Autumn Rewilding Retreat | Reclaim the Skin You are Meant to Be In: How Stories of the Selke Guide Our Becoming

"Myth insists that in each of us a great kingdom presides: filled with forests, remote castles, giants, witches, lovers, the dreams of the earth itself. To hear a story well told was to bear witness to the wily tale of your own life meeting the bigger epic that those before you had walked. Such speech was a way you tasted your ancestors. We don’t have such stories: such stories have us.” ~Martin Shaw

This immersive Rewilding Retreat went deep into the mythopoetic realm of the Westward Autumn Quadrant of the Rewilding Wheel circuit. Within this context a group of courageous women learned together from the archetypes within the Celtic Selkie myth and its potential form and meaning for the woman’s journey towards authentic be-ing and belonging. The retreat took place on the Saratoga Passage, a part of the whale-trail within the Salish Sea. It was the perfect setting for all things salty and sea-worthy to express themselves!

We were present to do this work together: to re-member ourselves within the voices of the earth, to the myths she tells us and the belonging together these stories bring. Ultimately myths help us to unravel who we are and what we need to work out. These are not our untruths, but in many ways, a good myth will hold the most archetypal truths about our existence. Stories help us find our path in life, and other ways of imagining our world and our place within it.

Whatever journey we imagine ourselves to be on, myth and fairy tales can inform our sense of what is possible, and enable us not just to cope with life’s challenges, but to live more intensely, and more richly, in the world. Spiritual growth—soulskin growth—lies at the heart of every archetypal tale—this is about a journey to develop one’s highest potential and in many ways recover a sense of our primary existence. We are often drawn to specific stories or characters, and if we explore the reasons why, deeper truths about our life and our meant-for-ness may emerge as a result.

This was our weekend’s work! Through various iterations of this mythic tale, Black Out Poetry, wild wanderings, sea-side Morning Matins, Council Circles, and even a showing of the Irish indie film, The Secret of Roan Inish, we invited our soul’s to speak of their primary existence and to what waters they would want to return. We wove together desires, prayers, and blessings onto a seaside loom, our collective “soul-skin” that was ceremoniously released to the sea as an offering of gratitude and a metaphoric return to our own skin.

Roughly eight thousand acres at the seashore;

a tension between

human and wilderness.

In this threat I find a relationship full of possibility.

Go beyond the philosophical arrogance

of exclusive emphasis upon reason

to experience interrelatedness and

a new ecological way of life.

God, speak to us by

tree, canyon, and ravens.

The new beginning has come

as a seed.

(Black Out poetry composition by a Rewilding Retreat participant. Shared with permission)

The Song of the Sea: Reflections on a Selke Soul-Skin Rewilding Retreat

The sun was just warming the sky with the first blush of pink and purple; the sounds of daybreak resonated over the threshold of land and sea. While I was starting the fire for a beach front morning matins, I heard the song—sonorous notes rippling over the waves coming from a lone kayak put out to sea. And then, the bobbing heads of seals emerged through the waves, encircling the modern coracle, receiving the morning melody that called to them and affirming the enchantment of the moment. It was as if the myths were awakening, or more likely, that we were awakening to the myths. For as our gathered group told and retold an ancient tale of shape-shifting seals, attunement began to occur—a tuning of the senses to the song of the more-than-human world happening all around us.

Mythtelling assumes that the stories already exist in nature, waiting to be overheard by humans who will listen for them…a myth is the power of a place, speaking. -Sean Kane

The collective energies of the Autumn (season), West (cardinal direction), and Water (element) land themselves in the work of the watersheds and seas within the coordinates of the Rewilding Wheel. In the westward quadrant of this wheel we gravitate towards bodies of water, an elemental way of binding back to ourselves. In this place we fully explore our becoming as water reflects the nature of the soul. It symbolizes the principle of “as above, so below, as within, so without.” Spiritual traditions teach that everything in the outer world is a reflection of our inner world, which provides a sobering invitation when looking at how our water sources are being mistreated. However, our spiritual growth around the wheel provides us with a sense of vision and imagination now that we are in our westward posture. We can draw deeply upon Source, as if from a deep well, and imagine how our waters should be treated, honored, and respected. Woman are particularly empowered in this quadrant as our bodies are profoundly tied to water literally and metaphorically.

As water flows from the mountaintops, through the forests and fields, and ultimately to the sea, this becomes a bioregional expression of fullness, of completion. Here the water shows us what it is meant to become through its appearance as Winter’s snow, Spring’s rain and snow-melt rivers, Summer’s wellsprings, and then the final meeting with the oceanic body. This journey bears echoes of our own psycho-spiritual formation as we too make our own journey through the seasons—bringing us West towards our own fullness and mellowed maturity. This is an invitation into an enchanted way of living—we see a reflection of ourselves within our bioregion as we re-learn to speak the language of seasons, of the sea, and even of the Selkie.

These interconnected themes and energies inspired the Autumn Rewilding Retreat, a weekend away on the Salish Sea where the Celtic myth of the Selkie was explored as way of reclaiming aspects of ourselves that were lost or dismembered along the way, and rediscovering core aspects of our True Self that are critical to an authentic way of belonging within our world. This shape-shifting story is one that honors the process that one goes through to become and belong fully to themselves as well as to the wild and sacred world. And so this retreat engaged this story as a way to recovering the “skin we are meant to be in.”

The particular location of this retreat provided a variety of sacred spaces. We created a “Sea Sanctuary” where individuals were invited to engage the collective energies of the Rewilding Wheel through prayers and practices that clarified how these elemental aspects of life itself are connected to our human lives as well. Prayer sticks created from Hedgewood herbs and plants were gifts that linked the elements together—earth, fire, air and water were all in tandem as praying participants were invited to light the prayer stick while standing in the sea. This is a powerful tradition of speaking your prayerful intentions into the water. The practice of praying immersed in water was one of the more extreme ascetic traits popular amongst Celtic saints. It is said that even Columba on the Isle of Iona would wade deep into the sea to pray for hours upon a time. Consider how water conducts energy and is very transformable. It changes depending on what the offering or intention is. In the Lakota way of prayer and worldview, Mni Wiconi means water is life and water is alive. Water has consciousness. Water has personhood. Water is eternal as our planet is a closed planet. This element of water has always been. Praying in the water intensified your prayer. Literally water evaporates so that water that has just been transformed by your words, your intentions, your energy, travels into clouds, which then travel the world. Your prayers can come down in the form of rain on the other side of the world. So your prayer and your intention you are sending may come down as snow in the Andes, or rain in the Amazon. You are sharing the consciousness of your prayer with the consciousness of the planet through praying within the water.

“May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.
Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has, streaming through
widening channels
into the open sea.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke

Weaving is another form of prayerful intention that shows up in myths from around the world; the weaver is often associated with the feminine and crone and shows up as a symbol of the Present who holds the threads of Past and Future within her omniscient knowing. With this mythopoetic understanding in mind, we created a sea-loom where retreat participants could co-weave a soul-skin, an expression of hopes, desires, and prayers for the reclamation of their meant-for-selves. The woven work took the whole weekend to create and then this “soul-skin” was sent out to sea on the last day, representing our prayers for reclaiming our re-woven self.

When one begins to recover the dismembered or buried feminine, one taps into a wellspring of creativity. This creativity is often conveyed archetypally through foundational creating often through the act of weaving. In Native American traditions you can find stories of Grandmother Spider who weaves creation and stories into being. In the Greek tradition it is Gaia who creates the cosmos. In Celtic tales you have the Old Woman of the World who spins and weaves the continuity of time. Through participating in this ancient practice, there was a sense that we were not only weaving ourselves back together, but we were weaving ourselves back into our very place. Much of our sense of dismemberment and soul-loss is a result of not being deeply rooted and connected to the spirit of our place.

Rewilding Retreats aim to provide nourishing foods that reflect the energies of the seasons as well as provide a pallet that reminds us of where we are, the foods that actually help form and shape our bodies through their biochemistry. This retreat was no different with the meals offering seasonal sustenance through apples, nuts, squash blossoms, rosemary and elderberry syrups. Most fun was the sea inspired smoothie bowls that were created every morning with the use of an extract of spirulina, a fresh-water algae that carries water notes and an amazing dose of B12.

In many respects, eating well is an invitation into dwelling well. We can be in a place and not know where we are or how to be there. We can also come to forsake or degrade places because we do not appreciate how vital they in fact are. Growing and eating the unique foods found in specific bioregions enables us to inhabit the places of our lives with a more detailed understanding and empathy. Ecotheologian Norman Wirzba states, “Food creates a profound connection to a place. To fail to know places in detail, and the wisdom that has collectively been learned there, is to lose the possibility of detailed understanding. Failing to understand, human action will grow to be out of step with, and perhaps even destructively contrary to, the processes of life that feed personal life”(1). The food served at these retreats hope to create this sense of reciprocity and sacred balance that is critical for all life to flourish in our bioregion.

The elements that were aligned for this Rewilding Retreat weekend created a portal for the Sacred to be seen and experienced in profound and powerful ways. There was a sense of sacred enchantment present as we played and practiced at the sea’s threshold. While we were praying matins one morning, a group of seals came almost right up to the shore, staying at the water’s edge throughout our liturgy! Mythologist, psychotherapist, and writer Sharon Blackie says this of how local knowing and detailed understanding creates connections within the seen and unseen world: “Enchanted living embraces a wider world, and acknowledges the value of respect and interdependence between richly different cultures—but it does so from the perspective of a deep grounding in its own locality, and in the unique bioregion which supports it” (2). This then is the process of rewilding—the practice of awareness and reconnection to the cultures (both human and more-than-human), the niches, the ecosystems, which we occupy, and re-membering ourselves to the sacred stories these places speak. This is the great work of reweaving ourselves back into our places, belonging once again not only to our True Self, but within the wild world that has given us rise.

Selkie Drawing by retreat participant Sarah Bylsma (2018)

“I have a feeling that my boat
has struck, down there in the depths,
against a great thing.
And nothing
happens! Nothing…Silence…Waves…
—Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,
and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?”
—Juan Ramón Jiménez

(1) Norman Wirzba, Food & Faith: A Theology of Eating (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 40.
(2) Sharon Blackie, The Enchanted Life: Unlocking the Magic in Everyday Living (Tewkesbury UK: September Publishing, 2018), 214.

Summer Rewilding Retreat: Scraping the Ground for the Grief Seeds

Willamette Valley, Oregon

The sun was high and hot these summer months. The ground was cracked open revealing crevasses of dry dirt. The traditional rains and cooling cloud cover transmuted into a thick covering of smoke as wild fires smoldered all over the West. And yet, even in these despairing conditions, tendrils of green hope grew into the form and shape of beans, tomatoes and peas; flowers became berries, apples, and plums; herbs returned to offer their healing. I was astonished at the hard and accomplished work these plants exhibited. In spite of the hot and harsh conditions, they were bound and determined to flourish.

This captures the collective energy of this season’s Rewilding Wheel quadrant, which brings together the ancient wisdom residing within the coordinates of the Summer season, the Southern cardinal direction, the element of Earth, and sinks these coordinating energies deep into the bioregion of the farm, the garden, the field. Here, the prayers and practices, and rites and rituals that reconnect us to the sacred rhythms of the earth-bound seasons and celestial phases take on a particular form. Within this soulful practice, one recalibrates the consecrated connection between season and site; natural rhythms and neighborhood residence; the beatific and the bioregion. One begins to explore how this landscape and season speak into their own psychospiritual formation, and how diving deep into the associated mythopoetic realm reveals transformational truths about ones soul.

“How will you know the difficulties of being human, if you are always flying off to blue perfection? Where will you plant your grief seeds? [We] need ground to scrape and hoe, not the sky of unspecified desire.”

— Rumi

My attempt with this practice is to bring into focused awareness practices that bind me to my bioregion, that sutures the sacred into the soil, and that reconnects me to the spirit of my place. A critical question has emerged through this effort, one that I have been bringing to each landscape. This question formed after a powerful moment that I shared with a Deg Hit’an Dine elder in my neighborhood woods. It was a moment that called into question all that I had been taught about the posture of stewardship, and earth-tending; the difference between managing the land and minding its spirit. In a moment I realized that my custodial care of this particular urban forest was another iteration of colonization. As much as land is intersectional, my Rewilding Year has demanded I do the work to confront the intersectionality of bodies and how they are colonized by the dominant power—earth bodies, animal bodies, human bodies. The question that has led this sacred round is this: how may I be about the work of decolonizing my bioregion, and more specifically, my homescape so that I may have access to the “Spirit of my Place?”

It’s the difference between managing the land and minding its spirit. It’s coming to terms that custodial care is another iteration of colonization.

In response to the Rewilding Wheel coordinates, and in need of wisdom to guide my question, my husband Joel and I headed south for my personal Summer Rewilding Retreat to Oregon’s fertile Willamette Valley to spend time with Reverend Randy and Edith Woodley at their community-restoration and teaching farm, aptly named Eloheh Farm (“eloheh” is a Cherokee word meaning harmony, balance, well-being and abundance). Utilizing and teaching principles found within permaculture, biomimicry and Traditional Indigenous Knowledge (TIK), Eloheh Farm is a model for a flourishing and abundant future as it displays the wholeness that occurs when cooperation with and permission from the more-than-human world are in alignment. Randy Woodley, PhD, is a Keetoowah Cherokee (legal descendent) teacher, poet, activist, former pastor, missiologist and historian. He and Edith’s work in the ongoing discussions concerning new church movements, racial and ethnic diversity, peace, social justice, interreligious dialogue and mission made me eager to bring my question and have him help me with my thinking and Joel was excited about the opportunity to interview him for his Emerging Future podcast (you can listen to this deep and vulnerable conversation here). We came with the expectation of being transformed by this place and its people.

The hospitality of this land and its people knew no bounds. We stayed on site in a rustic bunk house with windows that opened up to the star-soaked wind that whistled through the dying branches of neighboring Filbert farms. These money-driven monoculture plantations stood in direct contrast to the thriving bounty at Eloheh Farm. Randy, who understands his role with this land as a “co-sustainer” (note: not a steward, an important difference that comes into play in response to my question), led us on a tour around this 3.26 acre water-wise and regenerative landscape that not only feeds his family year round and provides produce for local markets, heritage and indigenous seeds for the Woodley’s Eloheh Seed company, but also provides a niche micro-habitat for a host of more-than-human species who now make their home in this incredible web of life. Within this web were a myriad of stone fruit trees; a well-visited pollinator garden; herbs and medicine plants including heritage and ceremonial use tobacco and tulasi; tomatoes, cucumber, and 800 year old squash strains. The list goes on! A walk through Eloheh Farm was like walking through the fabled Garden of Eden with the Wise Gardener who knew not only the names of every living being, but their essence and critical role within an ecosystem.

Our mornings together would begin seated in a circle with bottomless coffee cups. Within this unhurried space, stories were told—stories of violent racism, stories of grace, stories of healing, and stories of grief. Here we were invited to cross over from the White Western worldview into the indigenous mind, a conversion that Randy takes up very seriously, and which informs his work as a Distinguished Professor of Faith and Culture and Director of Intercultural and Indigenous Studies at George Fox University. He was very clear about this intentional effort. This isn’t appropriation, shared Randy. “This is what the world needs. Don’t take our stories or our prayers (without permission) but do take up our world view! It’s what the world and our future needs!” This circle became my fertile ground, the earth in which I planted this elder’s wisdom, hoping the storied seeds would take root, stabilizing and nourishing my rewilding journey. With a freshly poured cup of coffee in hand, Randy asked me why I had come. What prompted me to this place? I shared with him my stewardship story of Cheasty Greenspace and the moment when I began to feel that there was more to these woods than just matter and the resource-minded posture of stewarding. And while I knew that the forest was numinous, a place of inspirited presence, I needed to know if and how I had access to this depth. He listened. He waited. And he responded:

“Did you ever ask permission?”

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“We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”

— Aldo Leopold

Permission. I took Randy’s return question with me as I worked on transplanting dozens of peppers in the greenhouse. Permission. With each pepper lifted out of a now-too-small container and placed with organic compost into a much bigger planter the question took root. Permission. Did I ever ask permission from the land to steward it? Permission. The roots began to work through the too-dry soil of dominance. Had I ever asked permission from the spirit of a place to access it? Permission. Root tips worked against the hard lodged foundation of Whiteness and cracked foundation of colonization. Had I ever asked permission from the Duwamish tribe to restore this land? Permission. This question was both about the place and its original people. And the inherent answer required a profound shift in posture of power to one of vulnerability: stewardship doesn’t require permission as it assumes an entitled practice of resource dominance; co-sustaining or solidarity is the posture granted after asking permission from the entity by whom you want to stand beside.

To be vulnerable is to fashion yourself after the posture of the Holy—we are most like God when we are susceptible to the forming influence of the essence of others. And we see this throughout ecosystems and flourishing communities! We thrive when we are in inter-relationship and interdependence with others, sharing our very nature that is inherently mutually enhancing. This is the active work of encounter others and allowing others to encounter you. This is moving from being the beholder, to being beholden. Can we move into this vulnerable space? Can we assume the vulnerable posture of asking permission of a place and its original people to be there and be there deeply and well? For in that vulnerability lies the key to our belonging.

This is the marrow of this year’s journey. I cannot belong to a place because I believe I have the right to, the entitled access to all its resources, the power to move in and through it. I may get to belong to a place after I have asked permission and been granted access to the wisdom that lives in its blood and bones.

My reinhabitation, my rewilding into the whole of life requires the reintroduction of permission, and from that place, abundant renewal and regeneration will take place within my soul and the soil of my belonging. This is the work of rewilding, of land liberation, which works within the inner nature as well. It is a sacred act; an apology, a reconciliation. And it begins with the posture of permission followed by a perpetual posture of gratitude, the combination between the two being that which will heal our grief from our separation from the land.

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Field and Farm Rewilding Practices

“We can no longer hear the voice of the rivers, the mountains, or the sea. The trees and meadows are no longer intimate modes of spirit presence. The world about us has become an ‘it’ rather than a ‘thou.’ ”

— Thomas Berry

Within the 140 pages of the Waymarkers Rewilding Workbook, you will find many invitations to prayers, practices, rites and rituals that will assist in your tuning into the natural world. This sacred setting is no less than our soul's resonance with the natural rhythms and seasonal movements found within the natural world. I find that as every new quadrant of the Rewilding Wheel begins, I am more than ready to learn and lean into the lessons contained within the corresponding bioregion. This Summer I delighted in all things Earth, Farm, and Growing. It truly felt like the heated and heavy passions that push forth the emergence of life were energies that surrounded me. My own work through Waymarkers was in full swing this summer, requiring presence, tending the generating heat of working metal on metal. Another story for another time would identify how this season was the work of the journey through the underworld, Joseph Campbell’s mythopoetic understanding that to truly become, one must meet and mount the dragons that thwart our heroic return to our True Self. In many ways, I was living deep in the earth in this season, subsisting on the nourishment that, ironically, the descent below demands. This has been the potent time of seeing the Upper World’s plants and trees from their underside—looking upwards into the fascia of their root systems, learning from this perspective and how this working network supports and sustains life.

Following are a few of the personal practices I engaged to deepen the earthen mood in me, and cultivate a daily awareness of how this particular landscape expresses the Holy and becomes a sacred messenger as well. This is the work of recovering the sense of the world as a “thou.” Coming to my homescape with the posture of asking permission transformed this season for me and how I entered into relationship with the element of Earth. The culture of consent is raising even with how we engage the more than human world!

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Farmers Markets

Any and every where we went this summer, I would make an intentional effort to visit the local farmers market, sampling the bounty of that particular place and paying attention to how the sacred is revealed through this particularity. More and more cities and townships are supporting local agriculture through sponsoring and hosting these mini markets that offering seasonally fresh (and often organic!) produce. Shopping for our fresh fruits and veggies in a way that support our local farms and husbandry vocations is important to healthy people and a healthy place. This intention also brought into focus current issues related to protecting the rights and lives of our migrant neighbors and workers whose very sustenance depends upon the work offered at these farms. This summer has been a time of activism and advocacy related to immigrant detention centers and resisting those in power who would believe that fences of separation are better than fostering solidarity. While there is much delight in this season of working (and eating!) alongside your land, the disciplined practice is to increase an empathetic response through awareness and action for those lives that are directly connected to the fields and farms in our lives.

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Visting Farms

Throughout the summer we visited farms. We went out to the fertile fields that provide the land in which our foods grow and flowers which feed so many others. It was a time to reconnect to our food sources. This was especially important for my children who are being raised in an urban context. We visited the vast fields and farmlands throughout the Willamette Valley; lavender farms in Sequim, WA; Butchart Gardens in Victoria; and the amazing biodynamic Jubilee Farm in Carnation, WA. Spending sacred time in what used to be the Benedictine Nunnery herb garden on the Holy Island of Iona was another powerful way to reconnect to how women have always been inherently connected to the work of growing things for wholistic health and wellness. We talked about the health of the earth, the integrity of soil, the medicine offered by herbs, the concentric circle of harm caused by herbicides and pesticides, bumblebees and why we need them. We participated in growing, working, listening, learning, eating, sipping, and being alongside of the earth this season. When we begin to rewild our lives, we begin the work of recognizing and reestablishing elements and features of whole and interconnected relationships. The work of rewilding this summer brought us back into communion with the eucharist-like qualities of creation. Life offers itself to be consumed by the other as a gift for life to continue to emerge.

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Foraging & Harvesting

We learned about what our local land grows for food and how it can be used for medicine, and its fibers to fashion utility and clothing. Long walks along the wild edges of fields revealed the abundance of berries. Our own urban homescape offered up lavender, apples, plums, herbs, eggs, and a finally-berrying elderberry bush from which our daily tincture of elderberry syrup is taken. We learned from the Squamish (Sḵwx̱wú7mesh) peoples how to harvest cedar bark for weaving of baskets and making of rope. We almost daily engaged with Hildegard of Bingen’s understanding of veriditas—the greening power of God. It is truly within the working of the soil that we see how suffused the ground is with the Sacred; that through this element we see that the possibility of all life emerges from the dirt, the most holy of humus (see Genesis 2:9, 19). God draws near to the earth and then animates it from within—that is veriditas.

Spring Rewilding Retreat: Rising Up Rooted Like Trees

In May I went away on my personal Spring Rewilding Retreat out east in the lowland forests of the Cascade Mountain range. This was a set-apart time to lean into Rainer Maria Rilke's wisdom when he said,

“If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.”

What wisdom, what sacred intelligence lay rooted within the soil and with all of the forest community? What guidance might I receive from Creator through the meant-for-ness of this place? This is what I sought after as I made ready for time away in the woods. 

Its important to note that this practice is not just all prayers and serene postures; it is just as much about play! So, with this invitation to play in mind, I found a little treehouse I could book and play I did! Simply climbing up into the holding and nesting branches of the tree that held my lodging reminded me of my child-self. Equal to the wisdom sought in the interconnections of the Spring season; Eastern cardinal direction; and the element of Fire (correspondences which find their alignment within the ancient Celtic tradition), was the curiosity of my child-guide. I have discovered that this internalized version of my girlhood-self has become a guiding voice that speaks to me in the way that she so longed to be spoken to so many years ago. It is her that says, "Climb that tree! It will be fun and you are strong and brave and can do it!" She is also the one that deeply remembers the transformative power of the woods, for she is the one who drank the nourishing milk of the faerie tales and myths and reminds me of their powers. So, I followed her when she excitedly invited me into the transformative power of the trees with the rallying cry, "Into the woods!"

For three days I was immersed within the folds of the forest. I stayed within a little treehouse at Tree House Point. Unbeknownst to me, there is quite a following of this place due to its popularity gained through a reality television series on tree houses. So, when I was asked at registration if I was there because I was a fan of the TV show, I said no, "I'm here on a rewilding retreat!" I think we all were refreshed by new perspectives! In spite of its niche popularity and fan base, this was the perfect location to lean into the glory and magnificence of this particular bioregion.

“The corresponding symbologies that are in play during this Spring season are ones that invite one into their birth and their becoming. Ancient Celtic wisdom associated creativity and new life with Springtime, East and Fire.”

These themes of emergence are strong within the sacred meanings within these associations and invite one into a soulful journey that leaves the hearth and home of the Winter Quadrant; this quadrant is an invitation into the powerful transformational qualities of the forest, the location where all the nature symbols become embodied. This is the landscape where conversion occurs and those childhood faerie stories began to work their magic on me once again. Within their mossy and tendrilled tales were characters who were transformed by the woods and all who they encountered there. I was in need of renewal, the imaginal, the creative force that sparks up new life. Within this forest I would find the flame of sacred inspiration! 

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My treehouse was aptly called "Nest," and here I felt held up high above the forest floor, able to watch and witness life from the overstory. Birds beckoned from within the walls of my small woodland dwelling and without; I was eye to eye with blue jay, robin, wren, and chickadee. Within these walls (and throughout the Spring season) I read, and such glorious writers and works align with this bioregion! John Muir, David Haskell's The Song of Trees, Sean M. Conrey's The Book of Trees, Dr. Qing Li's Forest Bathing (the Japanese art and science of shinrin-yoku), Richard Power's The Overstory, and Peter Wohlleben's amazing work, The Secret Life of Trees all acting as my guides, coming alongside the deep indigenous wisdom that understood the sacredness of trees, affirming their place within cosmologies, with the emerging science that shows how truly intelligent and sentient these beings are. This To the Best of Our Knowledge podcast on The Secret Language of Trees was also a delight I    listened to several times. Other writers were more akin to a soul-guide for me, leading me into my inner-terrain and teaching me how my soulscape would grow from encounters with grief, especially when confronted with ecocidal evidence of colonialization and conquering mentalities and histories. Bill Plotkin, Francis Weller and Mary Reynolds Thompson all offered language to infuse the this landscape with sacred meaning and soulful growth. From this arbored place of learning, reading, and writing I would emerge; descending to the adventure that awaited on the forest floor as I followed the metaphoric crumbs through the woods towards my longing and belonging

“In the forest much is sensed and not always seen.”

— Mary Reynolds Thompson

I took long walks in the woods, these wanderings inviting solitude and aloneness. This time was completely different than being lonely or alienated from everything else. This was a time to allow my senses to tune in to the relationships that surrounded all of me fostering connection. For beneath me was the vast networks of mycelia, roots reaching to form familial connections that pass nourishment, information, and care along. Above me were the family trees: branches and trunks that told of storied and wise mothers, offspring, and the deep desire to be and behold. And all around me was the feeling of literally being transfused with veriditas, the greening power of God. This bioregion began working its deep and rooted truths on me. Within the wooded canopy you stay with questions, not the quick answers. Its not about racing through the trees to a finish line for there is no straight forward way in the woods. These timbered halls echo with the meaning of the journey, offering circuitous paths and passages, the wandering the value, the walking revealing universal truths. An authentic life will not travel the well-worn road traveled by many. Here a different worth is weighed. Eco-spirituality writer Mary Reynolds Thompson talks bout how the forest teaches that "No longer is  expediency, efficiency, and uniformity most prized." Rather, here in the the wild our soul awakens to the creative impulse and power that resides within the Spirit of a place, "a place that thrums and thrives with creativity, authenticity, and diversity." 

Once one begins the journey of wild soul discovery, there is a distinct divergence from popular paths; the trailhead allures and assures of something more, something deeper, something transformative. An authentic life leads to the woods and one's metaphorical red cape and basket of goods for Granny become the very things that ensure radical change. 

Beside all of this vibrancy and evidence of new life there appeared a shadow-side. There was a demand to remember the past that cut and clawed, crushing the indigenous life that flourished here for thousands of years before white European settlers laid their severe and severing claim. Beside every second generation old growth tree was the old growth one that was cut down, viewed only for its value as a resource; seen not as something sacred, but as a storehouse of wealth and power. I felt deep sorrow for the ancient groves that no longer stood and grief for the leveled and logged life, felled by the axe and saw. Hear me well, I did not move through these woods with disdained judgment and pious partisanship. No, this was a tension I held and attempted to stay in. A tension held between two poles, one hand holding the pole of indigenous wisdom and traditions, and the other the pole of Western modernity and capitalist claims of unlimited growth. Between these two places, within this tension, is the high seat of Spirit, that holy presence that can look to the past with discernment and empathic wisdom and to the future with a hope for flourishing and regenerativity. By staying present to both the past and the possibility, I felt I was able to tap into the place, growing roots that tapped into listening to the sacred and holy intelligence of this forestscape, leaning into the historic complexity of the recent history here too. My hope became an enflamed imagination for what this second growth forest could be if allowed to grow undisturbed for 200 years, allowing the tree canopy to grow and increasing in biodiversity. The nurse logs and decaying stumps, while evidence of a slaying, also are the nourishing sites for life!

I traveled through the forest valley, created and carved by the ancient presence of the lower Snoqualmie River, which cascades in a flurry of 276 feet of sacred force known as the Snoqualmie Falls. Snoqualmie Falls is a nationally significant cultural site of great spiritual importance to the Snoqualmie Tribe, whose people traditionally inhabited this valley, hunting wildlife and collecting plants and fish. For the Snoqualmie Tribe (sdukʷalbixʷ), the significance of Snoqualmie Falls can be understood through the cosmological legend of Moon the Transformer. The story was recorded by anthropologist Arthur C. Ballard (1876-1962) in the early 19th century, as related to him by Snoqualmie Charile (sia'txted) (b. ca. 1850). This story was formed from this place, the earth manifesting into language and legend in unique particularity. Confronting the violent history of conquering colonialism comes unbidden as the commercializing of this sacred falls into a utility and recreational source cannot be ignored. This is complex and intersectional, I understand. However, what happens when we strip away the sacredness of the Earth is a removal of personhood, the essence that gives a being rights, voice, and story. I'm not advocating for appropriation of indigenous stories; I am asking that we learn from these stories that percolated up from this landscape. Listening to the numinous within native tales is to give the land its tongue again, and then it is our work to listen and learn from her language. 

“Remember the earth whose skin you are...”

— Joy Harjo

We weren't placed on the earth, we emerged out of the earth. Indigenous cosmologies, creation origin stories, emphasize the interrelatedness between our natality and the nourishing and numinous topographies of Earth. The Hebrew Bible creation story within Genesis chapter two is no different. Even in this indigenous Christian myth there is an explicit connection to humanity being formed of the earth: "then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being" (Genesis 2:7 New Revised Standard Version). This is not mere dust, this is humus, the nutrient rich dark soil created when leaf litter (duft) covers a forest floor, creating a thick layer of humus. In addition to the plant material in leaf litter, humus is composed of decaying animals, such as insects, and other organisms, such as mushrooms. These ancient myths capture something of vital importance: the landscape is our ancestor, our kin. Mary Reynolds Thompson says it this way, "Four billion years of Earth's wisdom are embedded in your cells. It is time to awaken to the whole magnificent geography of your soul."

We are formed out of the earth and our bodily composition mirrors the interrelatedness. Not only do our physical forms find mirroring traits and characteristics of the earth, but we discover that these topographies image something of our soul too. Ecotheologian and cultural historian Thomas Berry says, "Beyond our genetic coding, we need to go to the earth, as the source from when we came, and ask for her guidance, for the earth carries the psychic structure as well as the physical form of every living being upon the planet." (Dream of the Earth, 195). There is a psycho-spiritual connection we feel in various landscapes. This resonance informs where we are actually from (our own indigenous heritage); what may be the location of our current soul formation; and it may also inform an inner-landscape that is our actual soulscape, our inner nature that mirrors features of the outer world, or outer nature. Within this sacred and soulful ground is where we and Earth meet, expressing ourselves to one another and offering amplification for one another as well. The forest not only teaches me not only about itself, but even more about me. There is an inherent connection between not only our physical bodies and the earth, but also our psyches. These bioregions restore lost or exiled aspects of ourselves and in the rediscovery of ourselves, in our re-membing of ourselves to Living Earth and the great community of things who make up life on this planet, we begin to participate in restoring the earth as well.

I have discovered that while all Earth's sacred landscapes speak to and through me, I resonate most with the woods. I find I long for the shelter of the woods over the comfort of other bioregions. Within the towering timber I find myself deeply at home, able to express myself in my meant-for-ness. The forest is not just external or extrinsic although I literally love to be in the woods. It is also archetypal. The forest is a place of being lost, finding one's way, roots, emerging strength, creative and nourishing energy, and sometimes (most times) it involves the process of even being found. I have come alongside Dante in the famous opening lines of his "Divine Comedy":                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

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“In the middle of the journey of my life,
I found myself in a dark wood;
for the straight way was lost”

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Forest Rewilding Practices 

Within the 140 pages of the Waymarkers Rewilding Workbook, you will find many invitations to prayers, practices, rites and rituals that will assist in your tuning into the natural world. This sacred setting is no less than our soul's resonance with the natural rhythms and seasonal movements found within the natural world. I find that as every new quadrant of the Rewilding Wheel begins, I am more than ready to learn and lean into the lessons contained within the corresponding bioregion. This Spring I delighted in all things Fire, Forest, and Flowering. It truly felt like the embers of the anima mundi were catching the tinder of the forest duft, sparking my creative imagination and inspiring me to walk into the metaphorical woods, wandering into the mythopoetic text of transformation. There have been many new ideas that have been birthed in this season, sacred life being formed that will begin to take on shape in the requisite work and production time of the Summer quadrant of the Rewilding Wheel. I look forward to sharing these in the season to come!

Following are a few of the personal practices I engaged with to deepen the forest mood in me, and cultivate a daily awareness of how this particular landscape expresses the Holy and becomes a sacred messenger as well. 

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With the sacred symbolism of Fire within this Eastern Springtime quadrant, I wanted to play with fire this season. I engaged the challenge of learning how to make fire with a bow-drill, an ancient fire-starting method that is more about relationship and rhythm than ever even getting a fire started. Again, even in this act, I was learning about how this season and bioregion is about holding the question not rushing towards the answer. My son, an eager and natural carver, willingly assisted me with the creation of the bow-drill. We are grateful to the good folk at Taproot Magazine who provided a very helpful and meaningful tutorial on this practice.  

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A thread that binds together the energy of the Fire and the Forest is found within the idea of inspiration. Forests help the world breath, and they have the capacity to inspire us as well, a word that comes from the Latin spiritus-breath. We use our breath to bring an ember to life and to live as a flame. We talk about a spark lighting up our imagination. Both the imagination and inspiration are the fertile ground in which new ideas emerge, a forest floor full of seed life and nourishing root systems, awaiting the light of the most primal life force, the sun, to awaken it and it bring it into form. Within the forest we witness the universal truth that we rise only when rooted. 

By bringing these seasonal and nature symbologies together into a bioregion, the Rewilding Wheel, the sacred circuit that guides these practices, aims to reroot oneself back into the rhythms, wisdom, and patterns that create this planet and our own flesh, feelings and ways to connect to the Sacred. 

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This past season I loved the sensual experience of cedar. By infusing my lava stone amber necklace every morning with cedar essential oil, I was offering myself the blessings of the trees. This scent carried itself with me all day so no matter where I was, I had an unconscious connection and access to the health benefits of being within the forest. I would even add a drop to my face cream ensuring that I was anointed with this woodland oil!

I also would light a tea candle in my essential oil diffuser (this copper oil diffuser is the one I use daily for my morning rituals), adding cedawood oil while facing East, saying prayers of gratitude for the emergence of a new day and for that great big flaming fire ball that is the origin of all life. It really became a favorite time of the day to gather in my senses and orient them to this season and bioregion and attune my senses to how God speaks through these elements. 

When I  placing the oil within the beads of my necklace or my oil diffuser, I    would offering up this simple prayer:

Creator God who makes yourself known through the tall and resilient strength of the cedar tree, bless to me this day. May my life be like medicine to those who are hurting, nourishment to those who are hungry, and warmth to those who may need shelter and clothing. May I grow rooted in your wisdom, like the cedar grows rooted in the soil, so that I too may rise within your strength. Amen. 

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Drinking delicious cups of fir tip or source tea became another meaningful ritual this past Spring. Bright lime green and tender needles burst with new life and amazing nutrients, truly what my body appeared to be desiring after the cold and dark winter. This cup of liquid vitamin C and electrolytes was medicine for the Coast Salish peoples, and is still enjoyed today for its vibrant characteristics. There are many ways to enjoy fresh fir or spruce tips, but truly mine was in a steaming cup of water with lime and my dad's honey. I am fortunate that I'm able to forage these tips locally within my homescape, and I hope that you too can engage in this practice that demands a knowing relationship with your forest friends. Please do forage responsibly and honorably; do no harvest tips from trees that have been sprayed or treated with herbicides and honorably harvest with a deep sense of gratitude and reciprocity. Take the time to introduce yourself to the tree and express gratitude for the gift of food and medicine she is providing.

You can prepare a hot tea by taking a handful of spring tips per 3-4 cups of boiled water.  Cover and let steep about 10 minutes. Add lime (or even a stick of cinnamon!) and honey to taste. 

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Winter Rewilding Retreat-The Enchantments

In February I went away for my personal Winter Rewilding Retreat up in the North Cascades. Here, in a cave-turned-cabin, I engaged prayers and practices that reconnected me to the deep and sacred symbolisms associated with Winter, North and Air, locating them in the bioregion of mountains and high places. From this place I sought the mythopoetic wisdom of the sage, the elder, the crone. Temperatures dipped into single digits so I kept the cave’s wood burning stove burning, not so unlike the fires around which wise ones gathered to tell their stories of what the wild had taught them. 

Rewilding is an ecological term that defines the process of bringing a habitat back into flourishing wholeness. It is a restorative philosophy that reintroduces native forests, flora and fauna to denuded landscapes with the hope for a flourishing ecosystem that is regenerative.

Applied to our interior lives, our “soulscapes,” rewilding then becomes a practice of integrating our souls back into the soil of our bioregion and the regenerative spirituality of nature. This is a coming to know the sum of an area's forces, what poet and environmental activist Gary Snyder calls the "spirit of a place." This is a developing of a bioregional awareness, allowing a place to instruct and inform us in specific ways. While there will always be archetypal wisdom within the universal qualities of a geography, the particularities of a place is critical. This is how we become of a place once again. This is a practice, a process, that remembers ourselves back into belonging here and into the sacred wisdom within the rhythms of the natural world. 

Each Rewilding Retreat focuses in on the sacred nature symbolism associated with the particular season, the corresponding cardinal direction and element, and the psycho-spiritual development that aligns as well. Within this collection of meaning, I can find divine inspiration in particular places.

This winter I went north to the Northern Cascades, mountains that are dear to my heart and heritage. My maternal great-great grandparents settled the town of Index, Washington. This mountainous corridor has headlands that bear the names of my forebears, so driving through them, and having them as my vistas, is like being amongst my ancestors. And while there are certainly favorite and seasoned stories from this side of my family, I am increasingly grateful for the perspectives of these peaks; their vantage point offers timeless truths that transcend the narrow views of pioneers of past days. I feel the mountains speaking their yet older names, and offering stories that aren't bound in leathered journals, but instead are writ in stone, pine, and headwater. And so I journeyed to a cave-like cabin at the feet of The Enchantments. In a small lean-to built into the side of an ancient pile of boulders, I engaged my anchorite-self, praying, reading, and writing in response to the wind, this high place, and the fires that kept this alpine hermitage warm. I felt a renewed sense of kinship with the great 11th century visionary and mystic Hildegard of Bingen. Legends of her life claim that her particular anchorage was cut into a hillside. Living within and tending to the earth produced a heightened sensorial attunement to and a unique understanding of the other-than-human world. This embodied experience of the interrelatedness of the whole of creation gave her insight into nature’s immanent creativity and rhythms.

These rhythms surrounded me in my alpine hut. Just outside of my worn wooden door cascaded a crystal clear, potable, water fall, undoubtedly part of the headwaters of Icicle Creek, the Skykomish and Snohomish Rivers, and the many tributaries and lakes in the Cascade lowlands. This deluge was amplified by the percussive booms of falling ice; the upper falls would ice over completely in the almost sub-zero night temperatures, and as soon as the sun glanced on the face of the falls, cracks would course through the coverage and descend upon the boulders just above the cabin. I climbed up there one morning after the sun had fully risen and was in awe of this steady cracking and breaking. Several times I had to jump further back and away from the emerging water fall as the ice fell away from its nocturnal covering to avoid getting hit by several feet of broken ice. These sounds reminded me of how very alive these high places are. For here is where all life begins; where water begins its journey in both form and function. Here is where it begins its journey to provide life to generations to come. 

“As long as I live, I'll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I'll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I'll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can.”
-John Muir

The heart of the world, the animus mundi, comes through with revelatory particularity depending on where we are. And where we are is constructed of various elements and associations within the natural world. In any given location, the spirit of a place is revealing herself through the given season, our physical cardinal orientation (Are you facing North? Are you facing South? Can you attune to the differences?), the elements, and solar and lunar phases. This collection of associations all play together in profound and powerful ways when they are located in a geographic location that marries these correspondences. And so, the Rewilding Wheel would spin these various nature symbols and land them, plant them, root them in a place where quarter long engagement can be practiced to develop a stronger sense of locatedness. The Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset is often quoted as saying, “Tell me the landscape in which you live and I will tell you who you are.” In today's amnesiac society this telling is an increasingly lost art form. People no longer know where they are as technological advancements and modern careers would say that in a global, social-media market place, being from one place doesn't matter. There are many contributing factors and outcomes related to this broad stroke generalization. What I am learning through my own rewilding year is that what is also lost is a particular understanding of God.

When we live transcendentally, so lives our understanding of God, and we lose sight of the sacramentality of our local soil.

What Annie Dillard called "the scandal of particularity," John Duns Scotus termed "thisness" (haecceity). This thisness understands that God creates and resides within particularity. There is something particular in how Divine Presence is experienced and manifested in the Pacific Northwest, as in any other location on earth. Our important work is to attune to our places and immerse ourselves in a particular way of knowing that honors how the subterranean stream of God has percolated through and become particularized in a place. This is how we connect to the animus mundi, the spirit of a place. 

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I spent a  warm and cozy late afternoon, reading, praying, and writing. Ironically, during this retreat (and most of all of February) I was dealing with a prolonged case of laryngitis. I literally couldn't speak. This physical ailment added a depth of meaning to this rewilding retreat as the themes within the Winter season include that of silence, the kind of quiet that comes from a life well lived and a wisdom that now chooses words with careful selection. Within this quadrant of the Rewilding Wheel, I look at the characteristics of the crone (a female elder whose name has been abused over the course of history) and how her wisdom is crystalized to that of a seed. So while this is the season of dormancy and stillness, the spring-time rhythm of seed-growth echoes backwards to me, even while I sit quiet in a stone enclosure.  I invited the natural world to be my voice and prophetic prose to be my prayers. As the sound of a waterfall sings right outside the window, Brother Muir is a perfect companion for this mountain retreat:

“Nature as a poet...becomes more and more visible the farther and higher we go; for the mountains are fountains—beginning places, however related to sources beyond mortal ken.”

Everything about this ancient alpine place speaks with wisdom: the craggy peaks, the granite boulders, the ice-ensconced falls, the celestial orbs. There is a hot tub that is filled and fed by the fall's water; to heat this tub one must build a small fire within an immersed metal box and tend to its flames. Slowly and steadily the water is heated to body-nourishing temperatures. Every action and chore around this cabin carries with it deep meaning and metaphor. Even the fire-tending for the hot tub speaks to me and asks me to meditate on that which I keep burning within me to maintain warmth, health, and wellness. Slowly, I am beginning to read the sacred text that is creation. I feel like my faith has grown feathers and my hope, horns.

These Relwilding Retreats are a way to begin the practice of this deep landscape-listening, this learning from the sacred thrumming that exists within our particular bioregion.

This is the practice of seeking out the story-soaked soil of our homescapes so that we not only begin to truly know where we are, but of equal importance, who we are.

These sacred stories will evade us as long as we ignore where we are, as long as we disregard our bioregion and its histories. A Crow elder has said: “You know, I think if people stay somewhere long enough—even white people—the spirits will begin to speak to them. Its the power of the spirits coming up from the land. The spirits and the old powers aren’t lost, they just need people to be around long enough and the spirits will begin to influence them.” When we remember and return to the land that fosters us and informs our faith, we are practicing a form of spiritual rewilding. This rewilding of our soul's terrain invites an attunement to the subtleties of the the sacred that exist within our particular places. 

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Rewilding & Journeying with Nature: A Conversation with Pilgrim Podcast

I had the opportunity to sit down and talk with friend and fellow-guide, Lacy Clark Ellman, host of Pilgrim Podcast about our shared appreciation for seeing life through a pilgrim's lens and how the natural world avails itself to us as a sacred guide as we make our journey. In our conversation I share my thoughts around rewilding as a spiritual practice and a process of remembering our meant for interconnectedness with all of creation. If you are curious about the Rewilding Retreats I facilitate, I invite you to take a seat! Pour yourself a cup of tea and listen in for an hour. There is a sacred voice on the ancient side of remembrance that awaits you and is calling you forward toward the wild edges of your life!

>>LISTEN HERE!<<