Story Stick

The Story Stick is a way to document your journey, whether through seasons, through terrain, or through meaningful moments in your life. Inspired by the Australian aboriginal practice of conveying their homeland and communicating their collective dream time through message sticks, the Story Stick is a way to witness this time through the natural world.

Find a stick that resonates with you—it can be larger like a walking stick, or a smaller one that fits in your hand. With yarn, thread, or twine, create color bands. These colors might represent emotions, landscapes, or hopes. Leave a longer tail of thread after you tie off your color block. This tail will be used to tie wild ones into your stick.

As you go out into the natural world, as the Sacred Wild for a symbol or message that gives form to your feelings and states of the heart. The Story Stick can represent an experience in the wild, creating a form of witness for how you felt on one particular day. Or the Story Stick can be dynamic and become something you bring with you out into the more-than-human world on several occasions. Over the course of time, the Story Stick becomes a way to remember how your story, and the stories within the wild world, are interconnected. This is a wonderful activity for children and adults alike. It is grounding in nature and invites fun, respectful, and sacred ways of seeing.