, stone, and timber, we shaped spaces that breathe with mountain winds. We planted food, composted waste, harvested rain, and allowed the land to recover at its own pace. Slowly, the soil softened. Birds and insects returned, and then people followed. Young men and women who once saw no future beyond migration began learning regenerative farming, eco-hospitality, natural building, and small enterprise. Coming to SAGG as participants rather than as tourists, visitors practiced sustainability as a daily discipline.

*A visitor enjoying fresh naturally grown cherries from the tree*

That’s when it became clear: regeneration is not only ecological work; it is inner work, where land meets soul. Alongside the Mool Sustainability Research and Training Center — our nonprofit arm working with youth, schools, and institutions — this insight gave rise to The Village Academy, a space where mindset, purpose, and stewardship align. Together, the Center and Academy form a living system of research, learning, and enterprise cycling into one another like water moving between soil and sky.

At SAGG, healing is experiential. We plant seeds, work with clay, and sit long enough to hear birds instead of thoughts. Children laugh on swings, Elders tell stories, hands remember skills the mind had forgotten. People arrive heavy but leave lighter. The land asks for presence.

Regeneration is not only ecological work; it is inner work, where land meets soul.

Today, SAGG is a small ecosystem, a farm, a retreat, a learning ground. Local youths, including women, earn dignified livelihoods as growers, cooks, guides, and makers. Working with natural fibers, food, clay, and herbs, they create objects that are shaped by place. Everything moves in circles: waste becomes compost; water is reused; and through practice, knowledge returns to soil.

Visitors often arrive expecting a hotel or café. What they encounter instead is a mirror — a slower rhythm, honest food, and the quiet realization that living with less can feel like more. Some stay to learn, while others leave changed. This photo essay captures some of these moments at the village.

SAGG, I believe, can become a living model for regenerative life, rooted in remembrance rather than imitation. The soil remembers footsteps, mistakes, and prayers. It forgives, and in that forgiveness life begins again.

Regeneration is not something we do to nature.
It is how nature remembers itself through us.
And when we listen closely enough,
the land always tells us how to come home.