–- merged notes from time on the land and in transit –-

A soft cloud covered the sun today, I saw it from inside the canvas tent. Within that cloud, a full rainbow circling the star–-radiance created in collaboration with the frozen canvas of white above. Nearby, the questers were doing their work, easing their way into their third day on the land in ceremony.

I find it hard to know what to write, what to put out in this space right now which feels both authentic and important. I am, as it were, feeling a potent writers block, even now some 1,200 miles from that ceremonial dance and on the edge of another.

It is not that I am without words. It is that I am, have been, will keep being so transported past my own tiny egoic self as I sit in these circles of transformational wholeness. Ostensibly, I am taking the seat as a wilderness rite of passage guide. Deeper and more true, is that I am a student of the ceremony and of those who take it upon themselves to enter and enact such ceremonies in collaboration with the wilding earth.

How can I even begin to put into words what really happens in such a setting?

Each morning, we come together in a talking circle and have a check-in weather report Council. Before the questing, the group then sits with each person as they unpack what is happening in their life and articulate the depth of why they are here. This is the intent Council. After the quest, we sit as a group and listen to each person share their four-day and four-night ceremonial story. Before, between, and after our circles, life is lived at the edges of the wilderness, where conversations are food, dinner is pot-luck-ing, and a simple walk becomes a gateway into community–-humyn and more-than-humyn.

Undoubtedly, the core of the experience is the quest, not just because of the ordeal (empty, alone, and exposed) but principally because it is the land which initiates. Crucially, critically, essentially, however, is the with-ness-ing of being in such an intentional community, being seen, felt, and heard, and being valued for the authentic vulnerability which emerges.

I am profoundly humbled and grateful to get to hear such depth from our humyn peoples.

Sitting here looking north, fire smoke in the sky here just as there was in Colorado, I find myself in the paradox of being utterly touched by the brilliance of this ecotherapeautic work and profoundly devastated by abstraction of our culture from the wild, healing earth. The news tells me that the tyrants of our global politics are being tyrannical. It says that liberty, justice, and peace are still severely threatened. It says, between the lines, that our lifeworld may fail…

Yet, it does not tell me how to feel more authentically or how to live deeper into truth. It does not explore the margins between the dualities offered, or offer models for the in-between-ness so many of us find ourselves within. It does not, quite clearly, tell me about the courageous and brave people who named their traumas in a circle full of strangers, who put their lives in their backpack and walked through a threshold into the wilderness to enact self-led healing rituals of wholeness.

But perhaps back in the old days, it did.

And perhaps, forward in the new days, it might again.

As a friend taught me this summer, we can send trust ahead as we embark upon redirecting our culture from it's trendline toward annihilation.

in these

living colors

moments joy

& sorrow

rain bowed into fabrics

of light,

leaves

& shadow

i am.

but a whisper

is too.

We came for this.

to thank, be

& dissolve impermanent

such whispers, these, are.

In sum, they went out on the land to heal. There was no prescription, nothing external needed. They knew this, held courage, and took that first step into the center of their circle of purpose. When the first rays of dawn broke across their wild-eyed selves on that fifth morning, they shouldered their pack to bring their gifts home to their community.

And as they did, the healing dreamt of for generation by the elders, the great turning of the dark unraveling back into life, became so.

The last few weeks and next few weeks have given me the opportunity to be on the land and in ceremony. As such, the blog will be updated on an irregular basis until September.

May you all find your days deeply met with soul, peace, and love.

tbird