
EARTH-BASED PRACTICES
Seeing the world reflected in a single dew-drop on a new spring leaf. Sensing the deep calm after a raging storm that brings the rainbow. Waking to the song of coyotes howling in the star-filled night. Wilderness… wild, awe-inspiring, untamed and often uncomfortable. For many, nature has become a frightening place to be avoided. Yet spending time in the natural world invites us to turn towards a knowing deep in our bones … that we are an inseparable part of the great web of life. Living within walls, viewing much of our lives on screens, we are all participants in forgetting how dynamically related we are with all of life.
Earth-based work is how we practice remembering. To live with the understanding of our interconnectedness with all of existence is to learn about our hidden capacities, survival, wisdom and love.
Like ancient stories written in the dancing shadows cast by firelight, our collective story of this age includes themes of climate change, species extinction, resource extraction, wealth disparity, greed and war. We want to be happy and comfortable, but we struggle with addiction, despair, alienation, anxiety, and grief. In the ancient cultures of all our bloodlines, we used earth-based ceremonies and initiation rites to restore right relationship with our Earth community. Perhaps now more than ever, we need earth-based practices to remind us of our original nature, to open our hearts to our family of all beings, to care for and therefore be moved to tend and protect life as a whole on our planet.
I guide with EarthWays and the School of Lost Borders, offering earth-based programs for small groups in wilderness locations. In addition to holding ceremonial space, I maintain certification as a Wilderness First Responder. My deep interest is in supporting people with the mirror of nature to heal and become whole, to connect with their own awakened wisdom, and to bring the gifts of that wisdom into their lives for the benefit of all the myriad and diverse beings on this beautiful planet that is our home.
Watching the moon
at dawn,
solitary, mid-sky,
I knew myself completely,
no part left out.
~ Izumi Shikibu