Wilderness and Deities

We were talking about the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone last class. It was probably the first time that I ever really thought about why that myth is able to exist. I've always thought that someone thousands of years ago simply came up with a story about mother-daughter relationships and applied it to the deities they worshipped. It wasn't until I saw the huge rocky hill in the slide show pertaining to Greece that the wheels began to turn in my head. The hill or plateau (whatever it is, its impressive) looks so foreboding it just begs to be turned into a setting for something ominous. What could be more ominous than the God of the dead kidnapping (possibly violating) the maiden of Spring and plunging the Earth into eternal winter? My initial response was that of many people in that I simply thought, "Hmm, well I guess people back then needed an explanation as to why we have seasons, so they created a story to make themselves feel that there was some sense of order in the world."
The book, Landscapes of the Sacred, talks about how places are not chosen to be sacred by the people around it but are discovered as sacred. Its like the stories are already bound to the land through our unconscious dreams. We hold things to be sacred not through our logical processes, but through our souls' innate desires. When we find sacred places, we don't dissect why they are sacred. They seem to have a way of telling us their stories. We personify them, give them histories beyond what we can trace in the archives of human progress, and make them seem almost...like ourselves. When a tree falls in the middle of a place we hold as sacred, even if it is only due to a naturally brutal wind, its as if we mourn the death of a pet or maybe even a friend. I remember a huge willow tree that grew in the sand beside my old beach house. It had been planted when I was born and so I always felt this special connection to it. It was beautiful and bigger than anything my child's head could conceive of. It survived many storms and two hurricanes by the time I was 10. Every time a branch would fall off or the trunk was slashed by a storm, my dad would always wrap the bark in thick white "bandages". I saw the tree as a sort of silent family member that we were all obligated to care for and protect. Years later, my family hit hard financial times and we had to sell the beach house. I didn't really feel anything too painful. I was 17 and even though I liked the beach house, I didn't exactly mourn the loss of the beach house that had turned into a timshare. It had been shared between us and 20 relatives by the time we sold it. The next day, literally as soon as the ink dried, Hurricane Isabel tore through Plum Point (where our beach house stood) and ripped out the huge willow by its roots. It was washed away with the surge. I came back to see my Aunt Annie who now owns the property. To my surprise, my eyes didn't search for the house, the porch, or even our prized kayaks. My eyes searched for the willow I had assumed would always be there. In that moment, I knew that I had held that tree to be more than just a place for shade. I knew that it had been my own personal touchstone. I had not named it or made sacrifices to it at its roots, but to me, it was a sort of childhood deity. I had deemed its immortality before I had even known what 'immortal' meant. This is just my personal experience, but I imagine the creation of deities and their stories come from a similar place of familiarity and affection.