# What Happens When You Ask the Land for Permission Every Night for 40 Years?

> "Every night before I go to bed I was at the edge of the pool and I look at the land, even though it's dark, I'm always thanking it for letting me be here and hope that they want me to take care of it like it takes care of me."

Alix Goldsmith Marcaccini speaks these words with the quiet certainty of someone who has spent four decades in conversation with 25,000 acres of Mexican coastline. What began as her father James Goldsmith's vision for Cuixmala—a pristine sanctuary along the Pacific coast—has evolved into something far more intimate: a daily practice of asking permission from the land itself.

## The Foundation of Relationship

When the Goldsmith family first arrived at what would become Cuixmala in 1984, Alix was 20 years old. The property was raw, wild, and unforgiving. "I just remember driving in here with... I think it had 30 different owners or something. But I remember driving in through the entrance of La Parota. I remember driving through here... I just saw the vastness of it. I was like, oh my god, this place is incredible. It just called me."

That calling has sustained her through hurricanes that destroyed 8,000 palm trees, through the complexities of managing a conservation foundation and luxury hotel, and through the daily responsibility of employing 300 people whose families depend on this land. But it was the hurricanes of 2011 and 2015 that taught her the deepest lessons about relationship with place.

> "When we had the first hurricane and the most beautiful trees flew away, I was heartbroken because the houses you can rebuild, it takes what it takes. But a tree, and a lot of the trees we planted when we got here too, but some of them like the huge bad old does. I mean, we had massive trees on the plot."

The pain was so intense that Alix was told "I'd been picking up on all the pain of the trees. So someone worked on me and then I felt better. But it was really intense. It was very, very sad." Yet from that devastation came understanding: "what I did notice though, everything in a way was much more covered and dense, so there was less light coming through, so having taken away a lot of those trees brought in a lot of light."

## Learning the Land's Rhythms

Gregorio Von Hildebrand, joining the conversation, points to a fundamental misalignment in how conservation is typically approached: "The conversation is steering towards that. That's the thing is that is being discussed by the World Economic Forum and Davos, right? So the conversation is emerging the same way of thinking, which is eventually going to lead us towards the same kind of problem."

But at Cuixmala, a different approach has emerged—one rooted in what Alix's father James and uncle Teddy Goldsmith understood decades before it became mainstream. As Rainbow Nelson observes, "How did your father look at this place? the same lens as he would through a business or completely differently in some ways?"

Alix's answer reveals the deeper philosophy: her father "knew a lot about food. He'd been in the food business. He'd been in pharmaceutical. He'd been in all different types of businesses. So he knew how bad they were... So what he wanted to do was really have a place where the soil was clean, the water from the river was clean, that we could plant more trees."

## The Practice of Gratitude as Stewardship

What makes Alix's approach unique is how personal relationship has become the foundation for land protection. Her nightly ritual at the pool's edge isn't mere sentiment—it's a recognition that effective stewardship requires acknowledging the land as an active participant in the relationship.

This intimate connection has practical implications. "Actually we have more animals now than we had before," Alix notes. "Now we have the healthiest population of... The little clouded, the clouded leopards, tigrillos... We have the healthiest. Feline." The success isn't measured only in species counts but in the quality of relationship between human and non-human inhabitants.

As her husband Goffredo observes, "his favorite tax to pay is the tax to the animals because they eat half of what we eat." It's a perspective that sees wildlife not as a burden on resources but as rightful participants in the land's abundance.

## Wisdom for a World in Crisis

When asked what people can learn from Cuixmala's 40-year experiment, Alix is characteristically direct: "It takes a lot of money. It's like what my dad, when people would ask him, how do you do it to manage to so many wives? Takes a lot of money."

But beneath the humor lies a deeper truth about the financial and emotional commitment required for genuine land stewardship. Von Hildebrand expands on this: "protecting land takes a lot of money. We're trying to move the financial system... The value of a standing forest must be much higher than the value of a timber or soil or whatever."

Yet for Alix, the real investment isn't financial—it's the daily practice of relationship. "I've learned to love it more and more actually," she reflects on her 40 years with the land. This deepening love, expressed through nightly gratitude, has created something unprecedented: a conservation project guided not by abstract environmental principles but by intimate, personal relationship with place.

## The Question That Changes Everything

As conversations about land use, climate change, and conservation grow increasingly urgent, Alix's practice offers a radical reframe. What if the question isn't how to manage land, but how to ask permission to be in relationship with it? What if conservation begins not with scientific studies or financial models, but with the simple act of saying thank you?

After four decades of this practice, Cuixmala stands as evidence that when we approach land as a partner rather than a possession, both human and non-human communities can flourish. The nightly ritual continues, and the land responds with abundance: healthy wildlife populations, thriving ecosystems, and a model for what conservation might look like when it's rooted in gratitude rather than control.

The question remains: What happens when you ask the land for permission every night for 40 years? At Cuixmala, the answer is still being written, one grateful conversation at a time.