Circles on the Mountain Issue #24 These Challenging Times 2019 circles on the mountain These Challenging Times 2019
Managing Editor / Sara Harris Copy Editor / Laura Brady Proofreader / Denis Marier Design & Production / Kinde Nebeker Photo Editor / Corinna Stoeffl
Cover photo by Corinna Stoeffl
© 2019 Wilderness Guides Council Circles on the Mountain is an annual production of the Wilderness Guides Council www.wildernessguidescouncil.org
Past Issues Circles on the Mountain has been published since 1988. It began as a quarterly and after Fall 1991 became an almost annual journal written for and by the members of the Wilderness Guides Council. Contact the Netkeeper for the Wilderness Guides Council at [email protected] for information about past issues. Circles on the Mountain Issue #24 These Challenging Times 2019
contents
Editors’ Note Sara Harris and Laura Brady ...... 1
Welcoming All to the Circle Kim Allen ...... 2
Medicine Walks for Times Like These Ann Linnea ...... 4
Queer Survival as Ceremony So Sinopoulos-Lloyd ...... 6
Fire Keith ‘Howchi’ Kilburn ...... 9
Dear Editor of Outside Magazine Darcy Ottey ...... 10
Incorporation Within White Supremacy and Settler Colonialism Pınar Sinopoulos-Lloyd . . 12
A QTBIPOC’s Personal Reflection of Their Initiation as a Spiritual Guide Roz Katonah . . . 14
Can a White Person Be a Shaman? James Shipman ...... 15
The Earth Has Given Much to Us . . . It’s Time to Give Back Trebbe Johnson ...... 18
Tree Said Kinde Nebeker ...... 20
The Wind Denis Marier ...... 21
Ask Yourself All the Good Questions Michelle Katz ...... 23
The Ecotone of Transition Jennifer J . Wilhoit, PhD ...... 24
It All Starts at Home Sara Harris ...... 26
Smelling Home from Far Away Sofia Nicholson ...... 28
The Green Camp Kitchen Anne Stine ...... 29
Tools for These Times Corinna Stoeffl ...... 30
Day of Purification Keith ‘Howchi’ Kilburn ...... 32
Now What? Paul Andrade ...... 33 Three Countries, Two-Hundred Rite of Passage Guides, Thousands of Woodland Trees in Southern Germany: One Unforgettable Experience Michelle Katz ...... 36
The Arizona Gathering Christiane Frischmuth ...... 37
Washing Ashore: A Gathering Incorporation Catie Armstrong ...... 38
Contributors ...... 40 Circles on the Mountain 2019 Photo by Corinna Stoeffl Photo by ii Editors’ note Sara Harris and Laura Brady Photo by Corinna Stoeffl Photo by
For our theme “Living in Difficult Times,” we have drawn opinions in this community, knowing that we may or may in a variety of voices. These voices affirm the exquisite not be understood? Can we, as a community, hold a basic awareness that all times can be challenging, and that how we trust that all voices belong in the circle? bring our attention to the stirrings in families, in daily life, We hope that this issue will bring us closer together as and in relationship to the earth shape our perceptions and guides, providing a glimpse into the unique challenges that actions. certain individuals and communities face, and also the Some of our pieces here also address challenging themes unique resilience and medicine that they have cultivated that are present in our daily discourse. How do we become in the face of injustice and pain. Perhaps through a shared aware of our own biases, our filters of inclusion and recognition of these challenging times—and renewed exclusion in our lives and work? How do we speak our truth commitment to facing them together—we can build new about the challenges and feelings that arise in us relative tools and processes, claim new language, offer beauty to to these conversations? How do we risk ourselves and our wounded places, and learn how to welcome all to the circle.
1 Circles on the Mountain 2019
Welcoming All to the Circle Kim Allen
lens in the hopes of bringing the work to a demographic of people who don’t tend to show up in, but need to be, in the circle. Our society is set up such that it is a privilege in most of the United States to “go to nature.” Aside from offering programs specifically for target groups, how can we all practice more inclusivity? I share below practices and stories that have provoked greater awareness in myself in hopes that they can be teachings for others as well. To be more inclusive, we must. . . Check our assumptions about
Photo by Pınar Sinopoulos-Lloyd Photo by environmental exposure, comfort, and “I thought outdoorsy was for white people,” my ecological understanding of participants friend Emma shared at a gathering of racially mixed When I was training urban youth in job skills and urban individuals. This is how she described her perspective before farming, we took a trip up to a regional park in the Berkeley participating in a women-of-color backpacking trip. As a Hills in Northern California where there are hundreds of result of the trip, she realized that nature was something acres of oak/bay forest and chaparral. I deliberately took that she, a person of color, could enjoy too. them to a trailhead near a public bus stop so they’d see that Hearing Emma’s statement was the moment I realized they could get there even without a vehicle. how badly needed it is for wilderness connection work to be As we started off on a trail, the youth started messing accessible to people who have been marginalized from it, with each other by surreptitiously tossing small sticks and particularly people of color. We are nature. All of us. Even rocks into the shrubs to make each other jump. To me, the those of us whose ancestors have been enslaved to work with sounds of sticks and stones landing in the bushes sounded the land; who have worked to escape toiling in the soil while like just that. But to them, it was a way of provoking each defending from the elements, insects, and environmental other’s fears of wild creatures lurking in the woods. There hazards; who in an effort to give our children a better life was an existing level of fear and discomfort for them in this have fled a relationship with the land. We need to heal our environment that I had not anticipated. relationship with the land and rediscover what is ours. Our I had them do a “solo” walk, basically spaced out a minute collective well-being depends on it. apart along the single track trail, which opened up to a As a person from a lower-middle-class background who small pond. When one of the youth, Davante, arrived at the identifies as mixed, Asian, and sometimes white, depending pond, he urgently asked me, “Are there alligators?” I paused, on the context, I walk through this world with a certain caught off-guard by the question, trying to figure out if he amount of light-skinned privilege at the same time as I carry was serious, and he said, “I’m serious, are there alligators in generational trauma while experiencing racial and gender- there? How do you know?” He was totally serious. based oppression. I have developed a sensitivity to racial Without the ecological understanding, how could he trust dynamics, power, and privilege (with plenty more awareness me that there are no alligators in California? I didn’t realize to be had). I have been training and guiding through this how little experience or comfort the youth had even in a
2 Welcoming All To The Circle / Kim Allen park a 20-minute bus-ride away from where they attended one of the parents, looking out for him, drove back home to school. I had to adjust my expectations and management of get him a sleeping bag. their experience. I was concerned about him staying warm and being Examine our language comfortable in his tent, so I mentioned to one of the lead When I’ve been in quest settings, I often imagine some of guides that I planned to offer him a fleece blanket I had in the black urban youth I’ve worked with sitting in my seat in the car to substitute as a sleeping pad. The guide suggested, the circle and how they would receive phrases like “this song in a mentoring way, that sometimes it’s helpful to the came through me,” “take a moment to let that land,” “find students’ experiences to not step in, but to let them learn. your edge,” “this is your medicine.” What the hell is this This stirred me up inside and I pushed back—what does this medicine you’re talking about? “I feel spacious.” Huh? The kid have to learn? The other students had the resources for “village”? What village? technical gear that would maximize their physical comfort. Are we “teaching” him what he already knows, that there are What kind of assumptions are we making through our the “haves” and the “have-nots” and he is amongst the latter? language? What of our speech has become such a cultural norm in the guiding community that we are no longer aware It is not our job to manipulate the teachings people are of how it may be perceived outside of the community? How presented, but it’s important to maintain a sensitivity to the can people communicate in such a way that most others, economic and cultural dynamics at play. independent of socioeconomic status, race, place of origin, Practice cultural sensitivity and awareness of or native language are likely to get what we are saying? impacts on oppressed communities One helpful practice is to request up-front, “if I or anyone People who have been objectified and exploited will uses any language or terminology that is confusing, please be particularly sensitive about cultural appropriation. interrupt and ask for clarification.” We as guides do have a Although I suspect most of us fully respect and honor culture and we do need to bring authenticity to our guiding the traditions we have adopted into our practices, such and our expression. There is a danger in removing the sacred as cleansing with sage, or saying “Aho” at the end of a by over-secularizing, but it is important to be aware of our prayer, honoring these traditions by naming their origin or language, adapt, and check the assumptions we make about explaining your own relationship with it are necessary to who is our audience and how our vocabulary is received. build trust around your intentions. Check our assumptions regarding program Offer safe spaces for marginalized groups structure My friend Emma was able to share her perspective with We need to continue to examine our programs and keep us because we were people of color around whom she felt asking questions. Who are the guides? Do they represent a safe. Had she been the only person of color with a group diversity of backgrounds: economic, racial, cultural, gender, of white folks, she might not have chosen to mention that sexuality, ability, age, life experience? backpacking trip, so pivotal in her relationship with nature, Are the programs welcoming to a diversity of people? In at all. Had she not had the opportunity to join the women- our marketing, is there a diversity of colors, cultures, and of-color backpacking trip, she may not have even recognized ages represented in images? If those people don’t exist in her right to have that relationship with the land. She could your images, why not? Where is it advertised? Would a quest with a group of white folks and indeed have a deep person of color look at a flyer and say, “Oh, this is for white experience, but it’s likely that she would tuck away the parts people?” of herself that have the most wounding and need the most How financially accessible is the program? Is there a healing. No matter how culturally and racially sensitive and sliding scale or scholarships? Are there additional costs aware a white-dominated organization or guide might be, I outside of the program not mentioned in preparation believe we need more opportunities specifically for people of materials, like a restaurant meal? color, and more guides of color to lead them. We must be willing to recognize and acknowledge our Check our assumptions about material and biases, prejudices, and assumptions and adjust the way we monetary access guide and run programs. I’m sure there are assumptions I’ve On one private school’s overnight rite-of-passage trip made about you, my audience, or about the people in my I co-led, there was one child who was clearly unprepared stories, and I will continue to explore them. With the above and under-resourced. While the other kids had their efforts and more people knowing that they belong on this backpacking packs and fresh-off-the-rack or veteran land, we can move closer to a Council of ALL Beings. technical gear, he showed up with only his day-pack, and
3 Circles on the Mountain 2019
Medicine Walks for Times Like These Ann Linnea
In 2018 I decided to do a Medicine Walk every week. The of the Olympic Mountains, Mt. Baker, and Mt. Rainier. challenge of remaining calm in the midst of tracking with Memories of all the philosophical conversations I had with our deteriorating political situation demanded radical Leo filled my soul and opened my heart to the real grief action on my part. I needed the help of a regular spiritual, of losing his presence in our lives. The entire walk was earth-grounding practice. dedicated to remembering Leo and all that he brought to us. For all of us privileged to be a part of wilderness quest A Medicine Walk is a journey to seek guidance. work, a Medicine Walk is one of our most important tools in For me the act of humbly going into nature to seek guidance helping participants prepare themselves for the experience. is a holy, radical act in this age of hyper-connectivity and When used as preparation for a wilderness quest, it busyness. It is simple and it is profound. generally lasts an entire day—from sunup to sundown. The walk is, of course, more of an inner journey than Why not, I thought, integrate it as part of a more frequent an outward physical journey. It is more a time for being weekly tradition? Given the natural time constraints of than a time for doing. If I am walking along making lists life, I generally set aside three or more hours for my walk. or thinking too much, I pause, maybe even sit down. It is The important thing is that my walk has four elements: important to stay close to myself and my feelings. intention, dedication, guidance, and gratitude. I alternate walking and resting. Though a Medicine Walk Intention is the core of a Medicine Walk. As is done without the company of another human, I often guides, we know that a Medicine Walk is different from an bring our little dog, Gracie. She teaches me a lot about ordinary walk: it is done alone, in silence, and in solitary stopping to sniff and investigate things. As a lifelong hiker connection with the natural world. The intention of the of trails, it takes mindfulness for me not to concentrate walk is to see, hear, smell, observe, and sense as much as on going from Point A to Point B. Gracie has been a great possible. We voluntarily place ourselves in the care of our teacher in this regard. She is a master of following her nose— natural surroundings and open ourselves to the subtleties of which is, of course, the precise purpose of the Medicine message. Walk. A Medicine Walk is not just a hike. It is a ceremony. It I also bring a journal. When I stop to write, I often find begins and ends with some kind of sacred marking like myself “drawn” to some natural object—a tree, a stump, a stepping over a string laid across the path’s beginning, rock. By focusing, breathing more deeply, and beginning to smudging with sage, or preparing a special thermos of tea. write, I often come to an important insight that relates to my Ceremony focuses intention and attention and sets the tone intention for the walk. Simple and sometimes even profound for a different kind of journey. Fasting on the walk clears insights flow from my pen within the container of ceremony mind and body. When I do bring food, I keep it simple. I have created. Always I am sure to bring enough water or tea. The Medicine Walk is an opportunity for me to Dedicating the walk to my intention. The time I give back to the earth by offering appreciation and spend outdoors on these walks is for “medicine,” which is love. Taking a weekly Medicine Walk is a tangible way for what I define as something needed to be whole in what I me to consciously notice the beauty of the world around offer to myself and others. For example, with the recent me—to really notice. The AHA! of realizing that part of my death of my friend, Leo (my partner’s father), I knew I purpose was simply to appreciate nature—and that that wanted to do a Medicine Walk in a place with a long view. in itself is a powerful form of activism—has brought my That was Leo—always thinking about the big picture. So, I politically discouraged soul great solace. embarked on a favorite local walk with a 360-degree view
4 Medicine Walks For Times Like These/ Ann Linea
Pragmatics are always important in the The benefits are tangible. Always I return home with wilderness. I always choose an area where I feel safe what my partner refers to as “the Medicine Walk aura.” I and will not get lost. One of the particularly joyful things feel calm. The “to do” lists can wait. My attention span feels this past year has been walking at South Whidbey State increased and I feel hopeful about life in general. From this Park numerous times and appreciating the subtle seasonal place I am better able to be a good citizen and community differences on the same trail. When I do encounter others, and family member. I simply nod or keep my conversation to a minimum. It is, Activism takes many forms. It is not just protesting on the after all, a solo experience. streets or letter writing or preparing for public hearings— Whenever walking alone, I am sure someone knows though those things are important. It is also taking the where I have gone and when I plan to return. And, honestly, time to engage in our own spiritual practices so that we I always carry my Ten Essentials. bring a deeper, wiser, more unshakeable presence to our engagement with the secular world. Photo by Christina Baldwin Photo by Ann Linea and Gracie
5 Circles on the Mountain 2019
Queer Survival as Ceremony So Sinopoulos-Lloyd
“[B]ut what if belonging isn’t a place at all, but a skill; a their promise of connection. Although it’s changing now, set of competencies that we in modern life have lost or rural queer culture has historically been hard to identify. forgotten.” — Toko-pa Turner When I decided to through-hike Vermont’s Long Trail with my girlfriend after we graduated high school, I was In the fall of 1998, Matthew Shepard was murdered in privately haunted by the story of Rebecca Wight and Claudia Laramie, Wyoming, the same year I fell in love with a girl Brenner, Appalachian Trail hikers who were stalked and for the first time and realized I was queer. I was in eighth shot at their campsite…while making love. Wight—who grade. A year later, the film Boys Don’t Cry came out, died—was also a biracial woman of color. In the cases of which was based on the life and murder of Brandon Teena, Shepard, Teena, and Wight, their killers seemed to have a a trans man who lived in rural Nebraska. It’s only years few things in common: they were white men enraged at the later that I can appreciate the psycho-spiritual effect these revelation that their victims were queer or trans and they high-profile events had on me and an entire generation of felt at liberty to fatally harm them. I honor the gravity of LGBTQ2+ millennials (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer inviting the stories of these young queer ancestors into my or Questioning, and Two-Spirit). It reinforced the narrative reflection. It is worth emphasizing that these were some of that queer and trans people weren’t safe in rural areas, the first queer stories I ever heard—and certainly the first participating in rural life-ways. Everyone knew that to find queer nature stories. Stories like this impact us in ways that acceptance and community, you eventually migrated to the aren’t just psychic—they are mythic. The moral of the stories cities, you found your way to the gay bars and clubs with Photo by Pınar Sinopoulos-Lloyd Photo by
6 Queer Survival As Ceremony / So Sinopoulos-Lloyd appeared to be that being way out in the woods is dangerous *** if you’re queer. I eventually realized that the bad things that As dusk started to fall on our fire-making workshop, the happen to queer people in remote places are connected to air around the fire pit began to fill with the spicy aroma of an enduring, toxic, pioneer mentality that sees anything smoldering cedar wood. Various folks, many of them pierced and everything it encounters in the “wilderness” or on the and tattooed twenty and thirty-somethings, huddled in the frontier as its own for the taking. When you encounter hate proximity, carving or practicing operating the wooden bow- in the backcountry, not just as a queer person but also as a drill kits that my spouse and I had been coaching them on black and/or indigenous person, for a moment the frontier how to build throughout the day. One of the participants, materializes, right between your body and the person who a queer graphic designer who lived in Denver, was on sees you as ‘other.’ the verge of making a coal—that magical moment where We live in a society where trans identity has recently the wood dust created by friction heats up to the point of been a matter of public debate—for example, in the form of ignition. They stopped to catch their breath and we all were whether trans people should be allowed to use the bathroom transfixed by the chaotic tendrils of milky smoke drifting of their choice. Patronizing attitudes toward gender-neutral from a small pile of dark dust next to their fireboard. The pronouns are common. We then also live in a society that smoking heap of dust soon glimmered with orange—proof has never been in greater need of ways to affirm trans and that it was forming into a coal—and the tension in the air queer identity in the very arena in which they have been was palpable. The student gingerly poured the coal into a historically denied—in nature. This is part of what is behind nest of papery cottonwood bark and began blowing on it to the mission of Queer Nature—the ‘organism’ that I have conjure the next step in the pyrotechnic algorithm: flame. been co-visioning with my spouse Pinar for over three years. When the flame finally sprouted from the bundle of tinder, Through Queer Nature, we create spaces for QTBIPOC the student grinned widely. No one could have told them (queer or trans black and indigenous people of color) and how satisfying that experience would be! white queers to learn various place-based skills and survival The mythos of making fire is so rich and self-evident that skills—which range from things like basket-weaving and it’s hard to put into words. Fire’s symbolism is complex— spoon carving to wildlife tracking and first aid. Even though associated in its domesticated guises with hearth and it appears to be didactic, we interpret and enact this work community, creation and birth, but also with control and as transformational and ceremonial—potent emotions and civilization. As an LGBTQ2+ community, we carry wounds acknowledgement of spirit and soul are welcome and are associated with every one of these facets. One way we have part of the framing of the spaces. been disempowered is through the deep-seated narratives— When possible, we offer courses where the tuition is perpetuated by religions, nations, and medical theories—that sliding scale or subsidized with grants. This is because our ways of being, whether erotic or somatic, are unnatural emotional, social, and financial barriers prevent queer or at best aberrant. Learning how to make fire as queer folks, QTBIPOC, and women from accessing spaces to learn folks is not just about learning a vital survival skill, but is land-based skills. Historically, learning these skills has also about incarnating these symbols of home, creation, and been the provenance of communities that aren’t welcoming control in queer space, which naturally re-stories them and to these populations or actively erase their existence—e.g. invests them with new meaning and subversive power. rural hunting communities, the Scouting movement, or the In queer space, learning ancestral survival skills—like how military. Though the latter two are changing, progress has to make fire without matches or how to blend into the forest been glacier-slow. Furthermore, these communities are and evade detection—are initiatory ceremonies in and of founded upon the piracy of knowledge from First Nations themselves because when we engage in them, we enact both people, a process we seek to interrupt. One of our most communally and individually the axiom that we can survive. important ongoing questions is how to teach ancestral skills Unlike how these skills have been framed in Western in culturally humble ways while on stolen land. Some of popular culture, we don’t learn them because we are afraid our de-colonial practices are naming whose land we are on, of the so-called wilderness and need to conquer and control and researching first names of rivers and mountains, or the it, but because we don’t want to rely on the human world first names of keystone animal or plant species that show for our sense of sovereignty. We want to build relationship up in our curriculums. When teaching a certain craft, we with our other-than-human kin, with wood grain, with stone give examples of analogous technologies that derive from and rivers, with songbirds and herbs. We want to bind up European cultures, to disrupt the selective pedestalizing of our own liberation with theirs. We want to have nature’s First Nations cultures. back, and we have the sense that they’ll have our back in return. That’s always how we’ve survived: by finding each
7 Circles on the Mountain 2019 other in community and standing together, like antelope or studying the arts of survival as well as the arts of council, prairie dogs, we get the power of the herd. In the various we have learned that the most important survival skill contexts I’ve been a part of where survival skills are taught, is what we do with our attention—which often looks like I’ve rarely seen more teamwork than in the groups that listening with multiple senses. Listening is also a medicine bless Queer Nature classes with their presence. People who for trauma—so what magic might happen when we, with our come to our workshops often aren’t interested in doing it all various layered identities, engage in a practice of listening themselves. We’ve all had plenty of practice with ‘going it and being-listened-to by the more-than-human world? We alone.’ We know better than to romanticize the lone cowboy hope it will lead to belonging—a dynamic state of being or commando. embedded in webs of accountability and intimacy with other The bedrock of our pedagogy is the skill of awareness. species and the earth. For many of us, belonging is an act of Based on our experiences of living in our bodies and resistance. Photo by Pınar Sinopoulos-Lloyd Photo by
8 Fire / Keith Howchi Kilburn Photo by Corinna Stoeffl Photo by
fire Keith Howchi Kilburn
And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well When the tongues of flame are in-folded Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one. ~T.S. Eliot
It was so strange to be fire, not something that was being burned by fire, to be inside the fire, part of it, bringing in that crucial fourth element, the one that feels so different from the rest. As fire beings forming a ring of fire, we felt more primitive, more elemental than earth, water, and air, all of which had a certain substance to them. Fire is the least substantial, the most prone to instantaneous change and thus the most powerfully transformative of all the elements. To be a fire being felt like unlimited potential.
One with fire Waves of gold with every small move step into the fire with every breath step into the other world Death is only this Without prejudice dissolution into the mass yet without judgment a unique essence goes on Streamers of hot light carry us away and reemerges ever more glorious into the liquid gold Victorious over all the distortions We are it at least for awhile it is us hopefully a long long while indistinguishable yet each of us is still here
9 Circles on the Mountain 2019
Dear Editor of Outside Magazine Darcy Ottey
Dear Editor of Outside magazine, appropriation— but this is context that is important in Thank you for making “Rewilding the American Child” publishing a piece like this. Cultural appropriation is part of the cover story of your September issue, and for including the legacy of rites of passage in many settler communities, rites of passage as part of this important discussion. The and many are working to address this issue. In the continued loss of rites of passage has implications not just for the struggles for indigenous sovereignty—where lands and lives of individual young people, but also for public health waters are still taken despite treaty rights, and where rates more broadly. Renewing rites of passage in meaningful of poverty and violence disproportionately affect indigenous ways is a powerful strategy to address issues as seemingly peoples—many of us are exploring deeply the context of unrelated as the rise of violent extremists and school rites of passage in our communities today. This context shootings, unprecedented pharmaceutical dependency, and includes how many of these ceremonies were lost or driven the increasing polarization in society. Because this is such a underground through violence, fear of persecution, forced pressing yet often-neglected topic, I was disappointed to see assimilation, removal of children from their families into gaps in your reporting of this subject, and what felt like an boarding schools, and more; how many of these cultural outdated perspective. forms have continued to be preserved despite these threats, What especially concerned me was the absence of the because their continued practice is so important to the cultural context of rites of passage within the piece. An survival of a culture; and how they are now being borrowed, essential part of rites of passage is the community and stolen, and commodified by others outside of the culture, in cultural context in which they occur—which in today’s world ways that harm everyone involved. is deeply affected by race, ethnicity, gender, geographical As your article so aptly points out, rites of passage are location, and a host of other factors. These factors were an important part of raising healthy young people and noticeably absent from this article’s descriptions. generating community vitality. By encouraging a broader In a nation with a founding story that involves perspective, I don’t want to discourage readers from learning enslavement of Africans and genocide of indigenous more or experimenting in their families or communities! I peoples, it is critical that rite of passage ceremonies help do want to challenge folks to understand the complexity of folks develop a healthy sense of cultural rootedness and the terrain, and to seek out diverse resources from which to identity (which is possible for all people regardless of racial/ learn. ethnic background), in ways that do not reinforce structural I hope you will consider a follow-up piece with a broader, inequity and white supremacy. Many indigenous peoples more inclusive view of the topic, as I expect it would be of have pointed out that the use of certain ceremonial practices great interest to your readers. I also hope you will refer your by non-indigenous peoples is cultural appropriation, and readers to Youth Passageways, a diverse coalition of rite of they have asked for (and at times demanded) this to stop. passage providers (some of the organizations you mentioned Yet the lead-in story to this article references a sweat lodge are partners of the Youth Passageways network). Youth without giving any context for the practice. While some form Passageways does not advocate for any particular form of of sweathouse for purification and prayer can be found the rites of passage, but rather provides education for providers world over, the practice that the “sweat lodge” term refers to and a broad introduction for the general public into what is generally based on the Lakota inipi ceremony, one of the rite of passage experiences exist, and how to find the right fit sacred ceremonies passed down to the Lakota people by their for themselves, their students, and their children. ancestors. Thank you, In this article, there is not enough context to know Darcy Ottey, Board Chair, Youth Passageways if the referenced sweat lodge is an act of cultural At the time of this printing, Outside magazine has yet to respond.
10 Dear Editor of Outside Magazine / Darcy Ottey Photo by Pınar Sinopoulos-Lloyd Photo by
11 Circles on the Mountain 2019
Incorporation Within White Supremacy and Settler Colonialism Pınar Sinopoulos-Lloyd
As rites of passage guides, we know that the hardest co-learning containers. These inquiries lit our fire as we challenge of the ceremony is not the severance, threshold, realized that what we were preparing for as a guide team was or liminal space, but rather what comes after: incorporation. being co-created before our eyes. Incorporation means to bring into the body or to embody We delved deep into being in right relationship to what one learned for their people during their initiatory fast ourselves, each other, our more-than-human kin, and the on the land. What does incorporation mean for those living land we were on. There is so much depth of possibility for within a system that chooses which bodies get to thrive and the land to hold these inquiries. If our conversations around targets others? What does incorporation mean within the diversity, equity, inclusion, and decolonization remain history of a nation built on the chattel slavery of black bodies intraspecies (humancentric), I frankly am concerned. and the genocide of First Nations peoples? How does one Only in collaboration with the land will we be able to fully embody their vision with the implications of their skin color, explore the depth of trauma and wounding we must go into ability, and gender? to truly explore power, privilege, and oppression. This is In August of 2018, we ran our inaugural Queer Mountain something that we continue to flesh out in the Ecology of Quest (QMQ) through Rite of Passage Journeys with an Power & Privilege curriculum in collaboration with Youth incredible team that had been dreaming into its creation for Passageways. Kruti Parekh (she/her), Darcy Ottey (she/her) over two years. The co-guide team was Roz Katonah (they/ and I are deeply exploring decentering humancentric spaces them), Anna Schulman (she/her), and me (they/them). So and bringing our more-than-human kin as potential allies Sinopoulos-Lloyd (they/them) was the QMQ fundraising and accomplices in our anti-oppression journey towards director as well as the basecamp ceremonialist. This was co-liberation. Of course, we must also be confronted with the a two-week backpacking trip on Snohomish, Klallam, discomfort of our own areas of privilege with interspecies and Quileute territories for 13 to 18 year-old two-spirit, reflection by our BIPOC (black, indigenous, people of color) nonbinary, trans, and queer youth. community members, especially within the rite of passage communities. There is a balance between intraspecies The majority of the youth found the QMQ through and interspecies conversations that has the potential of Queer Nature’s social media accounts where we bring de- remediating the impact of colonial and ecocidal violence. colonial and anti-racist discourse into the fields of nature- connection, place-based skills, and rites of passage. The This is why the QMQ guide team decided to discuss youth who came were white or white-passing teens from all white supremacy during our incorporation. It is necessary over Turtle Island, including so-called Canada. They chose to do so for our youth in the context of our current political to come because they felt seen and represented by the guide climate. By the epic coastline, we lit candles and made team and also out of a desire to walk in right relationship an altar where we read co-liberatory poems by Audre with the history of colonial violence on the wild and urban Lorde, a black lesbian abolitionist. As we sat to have our landscapes. discussion on incorporation, we began by reading “A Letter to White Queers, A Letter to Myself,” a poem by a To the guides’ surprise, after our acknowledgment of nonbinary white poet, Andrea Gibson (they/them). The the land, it was several youth who first asked to learn more poem was a reminder that the queer community needs about the First Nations of the place. What I have come to to be intersectional and remember to actively fight anti- know working with trans and queer youth—including at blackness and anti-indigeneity as white or white-passing the School of Lost Borders’ inaugural Queer Youth Quest folks in the LGBTQ2IA+ community. We opened a council in 2017—is that the younger generation will always be a to integrate the gravity of the longest part of the ceremony: delightful and edgy surprise in initiating intergenerational
12 Incorporation Within White Supremacy and Settler Colonialism / Pinar Sinopoulos-Lloyd
I hardly ever see black and/or indigenous guides of color without white-passing privilege. It is an isolating experience as an indigenous guide, especially with the word “wilderness” reverberating genocide and the ways our existence have been made invisible. The concept of wilderness is a foundational concept that perpetuates racism. John Muir, the father of National Parks, was explicitly racist against First Nations folks as well as black communities and promoted the eradication of Ahwahnechee tribal members to preserve the “pristine wilderness” of Yosemite. Edward Abbey, author of Desert Solitaire, was avidly disturbed by indigenous-migrants and was an early advocate for a militarized border on the lands he loved. I wonder, as “wilderness” guides, how can we each walk in right relationship while engaging in the complexities of white supremacy within the lands we guide on? For First Nations, land and people are the same. Therefore, land can never be an apolitical place. Leadership is a reproduction of culture. If that is the case, I wonder what culture we are reproducing as guides. Who will you make sure takes your guide seat? How can we all create opportunities for those who do not look like us and are systematically targeted to take the guide seat? How do we make sure that there are more black and brown faces in our wilderness guides networks
Photo by Pınar Sinopoulos-Lloyd Photo by without tokenizing? incorporation. This dialogue shook the youth as a reminder Right now in the Sonoran desert, there are of what world they are walking back into with their children, adults, and elders non-consensually fasting in the necessary gifts that are a healing balm and regenerative desert, praying that they will make it through the ordeal of disruptive force to the dominant ecocidal culture. crossing the border. There are black bodies being shot at In forming the QMQ guide team, we decided to center in public by law enforcement without any justice. Native and co-empower guides who hold intersectional identities communities have the highest rates of suicide in this within our queer community. When one holds multiple country. There are young generations of white youth who locations of oppression (class, ability, race, gender, sexual are being initiated into white supremacy. If we are bringing orientation, etc.), they are more impacted members within our gifts back for our people, we must include all bodies our communities. An example is our trans black community and center those systematically targeted. Incorporation in members have a disproportionately higher likelihood of this fragmented world must include looking at our power, transphobic murder compared to those being trans and privilege, and oppression and how it informs our roles as we white. Or being a darker-skinned and indigenous-featured live into the initiation our species is moving through. Latinx person with citizenship gets profiled significantly more than a lighter-skinned Latinx mestizo without Resources citizenship. Who in our communities are being impacted White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About by oppression on an institutional level? In order for co- Racism by Robin DiAngelo liberation to be actualized, we need to center the most Me & White Supremacy Workbook by Layla F. Saad Shades of Darkness: Race & Environmental History by Carolyn impacted in our communities. We need to find ways to move Merchant aside and be behind someone as a gesture of support with From Solitaire to Solidarity by Max Granger their consent. Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African As the darkest member of the Wilderness Guides Council, Americans to the Great Outdoors by Carolyn Finney
13 Circles on the Mountain 2019
A QTBIPOC’s personal reflection of their initiation as a Spiritual Guide Roz Katonah, 2018, Queer Mountain Quest Guide
How do I begin to articulate The place That bends time Weaves dreams As I stand here Witnessing the energetic pulse The sand slipping through my fingers Radically practicing the deep expression of carnality The corpse putrid Mirroring this death On beliefs of impossibility Sending signals of love so vast there are no longer boundaries Nor rules for how queer friendship exists Decolonizing this body from the thoughts of harming oneself Never being enough Never being worthy From White Supremacy When the rocks fall from the forest to break into a million pieces it exposes this place next to the ocean A portal which can never be or feel broken The grief existing simultaneously to our joy in the sky The moon so bright its light floods my veins with the truth of what it means to initiate fully To live our full whole lives In relationship with all beings and species Earth 9 months of creation A year of ceremony Holy and Sacred Land of the Quileute People This body reunited with the profane
14 Can A White Person Be A Shaman? / James Shipman
Can a White Person be a Shaman? James Shipman
[Edited for length]
have placed some of the ashes of my dear brother Mike on an important hill in base camp, and I visit with him as he watches over us. I believe in the spirits. Yes I do. I honor them every day with my rattle and my gratitude prayer. I spend as much time as I can outdoors, hiking over a thousand miles a year. I have sacralized with my rattle many, many places in the hills and mountains around me, and I return to them often just to sit and listen. I know how to listen. I know that these small practices don’t make me a shaman, but what word would you use? II White people have had shamans for millennia. They also had holy men, sages, Druids, and priests. And women could be holy people. One can read in Herodotus about the customs of the Scythians (in his The Persian Wars, Book IV). One can read in Caesar about the Druids and the
Photos by Corinna Stoeffl Photos by customs of the Celts (in his Gallic Wars). One can read in Tacitus about the customs of the Teutons (in his Germania). I All of these tracts outline what life was like in some of the Can a white person be a shaman? European tribes before the Romans, and then the Roman In fact, I think it is a vital, necessary, and honorable Catholics, stamped it out. Hundreds of sacred sites across station in life for certain white people. To be a shaman, Europe were destroyed, and rebuilt, with Catholic churches one has to be willing to acknowledge that there are spirits on top of sacred groves of oak trees. White shamans were in everything, and that messages flow continuously among the most persecuted. And later, of course, thousands between those spirits and humans. One has to be willing to of women were burned at the stake for crimes as innocuous acknowledge that it is possible to sense, honor, and work as knowing which herbs to use for certain remedies. with those spirits, and that it is possible to help others get in The Christians are largely responsible for demonizing touch with those spirits for their own healing. “Nature” and any “natural way” that early Europeans might We all know that the desert is prime spirit territory. After have had. White people have experienced loss of nature and nearly 40 years of taking Vision Quest trips to Death Valley, loss of culture, but they don’t remember it. And they struggle Mono Lake, and the Mojave, I have a pretty good feel for the to find a way back to Mother Earth. desert environment and the world of the desert spirits. I call upon them to “watch over and protect these brave young III people” on their vision quests. My wife calls the spirits of the In the early 20th century, Arnold van Gennep studied directions into our circle as we prepare to send the questers rites of passage in other cultures and used the words over the threshold and onto their journeys. I spend time “vision quest” as a translation of a Lakota word to describe inside the circle while they are all out on their solos for three a particular type of rite of passage practiced by the Plains days, rattling out thanks to the spirits and asking for their Indians. As we all know, decades passed before Stephen blessings. I visit my ancestors—the mountains—regularly. I Foster and Meredith Little gave us The Book of the Vision
15 Circles on the Mountain 2019
Quest in the 1970s. Their book followed a book called four directions, four shields, calling of the Great Spirit, Seven Arrows, written in 1972 by Hyemeyohsts Storm, a Jamie Sams’ Medicine Cards, smudging, or even a talking half-white, half-Northern Cheyenne. The early reviews of stick.(2) Storm’s book were quite positive. But after a while, some in As you read to this point of this article, I’m willing to bet the Indian communities began to point out that Storm was that “white privilege” came up in your thoughts. You might getting “all aspects of Cheyenne culture and religion wrong.” be thinking that I am displaying it right now as I write this. He was vilified for not being “an Indian,” but rather “a I haven’t jumped on the cultural appropriation bandwagon, blond-haired, blue-eyed German living somewhere close to so I must therefore be an “unawake,” old white guy who the Crow reservation.” Epithets began appearing like “white continually rips off the Indians by using a term like “vision Indian,” “New Ager,” “NuAger,” “plastic Indian,” “plastic quest.” We are so quick to pigeonhole and stereotype, so shaman,” “fake shaman,” and “white shaman.” The phrase quick to divide the world into us and them. It would be “playing Indian in the desert” was used. These terms were different, I have heard the cultural appropriation police say, directed at white people, not just Storm. And, these terms if my wife and I had been trained by an authentic Lakota were all used pejoratively. I am taking up the pejorative shaman, for example. Then we would have that important term “white shaman” and promoting it now. word to them: permission. We would have permission to stage a Lakota vision quest. But we don’t DO a Lakota vision quest. After nearly 40 years, we do our own vision quest. We DO mention the four directions and the medicine wheel and the four shields (and we give attribution accordingly.) And we also mention the Celtic circle with its five directions. We use Gail Sheehy’s book Passages, and long passages from the Tao te Ching. Buddhist stories come up, as do some of the Greek and Roman myths. We always talk about the steps in the Hero’s Journey. We like some of Mary Oliver’s poems, and we relate scores of stories about previous questers to the current group. We do use Jamie Sams’ Medicine Cards, with great success, and people do fast on our trips, but they are not required to. And there is story—tons and tons of stories. We have built up quite a history that we are immensely proud of, and we’ve taken 1500 people and more out to the desert in nearly 40 years of wonderful, meaningful work. Just like all the other members of the WGC. But none of us do a Lakota vision quest.
V IV I don’t think we are ever going to “solve” the cultural This brings us to the issue of cultural appropriation and appropriation issue. I think we may just have to live with the resulting battles over the term “vision quest” and other it. To satisfy some of the “purist” cultural appropriation practices. I won’t recount that history here, since most of police, we would have to revamp our entire program into the people reading this already have the idea. Many in the something like a glorified camping trip. No mention could Wilderness Guides Council now refer to a “vision fast,” or to ever be made of any worldview other than a white one. No a “vision quest-like experience,” on their web pages. Some accouterments even remotely associated with Indians could hold fast to the term “vision quest” and hope to avoid the be used, so no drum or rattle or talking stick. Or we could cultural appropriation police, many of whom are guilt- “seek permission” to do our work. But the obvious question ridden white people who have some notion of “purity” in is “from whom?” The elders in a tribe? The younger ones? mind as they seek justice for the Indians and their terrible Which tribe would we ask? And would permission from history (1) at the hands of white people. Their argument one tribe be honored by all the others? No one knows the is that the vision quest practice is an act of cultural answer to these questions. Instead, white people have to appropriation and should not be used or practiced by white be extremely sensitive around this issue of permission and people. There can’t be any drums, rattles, medicine wheels, appropriation. Perhaps that is as it should be. I don’t want
16 Can A White Person Be A Shaman? / James Shipman
careless white people leading a vision quest or a sweat lodge DO have our own memories in our work that we continue ceremony after a weekend “seminar” somewhere. At the to create. So long as we stay active and learning, our history same time, I want everyone to acknowledge that there are and our cultural memory will deepen. white people who do good and true and beautiful work out in the wilderness. VII I end where I began: I think it’s fine for a white person to be VI a shaman. Let’s get back to work. So dust off your spirits and get back out there. Read up. Study up. You can find the story of the Irish hero who Endnotes spent three days alone by the side of a river, and you can read where Genghis Khan did a three-day solo on one of the (1) I know the history. I know what the history has been between white people and Native Americans. I know the dreary lists of atrocities and sacred Mongolian mountains. Some of you do dream work; bad faith. Very few can defend the US cavalry in the 19th century, or the some use various techniques within the gestalt. Some of you Indian agents on the reservations who forbid native languages in their are licensed therapists; some use Joseph Campbell stories. schools. I won’t. All of us use mythology in some way. And our purpose (2) Not even a talking stick? Perhaps this is a place to remind everyone all along is helping others get to the bottom of their lives. of the office of “Herald” in most European courts. (He’s the guy who That’s what a shaman does and has always done, in cultures bangs the floor with his “staff” to announce visitors or the edicts of the across the world. I don’t think it’s a crime to use the Story monarch.) You’ve seen Queen Victoria (and Elizabeth) holding an orb of Jumping Mouse in your circles. I don’t think it’s a crime and a “scepter,” which is basically a talking stick signifying the queen’s to be doing this work at all. I think there is a great need for right to speak over everyone else. And this is a direct inheritor of the certain white people to take other white people (or anyone Roman curule stick, a wand of ivory that Roman magistrates were required to use whenever they had to pronounce their verdicts from else) to the desert, and right now that is us. We don’t have the curule chair. No one has an exclusive right to the use of the phrase an intact cultural memory to draw upon in our work, but we “talking stick.”
17 Circles on the Mountain 2019 Photo by Kinde Nebeker Photo by THE EARTH HAS GIVEN MUCH TO US. IT’S TIME TO GIVE BACK. Trebbe Johnson
Footsteps paced round my sleeping back all night long, and The footsteps were soft, slow, patient. They were made by I was not alarmed. someone about 20 feet away from me. They paced between In the spring 1997, I was guiding a vision quest with Bill the streambed and my sleeping bag. Plotkin for his Animas Valley Institute (AVI) in the deep Toward dawn, I woke enough to ask out loud, “Who’s and labyrinthine canyons of southeastern Utah. A seasonal there?” stream bordered one side of our base camp, and on the Immediately I saw a vision of a young Puebloan man. He other side the lion-colored walls of the canyon rose up to wore a short apron-like garment around his waist, and his where, just down the trail, you could peer up at alluring and black hair was cut in straight bangs over his forehead. “I am mysterious Native Puebloan (formerly called Anasazi) cliff the firekeeper,” he said. “You sent for me.” dwellings. AVI had a practice, on the final night before the I thanked him for coming. And then he told me this: “You fast and solo began, of building a small fire and inviting the are bringing the Earth into people’s hearts. But how will you fasters to feed it with an object they had brought from home bring people into the heart of the Earth?” that represented a part of their life that it was time to let When I heard these words, I knew that the young man go of. We asked the fire to take these gifts and reconstitute who had paced and watched all night was confirming the them without harm to any being, and when the ceremony imperative for me to find the answer to a question I had been was over, we covered the shallow pit with sand. asking for ten years: How can we find a way to change our In this particular year, I had the idea to sleep each night thinking and behavior about the places we love that have that the fasters were out on the place where the fire had been damaged or endangered? And what this young man of burned. On the first two nights, I had remarkably vivid the Canyons was imploring was: This is not an idle question. dreams. On the third night, I had a visitor. All night long I This is your work. hovered in a liminal zone of consciousness, unable either to In all the wilderness rites of passage programs and rise fully into wakefulness or sink into sleep. And all night, I workshops I have led for many years—first with AVI, then could hear someone walking around just out of sight. In my with my own group Vision Arrow, with other guides, and state of dreamlike awareness, I somehow knew that whoever on my own—I always remind people that the infinite beings it was who was keeping watch was neither a member of our of nature are conscious, curious, and willing to impart group nor a stranger. And, as I say, I was not alarmed. information about themselves and us in a way that is
18 The Earth Has Given Much To Us / Trebbe Johnson profound and transcendental, if only we are willing to pay and encouraged people to follow them in a way that best attention. I urge them especially not to turn away from what corresponded to their own culture and community, to the isn’t pretty and pristine. The ugly, the broken, the dying, the condition of the place, and to their unique relationship with mutant—they have vital messages, too. And people would it. Those steps are: come back from their time in meditative exploration of the 1. Go, alone or with friends to a wounded place. natural world with stories of life-altering encounters with 2. Sit a while and share your stories. lightning-struck trees, coyote shit, a dead rabbit, barbed wire 3. Get to know the place as it is now. tripping up a trail, a dying aspen grove. 4. Share what you discovered. Now the time has come when we must turn to the Earth not just to receive, but to give back. The air, the soil, the 5. Make a simple gift of beauty for the place. water, and every individual life form in all its phases has a We encourage people to make their gift for the place— place on this planet. The Earth has given so much. Now we often the image of a bird—out of materials the place itself must give back. Despite the warnings and the courageous provides: sticks, stones, flowers, even rubbish. In this way, actions of many people, global climate change is a reality, no one has to haul in a lot of materials and no one has to be bringing unpredictable manifestations such as drought, an “artist.” You don’t even have to plan your gift in advance; wildfire, extreme storms, vanishing wildlife, and the you just love, witness, and create on the spot. And by making displacement of humans and other living beings. As the a gift for a hurt place by using only what the place offers, planet heats up, fossil fuel extraction goes on at a pace future we remember that all that’s needed to restore beauty to any generations are sure to look back on as insane. Meanwhile, being is to call forth what already exists in that being itself. in our own communities, the natural world and loved Every year in June, Radical Joy for Hard Times holds neighborhoods are being whittled away, burned up, cut a Global Earth Exchange, a day when people around the down, splayed open, and poisoned every day. world go to hurt places they love and make beauty for them. The message I took from my nighttime visitor was that They send us their stories and photos of what happened we humans need to go to these wounded places not just for and we post these on our website. The variety and creativity ourselves, but for them. We must, in fact, seek them out. are always astonishing. Young peace volunteers in Kabul, And we must spend time with them, not so we can gain Afghanistan work in their permaculture garden as part of wisdom, insight, and courage for ourselves—though that the Global Earth Exchange. A small group considers the very often happens—but so we can give something back paradox of Rocky Flats, Colorado, poisoned from decades to them. So we can give them attention, love, presence, of chemical weapon manufacture and, because it has long curiosity, and simple acts of beauty. been off limits to humans, now a wildlife refuge. A woman During my years-long search to figure out how to realize in Ukraine makes a bird for her country. A college class in this vision, I wandered in a lot of hurt places, led a ceremony Florida makes art for their diminishing coastline. near Ground Zero in New York after September 11, led a The field of psychotherapy teaches us that we cannot be weeklong vigil in a clearcut forest on Vancouver Island, BC, whole and healthy individuals until we get to know the dark and queried a lot of people. I wrote several magazine articles places inside us, listen to what they have to tell us and how and essays and in 2009, I founded, with the help of several they have served us, and then find a way to befriend them. In other members of WGC, a non-profit organization called this way, our relationship shifts to something more positive Radical Joy for Hard Times. In the fall of 2018, my book, and helpful. The same is true of the dark, the shadowy, the Radical Joy for Hard Times: Finding Meaning and Making “taboo,” the neglected places in our midst. We cannot claim Beauty in Earth’s Broken Places was published by North to support a “sustainable” and healthy planet if we turn our Atlantic Books. The book not only traces my own journey backs on the clearcut forests, the fracked farmlands, the to be reunited with places that have been neglected, but it wilderness trails gouged open for mining, the tree in our also relates the stories and explorations of other people, own backyard killed by insects. Until we see and come to and explores how we can bring forth creative, collaborative, terms with what has happened—until we can bring ourselves compassionate new ways of living with where we are now, to find meaning in and fall in love with these places—we shut even as we work for a better future. off part of our planet from consciousness, just as we would When we founded our organization Radical Joy for shut off a part of our psyche we prefer not to see. Hard Times, we realized that love of place and grief when When the places we love are hurt, we hurt too. When we something happens to it is universal and that we should, give back, we discover empowerment, community, creativity, therefore, not attempt to codify any “correct” or “certified” and yes, even joy. way of responding. We set up a few simple guidelines
19 Circles on the Mountain 2019 Photo by Corinna Stoeffl Photo by
Tree said Kinde Nebeker
I went to Tree and asked, heart raw and open, What can I do? I am so sorry.
Tree stood in silence.
Then Tree said, Reduce, reuse, recycle, and offer your broken heart to your most bitter enemy.
This will save the world.
20 The Wind / Denis Marier
the wind Denis Marier
A mild breeze came up the canyon as Nancy set some dried moment had come for me to announce my intention for white sage in an abalone shell and put a match to it. She was undertaking this vision quest. It was time to open up my a soft-spoken, sweet woman with turquoise eyes, delicate story. laugh lines etched by the sun radiating outwards from the “My intention for this vision quest is to mark my corners. The excited chatter quieted down as she began to transition into adulthood,” I announced. smudge herself with the smoke from the smoldering sage. Suddenly, the gentle breeze began to pick up, making the The two guides, myself, and eleven other fasters sat in a bandanas that marked the four directions flutter in the wind. circle on the dusty canyon floor in Utah, a floral batik cloth The trees began to sway and eddies of dust kicked up from decorated with wildflowers on the ground in the centre. Red the canyon floor, enough to make the others hold onto their canyon walls spired vertically around us, punctuated with hats and journals. The wind began to have its own voice, a green junipers. Gigantic boulders, whoosh coming through the canyon seemingly tossed about randomly with a sense of urgency. I had to by some greater Giant of Creation, speak louder in order to be heard. cradled us in our secret lair. “Something happened to me when White, yellow, red, and black I was young, and I have been trying rocks marking the north, east, to move past it ever since. This south, and west cardinal directions is what brings me to this canyon were carefully arranged in the today.” center, while four correspondingly The wind began to blow more colored bandanas were tied to trees fiercely north to south through on the outside of the circle behind the narrow ravine, although there us. Sacred space had been created. were barely any clouds in the bright We were invited to place a cerulean sky. Where was this gale personal object on the altar that coming from? Thirteen pairs of represented ourselves and our eyes focused on me attentively. The
Photo by Kinde Nebker Photo by intentions for coming to this force and sound of the wind coming wilderness program, known in First through the canyon suddenly Nations and Native American culture as a vision quest. increased to the point where I had to shout to be heard: Some participants put photographs in plastic sandwich bags “When I was thirteen years old, I met a male teacher at my on the altar; others set pieces of jewelry or little carvings on high school who became a friend and mentor to me. When I the cloth. I placed a laminated photograph of my brother was sixteen years old, he began sexually abusing me.” Jerry and me sleeping in the back of the family station The trees began to lash at each other. Red canyon earth wagon in 1968 on a family road trip. I was almost a year old, swirled in the air. Still looking intently at me, several a soother in my mouth, sleeping with my head on Jerry’s participants brought their bandanas to their faces to block chest. He was eleven years old. I anchored the photograph the blowing dirt from their noses and mouths. The wind with a spirit-rock I had found while setting up my tent in blew the hats off two participants, but they did not move. All base camp – a grey golf-ball sized rock with a line of white eyes were on me. Amazingly, none of the objects on the altar, quartz running all the way through it. including the photograph of Jerry and me, blew away. Several other fasters had shared their stories and “It went on for two years before I put an end to it,” I intentions so far. The talking piece was passed to me. The
21 Circles on the Mountain 2019 shouted above the sudden tempest. trouble for it, so I could never let him find out. I was shaking There it was: my darkest and most painful secret. from not only publicly declaring my secret, but also having to shout it out over the wind in a canyon that ricocheted my The story that I had only whispered to several therapists words back to me and anyone else within earshot. prior to this point in my life now came tumbling out of my mouth at full volume. I couldn’t recognize my own voice. My “Denny, the fact that Nature began its howl at the same throat ached, constricting as I was yelling. time that you were telling your story is confirmation that this was never okay. Someone should have spoken up for “I am here to move past this trauma and to mark a rite of you. You should have been able to feel safe enough to tell passage from wounded child to healed adult!” I screamed. someone that this was happening. The fact that you couldn’t The moment was met with unblinking wide eyes staring back is a trauma in and of itself. at me. The others seemed too stunned by the unfolding of this story and the accompanying outburst of the windstorm “You are so brave for dealing with this in the way that you to even move. are now. As you go out onto your fast, allow yourself to tell your pain to the canyon and to the sky. They are big enough Abruptly, the wind ceased altogether, leaving us all in to hold your pain. If the wind returns, give your hurt to the stunned silence. The roar of the unexpected gust and the wind and let it carry it away from you. This is why you are echo of my words bounced off the canyon walls. The courage here. You are being supported on this journey, and yes, it is I had worked up to disclose this secret flew out of me and time for you to leave this pain behind you and step into your chased the wind down the ravine. I was suddenly filled with life as a healed adult.” the familiar shame that had been wracking me for years, only now it was amplified to a whole new dimension. I felt I buried my face in my hands and began to sob. I thought myself go numb again. I was going to tell my story to these thirteen other souls in a canyon, fast for three days and nights by myself, and then “Me’egwetch,” I said self-consciously as I passed the move forward into a life healed of any previous trauma. talking stick to Catalina, who sat to my left. Her big brown I was anxious to get on with my life, having spent far too doe-eyes had tears in them as she accepted the talking stick. many years alone and in therapy without significant enough Breaking protocol for council practice, she leaned over and results for my liking. Somehow, I thought this vision quest, hugged me tightly around my neck. my fourth, would be the one to end the cycle of suffering that “I am so proud of you!” she whispered in my ear. had been tormenting me for almost twenty five years, more That was the first “I’m proud of you” I collected during the than half my life at the time. ensuing drama of publicly declaring that I was a survivor of Had I known it was just the beginning of another even childhood grooming and sexual abuse. more intense medicine wheel in my life, a turn of the wheel With the din of the wind trailing on its way out of the that would drive me right into the ground, I might have suddenly serene canyon, Nancy blinked, shook her head, and imagined a less lofty intention. The message that imprinted responded. In a very loud and steely bellow that shocked us itself upon my soul after that ceremony was not one of a all, she roared, “This is NOT OK!! wounded child moving through a wilderness rite of passage Her decry echoed throughout the canyon. Birds that had and emerging as a healed adult and productive member of been hunkered down during the previous two minutes of society. maelstrom took flight. None of us could have anticipated The message that I walked out of that canyon with was, such a response from this gentle and demure elder guide. “Good work! Now it’s time to go to the police.” Unaffected, she continued in a strong but gentler tone and asked me, “Denny, did anyone ever speak up for you?” This chapter is the prologue for Denis Marier’s nearly completed I looked at her, puzzled. memoir Ashes of Stockholm, which tells his story of surviving “Did you ever tell anybody, and did anyone ever try to childhood grooming and sexual abuse. A subsequent investigation led to the arrest of the perpetrator and a four-year trial ensued. protect you?” she asked with such tenderness that tears The accused was found “not guilty” despite the testimonies of Denis came to my eyes. and another survivor, with several other survivors refusing to come I couldn’t understand her question. Of course I had never forward and testify. At the time of this publication there is yet to be told anyone. The shame was too great and I felt that it was a conviction of a male teacher accused of sexually abusing a male all my fault to begin with. The first thought that came to my student in Canada. Although there is still, and perhaps always will be, mind and prevented me from ever telling anyone was that more healing to be done, Denis feels he is now ready to share his story with the hopes that his rendering can assist others on their healing if my brother Jerry, my protector in life, had ever found out paths as he reaches behind to lend a hand to other survivors coming up he would have seriously harmed that man and gotten in the trail.
22 Ask Yourself All The Good Questions / Michelle Katz
Ask Yourself All the Good Questions Michelle Katz
Coyotes: Come to the floor of the earth One wounded. For as long as you need. One dead. Feel the gravity Of what is dying. Does the extent of the wounding surprise you? Were you not aware that something needed to die? Feel the chill Reach your bones, Stay still. Begging the heart If you must go, To know the time for harvesting. Go slow. Go further than your daily distance Ask yourself all the good questions. Not too much further, And know the answers will meet you in the spaces between Just enough to stop Between the tree branches of the juniper In a different place. Between the distance of two birds And when you can, Between the meeting of sand and stone Stare right into the sun In the expanse where the land holds the sky. So it burns off What you don’t need Cradled, In order for you to truly see. Face the stars of the night sky. While Venus does its dance with Mars, Only certain eyes listen to the pack howling Can reveal an encounter with utter love. In the not-too-far distance.
If you cannot lay your head on your lover’s chest Find rest on my open and ready ground Letting the sands and soils into the roots of your hair Remembering that all things take their time Especially grief Which is only known Because you let love grow so whole-ly. Photo by Kinde Nebeker Photo by
23 Circles on the Mountain 2019
The Ecotone of Transition: Difficulty as an Opportunity for Nature-Based Transformation Jennifer J. Wilhoit, Ph.D.
I’ve spent the past twenty-two years formally studying the nurses…), the members of the WGC are especially sensitive ecotone between creativity and the natural world. In ecology, and attuned to how nature mirrors us (and how we, in an “ecotone” is the rich, diverse conjoining of two distinct turn, mirror nature); and, of course we do, as inextricably biomes. It is the area of overlap between, for example, a interconnected members of Life on this planet. As guides, forest and a meadow. Ecotones are considered especially we work at the intersection point of transition—that is, rich in biodiversity, in part, because they are areas that transition in people’s lives. Ecotones are the transition place contain species from each of the adjoining (distinct) biomes, between two or more biological areas and they are especially and because they are a pass-through for species that might rich in biodiversity; difficult transitions in our lives can not reside in either biome. Additionally, some ecotones also be especially rich, particularly if we have nature-based contain resident species who specifically thrive on the ceremonies and practices as daily touchstones. bounty of the transition zone. I find that the interconnection between ecotones, life transitions, and creativity is the natural world. All of my research bears this out. But more significantly, human experience bears this out. From my own spiritual quests on the land—as well as non-nature-based spiritual pursuits—I was called to and dedicated myself to bringing nature-based practices to people. I literally mean bringing the land to the people, particularly for those who are not able to be taken into natural landscapes. My severely physically disabled younger brother first taught me decades ago about the difference between appreciating nature (such as for its beauty) and the capacity to be out in it (for sustained periods); the former allows for physical safety while the latter can be fatal (as it would be for my brother). Some of my clients, hospice patients, elderly and declining friends, and other people I know who are disabled have reinforced this lesson in recent years. So, one cold black night in the wilderness, I was given the spiritual mandate to figure out how to make the
bridge between humans and wilderness, between folks who
could never embark on a wilderness rite of passage and the
natural world that is present, even in non-wilderness areas. I was called to create a body of work that would bring the natural world a bit closer in so that a broader community
Photo by Corinna Soteffl Photo by of people could have access to the gifts of transformation that we, as guides, have had the privilege of receiving and My fascination with ecotones as an ecological concept supporting for others in remote deserts, valleys, beaches, quickly turned into a compelling interest in how ecotones and mountaintops. can be used as metaphors for the human condition. As Over the past decade, I’ve turned my scholarly pursuit guides of various sorts (wilderness, non-wild nature, doulas, of (and spiritual passion for) ecotones into practices that I
24 The Ecotone of Transition / Jennifer J. Wilhoit offer every day in my one-on-one work with clients and with They are making amends in protracted conflict situations. various groups. I have heeded the call of Spirit and created They are hospice workers practicing brand new tools for ways to meet the acute needs of people in transition, and or sustaining emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual balance facing difficulties, by offering nature-based ways of being. in their work with those who are dying and their families. I have discovered that simple, nature-based practices — They are intellect-based attorneys touching blankets particularly when engaged in every day — can have long- of moss and realizing their interconnection with the term, transformative effects on the inner wild landscape of natural world, resolving to soften and broaden their direct those in transition: people who are hurting, afraid, confused, experience of nature. grieving . . . and who do not have the capacity to do a rite of They are dozens of people from all over the world coming passage out in the wilderness. That is, they won’t be going together online to gain simple, nature-based tools for out into the tangible wilderness of nature for a healing navigating the emotional disruption of current political and experience, but the nature-based practices inspire them to social upsets. trace the pathways back to their brilliant, wild inner winds. They are aging seniors in skilled nursing facilities who In order to do this work, I’ve needed to alter the manner in are reviewing life and creating new possibilities for daily which I offer it - including the setting, mode of delivery, and experience by holding a rock or lichen as they share an tools. important story. The settings in which I’ve offered inspired nature-based They are Habitat for Humanity staff members with work include: polished board rooms at the top of skyscrapers compassion fatigue for residents of a housing development in major cities; hospital and skilled nursing facility rooms; fraught with interpersonal turmoil, addiction, and mental churches; law offices and university campuses; dispute illness; and they are finding renewed ways of coping by resolution centers; cable television network, green rooms, turning to nature-based ceremony and practices. and radio studios; Skype and Zoom webinars as well as They are people coming to bookstores because they sense online courses; blog posts, articles, and books (others’ and that a stranger offering writing and nature-based practices my own); bookstores; social service agencies; retreat centers, is going to support them in moving deeper into their project, accessible local parks, and nearby protected areas; and a or into their life story. conference center of an international business consultancy in the downtown of a bustling city. These contexts have They are community members listening to a podcast, included locations in the United States and abroad; while, watching a televised interview — or facilitating the interview, of course, online platforms reach people with Internet even — who suddenly “re-member” that we are all one with connections across the globe. another, and in the web of all life. The modes of delivery I’ve used for nature-based They are individuals at an impasse — in creative work and practices in service to people in transition include: life—who are drawn to the “natural” ways in which a mentor individual mentorship and consulting; teaching; workshops; works toward healing and fuels movement from stasis. in-service trainings; volunteer work; mediation sessions; They are burnt-out mediators at a dispute resolution grief groups; formal presentations, and more. center who are gaining sustaining self-care skills through Finally, the tools I use include: photographs and other nature-based rituals. images of the natural world; nature writing and nature They are people in the ultimate final transition, those who poetry; found natural objects (the list is endless but includes are dying, who touch for the last time a flower petal or leaf, everything from bones, feathers, and carapaces to cones, feel the sun on their face, remember a story of lying in grass seaweed, lichen, and leaves); video clips and recordings as a child, and who make their final journey with a cherished from the natural world; Powerpoint slides; ecological natural object in their palm. facts and natural history descriptions; stories, and — most Very simple nature-based practices, in a diverse array importantly — guided time out of doors. of contexts, accompanied by tangible connection to nature In small and do-able ways, the people who have engaged through objects, images, or outdoor experiences — often the this nature-based work are touching the Earth and touching catalyst for creative engagement — are transformative in in with their deepest wild selves, too. these trying times. People need to be heard. They want to be They are becoming more whole, healed from tragedies, reconnected to life. They crave beauty and wholeness. They imprisonment, grueling work, and abuse. seek healing from crisis. They are writing captivating and heart-wrenching Whatever form our work takes, I wholeheartedly believe memoirs. our guidance is changing lives. And I don’t just believe it. I bear witness to it on a daily basis with “my people.”
25 Circles on the Mountain 2019
It All Starts at Home Sara Harris
It started like many a classic, epic family fight. A major My husband Ken and I were continually in conversation, holiday, some alcohol, hurt feelings that were buried, both feeling helpless. One day Ken suggested, “Should we competition, idealization, not feeling well . . . gee, what could call a council?” go wrong? But it had not happened like this in my family Yikes. Call a council? With FAMILY? Were we capable? before. Could we explain the process well enough to get their Several years ago, my brother and his whole family cooperation? What if it went off the rails and spun out of gathered for a big Thanksgiving dinner. One guest present control? How would we do this, living in California and the was a fairly new son-in-law, the husband of my brother’s feuding part of the family in Colorado? But it felt like our eldest daughter. Both of these men I would characterize as first lifeline, a ray of hope and possibility. We pondered. We “alpha males” and both try really hard to be “good.” But one decided to take the leap and offer this to the family. thing led to another and wild and hard words were flung, The first decision was who to invite and how to keep it resulting in an abrupt leave-taking by one and a very upset contained to those most directly affected: my brother, his family. wife, the daughter and son-in-law. Ken and I would be the Time passed. Unfortunately, communication was conveners and the guardians of the council. happening by email, so messages tightened, thickened, The second decision was where to hold this circle. It choked, and finally ground to a halt entirely. I was on the could not be at either of their homes, we felt, as it needed phone a lot with my niece, my sister-in-law, and my brother, neutral space to diminish the power differential. After as we desperately tried to intervene, decode, and fix the calling around, we were lucky enough to find an old WGC situation. My poor niece was caught between the two men friend who had a beautiful gathering space above her garage she loved most in the world. When I spoke with my brother that was close to where my family members lived. Perfect: and heard his point of view, I understood, but was helpless a large, peaceful, neutral space that didn’t inconvenience to move the needle on the giant “react-o-meter” that was anyone in terms of location. Except us, of course. We made hovering on high alert. the decision that we needed to fly to Colorado for a long More time passed. Questions began to arise about weekend . . . it was that important that we give this a try! attendance at other family functions, and more family Next up: how to explain this process of council that we members were feeling compromised, confused, and taking all know is somewhat mysterious and greater than the sum sides though trying not to. The more time passed, the worse of its’ parts? My brother had many years of experience in things got. I began to realize a horrible possibility: THIS organizational development and conflict resolution, so it was exactly the kind of family fight that sometimes can go took a lot of talking to try to explain how this was different. unresolved for years and even generations. This was the He was the most reluctant and, I believe, the most scared. kind of family feud that breaks hearts, ruins celebration, and My niece and sister-in-law were easy: just happy anyone makes everyone feel like they are walking on eggshells. This had anything at all to offer and gave an immediate Yes. was the kind of fight that no one remembers how it began, My nephew was cautious, protective. Everyone feared the but it shapes relationships forever. possibility that meeting could make the situation worse, And now it was happening in my family, affecting those I and then there would truly be no hope. We sent a few short love most. What could I do? Phone conversations were going articles about council as well as guidelines, so everyone nowhere, time was of the essence, and I was really scared. could get a feel for it ahead of time. Finally all were IN: we set a date and made our reservations.
26 It All Starts At Home/ Sara Harris
Thus began some sleepless nights on my part, I must say. The council went on for seven hours. Seven hours with no I have held many councils, but never any as charged as this breaks except silent bathroom breaks periodically. Seven one, and never with family members. I was terrified. Finally, hours of tears continually leaking down my cheeks, no the day for the family council came and there was no way I matter who was speaking. Seven hours of the rise and fall of could choke down any food that morning. Ken and I went human feeling. Several times Ken had to ring the bell and over early to set an altar, arrange seating, and to be in the tentatively suggest to one of them that he was attacking and space and pray for help. We knew that council brings its own needed to re-state what was being said. Seven hours of my wisdom and that speaking and listening from the heart does fear that it would end badly or that someone would walk out, its own work beyond what we can imagine, but the level of despite our agreement that this was not an option. personal responsibility I felt was over the top. I had to keep Seven hours of courage, of people who stayed with it reminding myself to get out of the way and to trust that each rather than run. Seven hours of wishing we were just about person truly wanted a better outcome than the family was anywhere else, but everyone hanging in there. Hard things living with now. were said. At one point, I almost gave up hope. But, eventually, through the Great Mystery of the circle holding us and through everyone persevering, things began to open up, to shift, to soften. We were exhausted and it finally seemed the circle could come to a close. The next day we flew home. Did it help? Absolutely. Did it transform and re-establish trusting relationships? Not exactly. Was our risk to offer this way worth it? Beyond a doubt. Years later, both understand more about what the other can and cannot tolerate. Both men know how to behave around one another and we feel confident that blow-ups will not happen again. Both men, to their great credit,
Photo by Kinde Nebeker Photo by tried to understand what they were projecting onto the other and take The air was thick with tension as all arrived and silently responsibility for their side of the mess. walked up the stairs to our meeting area. We had asked It was the hardest, most painful and frightening council each person to bring something for the altar. I reviewed the I had ever been present at. Did we hold it perfectly? No. guidelines and procedures for council, and we also explained There are things Ken and I could have done better and more that Ken would be the guardian of the energy and would skillfully. But we offered our gift, imperfect as it was, and ring a bell if we needed a break, a breath, or to head off any it helped. Perhaps that is the best our world can ask of us. personal attacks. Because Ken was not “blood,” my nephew These tools we have all learned through this world of Rites trusted him the most, as he worried I would align with my of Passage can bring meaning and heart to many who have brother. no way to proceed. Trying it with those closest to us can be The council was now open. The levels of feeling, exposure, the most difficult, as letting go of outcome in these cases is risk, despair, hurt, anger and hope in that room were perhaps the hardest. But if one definition of trust is “a risk palpable and almost overwhelming. My big brother took the successfully survived,” then our trust in the Council Way talking piece first. Here we go, I thought. And my silent tears grew that day! Perhaps your personal world will call for your began. risk and skill as well one day.
27 Circles on the Mountain 2019
Smelling Home from Far Away Sofia Nicholson
To love a landscape where cicadas hum so loudly that heat can be heard. a vista where the Milky Way swoops brilliantly, ever overhead. a canyon filled with crickets & desert river ripples: miraculous life in an eye-aching dryness. a community where toughness percolates through brown face creases & dry earth catches so easily in the spring breeze. To long for the caress of sun – high, bright, and strong. for the grainy roughness of rusted sandstone. for a kinship with dark desert crust. To understand the links between damned dams & humpbacked fish. To see lizard tails dancing in the sand. To be ecologically literate: Passionately fluent in local connections – flora & fauna, human & sediment, lightning & fire. A desire to fall deeper & understand the journey of every drop of monsoon rain. To smell home from miles away. Photo by Corinna Stoeffl Photo by
28 The Green Camp Kitchen / Ann Stine and Susanne Petermann
The Green Camp Kitchen Anne Stine and Susanne Petermann
How we live in the wilderness is how we live in the world. 3) Landfill. Line another five-gallon bucket with an After many years of questing and guiding, I was recently eight-gallon plastic bag. In this bag, dispose of paper impressed (again!) with the connection between our toweling that has been used to wipe dishes, as well as other spiritual lives and the physical/logistical details of daily garbage that isn’t compostable or recyclable. For 15 people operations. The small actions matter. The attention we pay for 2-weeks, we fill 2-3 of these small bags. to being conscious of our impact on the earth, matters. We 4) Toilet paper. Place all used t.p. in a large white plastic are nourished when we are attuned earth’s rhythms and bag and hang it from a tree outside the kitchen area. truths. 5) Gray water. Dump gray water from washing and The camp kitchen provides fertile ground for weaving rinsing dishes in a hole dug in the dirt and fill it in before together the physical and spiritual planes of existence. leaving the site. A shared kitchen can provide a sense of cooperation and As you can tell, our focus is two-fold: water conservation mutual responsibility. The following article is meant to and plastics reduction. Questers are encouraged to take give both guides and participants some basic ideas about their plastic containers home for re-use. We are continually conserving resources and reducing landfill created while thinking of refinements to this system, as you will too if living in the wilderness. you apply these principles to your particular needs and My base camp team, Paula Backus and Susanne circumstances. Petermann, and I have devised a base camp kitchen that Dealing with waste as we spend time on wild lands is a applies some basic principles of recycling and waste concrete and sacred way of stewarding the precious places management. In our base camp, each quester brings food in we use for our transformative work. a cooler and/or sturdy rodent-proof bin. Dinners are shared, prepared by two or three questers, and planned ahead of time. Naturally, we end up with lots of used food packaging and food scraps. The system as outlined below should feel familiar to those who practice green disposal methods at home. Here are the essentials of a green camp kitchen: 1) The compost bin. This is a five-gallon bucket with a perforated lid that is covered with fine-mesh screen. Place vegetable leavings and uneaten food here, as well as coffee grounds, coffee filters, and tea bags. Cover each layer of waste in the bucket with a layer of wood shavings or sawdust to keep the contents of the bucket as dry as possible. We use 3 five-gallon containers for approximately 15 people over a 2-week period. 2) The recycling bin. This is a large plastic bag that you can place inside a trash barrel if you wish. In this bag, deposit your rinsed-out cans, bottles, plastic containers, paper, cardboard, and/or foil, in accordance with the recycling capabilities in your area. Photos by Anne Stine and Susanne Petermann; Photo montage by Corinna Stoeffl Photo montage by and Susanne Petermann; Anne Stine Photos by
29 Circles on the Mountain 2019
Tools for These Times Corinna Stoeffl
No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. — Albert Einstein
The above quote has fascinated me for years. In these times of change, it has become increasingly frustrating to realize how much society is looking for solutions to the issues we are facing from the same level of consciousness that created them in the first place. It seems that in order to solve one problem, a whole new set of problems is created. I also know that, in the end, it is up to each individual to create the change. We have to transform our personal worlds: our points of view, beliefs, desires, and expectations. This has been my personal work for the past few years and, last year, the outcomes were significant. Here are a few tools that I use to create change:
Light/Heavy What if we get away from absolute truths and instead find our own personal truth to bring into the conversation and into council? Yet, how do I know this is my personal truth and not one that I “bought” from someone else? There is a tool for that. What is true for you has a light or expansive energy to it. What is not true for you has a heavy or
Photo by Corinna Stoeffl Photo by contractive energy to it. You feel
30 Tools for These Times / Corinna Stoeffl it in your body if you are present with it. Play with it; be of us? Are we even willing to have the kind of relationship curious about it. Seriousness will not allow you to perceive it with the earth that includes that communication? Are we because it is contractive. willing to be in communion with the earth? Communion means we have no point of view about it all. Ask Questions I am aware that these statements may seem strange When we ask a question, we are so trained to look for or to you. There is a reality that is so different from the one expect an answer. However, that answer is from our current we live in where magic is normal, not extraordinary. I level of consciousness. What if we could go beyond this level have heard of, seen, and experienced things that would be by asking an open-ended question, a question that has no considered miracles in this reality. If you would like to hear answer except one in the form of an energy we can perceive? more about what I have been talking about here, feel free to Use the previously mentioned light/heavy tool to discover ask me. what is true for you. Here are a few of my favorite questions: Are you interested in being on that different level of • Is this true (for me)? [‘Money’ sells us many truths that consciousness of which Albert Einstein speaks? are actually lies.] * From the German, Selbst ist die Frau! meaning a woman who does • What else is possible? things by herself. • If I had no definition for this, what would I actually know about it? • What am I not willing to receive? • What do I know that I am pretending not to know?
Acknowledgement Are you acknowledging yourself for your creations? For the miracles you create? For the greatness you are? When you acknowledge something you can have more of it with ease. And I know how hard it can be to do this. What, I created a miracle? No way! What, I am great? No, you mean someone else. That’s how we have been trained. Everybody else is great, not us. Who benefits from us playing small? No one! The Earth is asking us to step it up and be the greatness that we are. To know that we have the ability to change things and to do it.
We are not alone. Through quantum entanglements we are connected to everything, down to a molecule. The universe desires to contribute to us; all we have to do is ask for it. Yet we have a hard time asking. For me, it was the stance of ‘self is the woman*’ that had me decline offers of help. It was so strong in me that, even though I was aware of it, I still needed time to break the habit. I was also aware that in refusing help, I was refusing gifts from others and, as a result, taking away others’ opportunity to gift. Receiving and gifting go hand in hand. ‘Gift and receive’ is different from ‘give and take’ in that there is no agenda, not even a hidden one. Giving can be motivated by the hidden agenda to feel better. Helping can have an aspect of superiority unless we ask the one we desire to help for permission. Are we asking the earth what she requires, or do we assume or conclude what it is? What if that is not at all what the earth requires or would be asking
31 Circles on the Mountain 2019 Photo by Corinna Stoeffl Photo by
Day of Purification Keith Howchi Kilburn
The Day of Purification is a concept from a prophecy carried Our better beings, the ones we can imagine, are among and retold for centuries by the Hopi people of what is now those actively and consciously working to bring about the Southwestern United States. The Hopi Prophecy takes a more powerful unity of mission and purpose with our four full days to be told in its entirety. According to the spiritual selves. Part of their mission is to dream or imagine prophecy, there will come a time in human history when into existence a time of greater blessings and joy for all those so many people have strayed from a true spiritual path who choose to work in concert with higher beings and live that life on earth will become dangerously out of balance. life in a dance of love and cooperation. As one Hopi elder has Unprecedented weather patterns, strange new diseases, advised: “Gather yourselves! Banish the word struggle from and the sea turning black are among the signs cited in the your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must prophecy that show humanity is reaching a crossroads be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. referred to as the Day of Purification. Whether this is a time “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” of great destruction or a time of revelation, rebirth, and I invite all of you to take part in this imaginal creation of evolution into a new age is up to each individual human our future together. May it be a glorious, graceful dance of being and the decisions we make in the days and years beatitude and ongoing renewal and revelation. ahead.
32 Now What? / Paul Andrade
Now What? Paul Andrade
Now What? But we did. Where do we go from here? Because of that roaring in our heads and the vision of the sacred mountain it led us towards. Stepping deeper into dark, unknown territory. And, we found others who had also answered the call of the It is what we have always done, Great Mystery. and yet, things seem different now, or maybe it is always this way, Some of us put on the Raccoon’s mask. for people like us. We adopted and adapted Coyote’s tricks; even as we walked, mostly unnoticed, among those many who had not yet Renegades, seekers, and adventurers who would not, could consciously put their feet on the path that leads to death. not accept the limiting roles that our culture offers. Somewhere, somehow each of our souls and hearts were Discovering both the joys and challenges of our journeys called by the Great Mystery. towards the Sacred River and Sacred Mountain we could not Called to embark on the same journey as our friend Jumping go back as the same people we were when we left. Mouse, to seek the source of that roaring sound in our ears. Meanwhile, the machine continued to grow and grow. It became bigger, more complex, more seductive, hungrier, Along the way we also met Raccoon, who said to us: I know and more dangerously violent. what that is. It caused many to forget simple ancient truths. That is the Great River. Come with me and I will show it to you. Like: So we followed Raccoon, despite the voices of those who thought we must be mad. The world is alive and constantly talking to us. Why embark on such a dangerous journey? The cycles of the Great Wheel continue despite the relentless Why choose such a challenging life? lights and noise. Why not stay here where life is comfortable and we have so We need to deal with our own shit, and keep our air and many goodies. water clean and pure. Darkness has a sacred purpose and place in the world. We have round the clock entertainment, delicious foods The Giveaway Ceremony assures that all people (not just the from far away lands, nice homes, family, and friends. human ones) will continue to survive and thrive. You will never have to feel lonely or bored again. There are movies, restaurants, reality TV shows, the The people (most of them anyhow) seemed to be enchanted internet, the endless excitement of sports and politics, by seductive spells; hypnotized by the bright lights and and if that is not enough we have drinks and drugs of all noise. kinds. Believing that all stories have happy endings, and that the Surely you don’t want to leave all this behind; to sit alone in Great Father in the sky would save us (or at least those who the dirt, exposed to the heat, cold, darkness, and wind for pleased him) from our sins. who knows what reasons?
33 Circles on the Mountain 2019 Photo by Corinna Stoeffl Photo by
Meanwhile the forests and topsoil continued to disappear, They were sacrificing the future while the fuel that ran their the glaciers began melting, storms grew larger and more machines was becoming more scarce and difficult to access. destructive, nuclear waste—poisonous for time spans longer Increasingly, the more-than-human people, who have lived than most people could comprehend—was created and here for much longer than humanity, were disappearing released into the world. forever.
Great and horrible wars were waged across the planet. So many people were being enslaved, tortured, and murdered as their lands and resources were being taken to Some grew fat, complacent, and lazy while others toiled and fuel the ever-growing carnival of excess. suffered, lacking sufficient food, clean water, housing, and health care. All the while the Empire continued to thrive Many people blamed their problems on others who they and grow, providing more distractions, more entertainment, imagined as being different and therefore less important more shopping, and more new play toys. than themselves.
Some—especially those who still lived close to the land and Everything seemed to have become inside out and the ways of their ancestors—tried to tell the world’s people backwards. that they had chosen the wrong path. The original inhabitants of this land that they called Turtle Island described it as Koyannisqatsi, meaning crazy life/life Instead of sacred reciprocity, they were acting like children out of balance/life calling for a new way of living. who believed they were immortal and that the world was theirs to do with as they pleased. But few listened to them. Few were even aware that they still lived here and still cared for this land,
34 Now What? / Paul Andrade or that they had anything worthwhile to say about how to So, live here. What are we to do?
As Empire continued to grow, it needed more fuel, more Wait patiently for those few seeking the source of the energy, more slaves (but it would never call them that) to Roaring in their head to find us? keep it alive and growing. . . . Become more like the Empire in convincing others to Soon all of life was being threatened by the extreme weather, join us? the violence, wars, hatred of others, and the intolerance of . . . Live like Coyote the trickster who seems to thrive no differences on which the empire thrived. matter what the Empire does to her? Leaders arose who promised that if we supported them with . . . Sit alone in the heat and dust and pray for guidance? money and power they would return everything back to . . . Actively work to stop the destruction? normal. . . . Join together in sacred space, sharing food and music, Back to how it used to be. talking among ourselves, and sharing our stories, dreams, But some of us questioned: What is this normal, you want to and visions? return to? . . . Grieve and face the darkness together, remembering Do we really want to go back to how it used to be, even if we those who have gone to the Sacred Mountain before us, could? . . . And when dawn arrives, celebrate our brief precious time here? Meanwhile, there were young ones coming who were curious about the roaring they heard inside their heads and felt Is this ‘The End,’ or just another ending? in their hearts when they tuned out the artificial light and noise. How will we choose to live in the face of our own inevitable Some still stole away from the distracting pleasures and deaths? ventured off into the unknown wilds, to be alone and endure In the face of the continuing mass extinctions—caused by being hungry, dirty, tired, too hot and/or too cold. our kind—of the other beings who were here long before us? Perhaps it was because of something they were missing. In the previously unthinkable possibility of our own and our Something the bright lights and noise could not give (sell) descendants’ looming self-destruction? them. Now What? Some called this mysterious something Soul—the invisible, Where will we go from here? untamable essence and mystery of life and death, that lived both within and beyond them.
Those who had glimpsed the mystery of the Sacred Mountains did their best to find each other. They gathered to share food, warmth, and the tales of their journeys, to find ways of keeping their visions and souls alive through the dark dangerous times. They grieved their losses and celebrated the joy of being alive in such a mysterious and magical world. They remembered and honored those who had gone before them, and they welcomed those who had only recently joined them. While others still under Empire’s spell continued to sacrifice the future for their comfort and entertainment.
And so, the Empire grows more seductive, more arrogant, more complex, more dangerous and threatening all the time. Those who live there continue to multiply, consume, and destroy the last few remaining wild places and those who live there.
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The week together began with one representative from THE GATHERING CORNER each country stepping into the council and speaking about This is a new feature for Circles on the Mountain. Since the their country. I heard the collective story of struggle and Gatherings are an important part of our community, and difficulty with political situations, social landscapes, and not everyone can always attend, it is our intention to share injustice, as well as the shared story of collective caring some stories from those who were there, for all to enjoy. for nature and the future of humanity. It was powerful to witness what draws us all together. It was deep recognition of not being individuals from many different countries, but being the world. The councils continued. The collective saw those that identified as Elders step into the center. I witnessed those that have experienced various changes over the time of their lives speak about how they identify with the title of Elder, what they have learned, and what they continue to learn. The words they spoke offered a refreshing drink, a gentle reassuring smile and a comfort in knowing that as life continues we all also continue to grow. The week continued and I found myself, in an honoring of being an introvert, moving my tent beneath an oak tree on the far outskirts of the grounds and wandering the lands
Photo submitted by Michelle Katz Photo submitted by of deep damp woods full of pines with the intermittent oaks, all meeting the rain in a soft quiet way. It was a place Twenty-Three Countries, of whispering life. The meeting of the wide and fast flowing glacial water, river Isar, offered a welcomed resonance and Two-Hundred Rite of Passage Guides, pace. I visited often, listening to the calling. Thousands of Woodland Trees in The drums from the South African community echoed Southern Germany: across the land every night, as did the feet that danced in sync with the heartbeat heard by human hands and One Unforgettable Experience breathing earth. Michelle Katz The week concluded with two councils to compliment the first two. One was the community gathering for decision- It has been hard for me to truly articulate what happened at making regarding the location of the next gathering. I have the 7th International Gathering of Rites of Passage Guides. I been, and continue to be, in awe of the way of this practice. am still sitting with it, reflecting and integrating it. And yet, Mostly, I sit in awe of the communal aim and deep desire it feels important to somehow articulate what I can about to include, share, and come to a consensus, a seemingly the experience, in living into the traditional and practice of impossible task of our time. I cannot help but exclaim, “I storytelling. From the high desert of New Mexico, lands of expansive views, monsoons, and wildfires, after 30+ hours of travel, I landed in the humid, wet woodlands of Southern Germany. Upon arrival, I pitched a tent, shared a meal with friends from familiar lands, and then began the ten days by participating in a powerful pilgrimage to Dachau. Two days later, the larger group arrived: 200 rite of passage guides from 23 different countries. Representation from Germany, Denmark, South Africa, Spain, the United Kingdom, the US, Israel, Columbia, Chile, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Czech Republic, China, France, Italy, Netherlands, Switzerland, and the list goes on. It was a beautiful collection of people to bare witness to, hugging and laughing and storytelling with
no knowledge of the passage of time. Kinde Nebeker Photo by
36 The Gathering Corner
love our way!” Especially as I watch the difficulty in it all The journey to Arizona was definitely part of the whole and how still we stay present and connected to each other, experience. Meeting up with fellow attendees on the drive continually meeting all the differences in thought and to the ranch was a wonderful start. When we arrived at the opinion with spaciousness, time, and patience for developing site, I was greeted like a long lost member, which continued more and more deep understanding. to make me feel like I had come home. I only knew one Finally, it was the council of the younger guides, the other person, but that changed within the first few minutes. guides of the future, who had the opportunity to share and Everyone was open and wanted to get to know each other. I be heard and seen. We began our circle holding hands in a set up my campsite and kept trading discoveries about good deeper knowing that regardless of feeling alone so often, we spots and exclamations about the beauty of the land with are never alone and we know each other, need each other, new arrivals. A special bond seemed to be created amongst and hold each other in deep respect and love. We honored those of us who camped on the mountain, strengthened our predecessors, we honored our stories and needs, and as we met for tea and coffee and waited for the showers to we dreamed of what is to come. In the end, the whole become available. community rose to hold, support, and celebrate the vision Some aspects of the gathering that really worked for a we collectively create. newcomer like me were the wonderful meals we shared and the small workshops where we learned and explored together. I was partnered with a mentor right away and those conversations made me feel so cared for. While I am comfortable in larger group settings, it was so special to have an intimate connection with an elder. I also decided to offer a workshop myself because it is my way of fully committing to a community and a ceremony, without worrying about who shows up. I ended up having the most wonderful experience when members came and were so appreciative of what I had to offer. Over the course of the gathering, I learned about using ceremony to design
Photo by Jason Geoffrion Photo by an event. I learned new songs and stories around a campfire. I shared logistics and The Arizona Gathering – 2018 real practical advice about setting up a guiding business Christiane Frischmuth and a way of life. I formed partnerships and relationships that are now rippling out into real guiding opportunities. I learned about how different generations relate to guiding My journey to Arizona for the 2018 gathering, and my and interpreted the opportunities and challenges present in process of becoming a member of the Wilderness Guides today’s world. Council, started in 2017. Because I participated in the month-long training with the School of Lost Borders that During the final day, when members were asked to year, I was unable to attend the International Gathering step into councils, my body and soul took over. Without of Wilderness Guides in Germany in 2017. I was not going any internal debate, I stepped into the 2019 Gathering to miss my chance to attend the 2018 WGC gathering in Council and the Advisory Council. The process of forming Arizona. Upon registering and having some trouble with and reforming those councils made it so easy to step up the website payment process, I had the most caring and and it also presented a way of taking responsibility for this responsive communication with our netkeeper. I was also community I now call my own. touched by the offers of assistance to find a ride to the What else has emerged since March 2018? I am inspired gathering. The place, the people, the program, and the to really experiment in so many ways after the gathering. interactions all spoke to me. Everything was about inclusion, I offered the ceremony for city people, for coaches, for my respect, and honoring the ceremony and the land. I had clients. I explored land in Europe and on the East Coast for found my community. future fasts. I connected to guides through the WGC website
37 Circles on the Mountain 2019
and have been meeting some of them. Living on the East cracks and wounds I just reopened. Everything soaks in, Coast, this has been very important as fewer guides seem saturating my body and taking over. But it feels good, just to make their home here than out West. I have updated letting go, feeling raw and real; and still does today. my website to include these new offerings and am actively spreading the word to my corporate and not-for profit clients This was almost seven years ago, a preview and summary as well as my friends. I traveled to Canada to prepare for all in one of what lay ahead, as I began incorporation. the 2019 gathering, which opened up that part of the world Embarking on my fast, I had no idea what I was getting to me. Being on a council, with the many phone calls and into, and never expected setting the intention to sever with meetings it entails, and the work in between, really created childhood. Nevertheless, after riding through a carefree year “families” rather than working groups. of gallivanting around, I found myself now spinning my wheels. In order to move forward, ultimately severance is what I chose. Throughout the weeks after my fast I crashed and crashed HARD, paralyzed by fear and confusion. The vision I received wasn’t what I expected, and it had no clear directed path forward. It was too intense to carry around, and I couldn’t bear to think of it. I had opened Pandora’s spirituality box. Nonetheless, I clung to this vision when everything else came undone. It lay in wait, always hidden in the back of my mind as a handle to grab; strength and hope in a secret map that could guide me through challenges ahead. Throughout that year, I was unable to care for myself, withdrawing from my community and everyone on my fast.
Photo by Corinna Stoeffl Photo by I was back on the east coast in my childhood home, after undergoing what I thought was severance with that very Washing Ashore: life stage. Were vision fast elements playing out on a larger A Gathering Incorporation scale, with a longer period of severance on a path towards Catie Armstrong adulthood? My loving parents stepped back into their care-taking The music is making me feel heavy and swollen but relieved role, though they didn’t understand why I needed them that that someone understands. The song “Breathe (2am)” by way again. I fell prey to childhood demons, and resorted to Anna Nalick plays on repeat as I drive to meet everyone old, half-baked childish coping tactics to pull out of crisis for for dinner. I’m a wreck and this song is just barely getting the time being. me through. After my fast, my vision, the lyrics move After resurfacing and severing once again, I headed back through me as the meaning becomes clear and rings true. out west with my feet on the ground, and . . . I crashed Everything is so intense, my emotions, my body sensations, again. Once more, I couldn’t manage life’s obstacles. After the sunlight. trying old coping techniques to climb out of this hole, I met We’re seated on the porch. Restaurant dining outdoors, a brick walls. Maybe this life stage transition required me to nice way to incorporate. But it’s too much for me. I’m seated look beyond childhood ways. Maybe I had to try something in direct sunlight and can’t take it. new. I get up and walk to my truck, sobbing uncontrollably. I took to solitude and withdrew again, moving to I’m falling apart . . . again. I can’t stand it. This hasn’t southeast Arizona with my new partner to live in a tent happened since I was a teenager. Old feelings creep back on relatively undeveloped land. I didn’t know then, but I in, that all-consuming fear, losing control and falling into was making space to confront myself, face survival, work despair within myself. I’m petrified. through all that I’ve tried to sneak around, and step into me. I can’t catch my breath, bawling, lying draped over This seemed to be the start of my threshold. my steering wheel. I feel like I was chewed up, spit I spent time on the land, clearing my head and connecting out, and smashed against the rocks by turbulent ocean with what my soul needed. Forced to battle my demons, I waves. Washing ashore, I’m exhausted from the stinging discovered new ways of interfacing with my reality. And in
38 The Gathering Corner the midst of it, a newfound peace settled in. I had gathered words lingered as I experienced learning as a form of being, necessary tools for the next phase. It was time to untangle instead of doing. I was able to stop rebelling, and could just my bewildering but sacred vision. be, letting go of my fear of outcomes, of the future. Returning hesitantly to my vision, I found that it naturally With guidance from my aunt and the group, I returned integrated into my reality, serving as inspiration for from the sacred mountain with a gift intertwined with reuniting. I was beginning my Incorporation. hers to share with my people. I relayed the importance I rediscovered the Wilderness Guides Council just in time of incorporating an element at future gatherings that to sign up for the gathering in Oracle, AZ, near my home. would help fasters reconnect and incorporate with their I wasn’t sure if I was ready, and was questioning “worth” rites of passage experiences. Maybe my aunt’s and my and “meaning” within rites of passage. But maybe there interconnected combined gift is to further tell our fellow was something larger at work here. While nervous, slightly human species to reconnect and incorporate with each other. skeptical, and with some cognitive dissonance, I trusted the I can begin to do so in this special space of the WGC, created coincidence and signed up for an incorporation into the rites for continued growth, and starting with Aunt Amy’s words . . . of passage community. In loving memory of Amelia “Aunt Amy” Armstrong My gathering experience was incorporation tenfold. Within a matrix of love, acceptance, and support, the space encouraged us to go through our tunnels and emotions without reservation. Thank you all for that opportunity. I was relieved to find fertile ground for growth. Open-hearted, raw, and pleasantly vulnerable, I welcomed change. Upon entering the “House of Remembrance” ceremony, I called for Aunt Amy, who passed before her gift was realized. That night, her words from years ago finally resounded through with meaning, “THE PURPOSE OF LIFE IS TO LEARN THROUGH OUR STRUGGLES, AND TO HELP ONE ANOTHER IN LIFE’S STRUGGLES.” When I shared her complete written piece, “Rules for the New Millenium,” during the talent show, her wisdom was further appreciated as her words touched the entire group, for which I am relieved and grateful. I ruminated on Aunt Amy’s words as I reconnected with my incredible guides, Larry and Petra, who took the time to listen and validate my journey, for which I am so grateful. Through Aunt Amy’s new lens, I conveyed my story. Energy that had been building inside of me throughout the gathering presently matured into a large ball. As I told the last of my story, it slowly began to release, floating out to start a longer process of breathing a vast expansive opening out into what lay ahead. I was finally realizing the fulfillment of bringing back my gift from the sacred mountain, and it had been received with open arms. As the gathering ended, I felt a shift. I was no longer a “younger.” At the closing ceremony, I stepped from the “youngers” circle to the “middlers,” marking my Photo by Corinna Stoeffl Photo by incorporation within this loving community. This gathering was powerful in ways I couldn’t conceive. I’m incredibly grateful to be received in my quest for incorporation by such loving and caring people. Days later, I felt a letting go, and sensed a loop had closed. A project was completed that I never knew I had started. Aunt Amy’s
39 Circles on the Mountain 2019
Contributors Roz Katonah (they/them) is a curious soul who is fascinated by the spiritual experience of being in an intelligent human body. As a black latinx non-binary person, they understand Kim Allen has been guiding youth and adults in their learning the power of transition and view coming out as a sacred rite of journeys in wilderness, farming, and outdoor education settings passage. They co-guided the Queer Mountain Quest in 2018. for over 15 years. She is passionate about supporting people, They are passionate about exploring the healing connections particularly those marginalized from nature, in exploring the between the Earth and their ancestors. Roz finds joy in living wisdom of the land while discovering their own inner wisdom. their best-imagined life. A woman of many shoes, you can also find her backpacking, playing ultimate frisbee, refereeing girl’s lacrosse, coding, biking, pruning, carving spoons, and rock climbing. Michelle Katz – Michelle embodies joy, humor, and love into everything she does. She is a wilderness guide, trained counselor, and yoga practitioner. Her favorite part of guiding is Greenman - Paul Andrade: “Our remote ancestors said to the stories shared that not only capture the wonder of a nature their mother Earth, ‘We are yours.’ Modern humanity said to connection, but also weave into the greater story of humanity to Nature, ‘You are mine.’ The Green Man archetype returning as offer a meaning that changes us. Michelle brings all of herself to the living face of the whole earth enables us to say through his her practice and business, Oaks Counsel. You can best find her mouth to the universe, ‘We are one.’” — William Anderson in in nature with her dog, in ceremony. Green Man: Archetype of Our Oneness with the Earth
Keith Howchi Kilburn increasingly lives in the Imaginal Catie Armstrong’s love for the land started Back East as a Realm. After a lifetime of writing poetry, he has been writing child and blossomed out west in college, where she studied fiction for the last seven years. He recently published Arks outdoor education. From there she traveled, taught outdoors, of Rainbow Light as an ebook on Amazon. His commitment participated in a vision fast, and landed in her current to ceremony, meditation, quest, and other spiritual practices southwest home. Following her Aunt Amy’s lead, she’s learning remains steadfast. Upon request, he will email his current work about, developing, and loving the land she lives on. in progress, Instruction Manual for the Day of Purification, and solicits your comments. Howchi invites you to write him at Christiane Frischmuth - Guiding and rites of passage [email protected]. ceremonies are Christiane’s soul’s work and she is merging these practices into all areas of her life. She is also an Ann Linnea has been a wilderness guide since she was 16 organizational development facilitator, a life and leadership years old. In the last two decades she has devoted herself coach, and designs leadership development experiences all over specifically to wilderness quest work. She is co-founder of The the globe. She teaches Yoga and meditation. Christiane has been Circle Way work, author of numerous natural history books courting her muses of dancing, painting, writing poetry and including Deep Water Passage and Keepers of the Trees, and articles, and making pottery. She is living into seeing beauty and co-guide of Cascadia Quest in eastern Washington. She lives on becoming a young elder. Whidbey Island with her beloved partner, co-guide, co-author, and life journeyer, Christina Baldwin. Sara Harris taught elementary school in her twenties and went on to enjoy a 35-year career as a psychotherapist. At 50, Denis Marier is a naturopathic doctor, ecopsychologist, and she went on her first Vision Fast, and has been in love with this wilderness therapy guide with a special interest in working with way ever since. She co-founded EarthWays LLC and also served survivors of trauma and those given a life-limiting diagnosis. on the new board of School of Lost Borders for seven years. He is the founder of Tribe Academy, offering wilderness rites She guides an Elder program with Lost Borders and various of passage and other ecopsychology practices and trainings programs with EarthWays LLC. for those healing and re-wilding themselves, helping others in their search for their most essential selves. He lives and works Trebbe Johnson is the author of Radical Joy for Hard in Ontario, Canada with his therapy dog, Dharma Phoebe Times: Finding Meaning and Making Beauty in Earth’s Broken Bouffet. www.TribeAcademy.ca, IG/FB: @DenisMarier, IG: @ Places, and two other books, as well as many articles and essays DharmaTherapyDog that explore people’s relationships with nature. She is also the founder and director of the global community Radical Joy for Hard Times, devoted to finding and making beauty in wounded places.
40 Contributors
Kinde Nebeker, MA, MATP is an ever-budding wilderness Pınar Sinopoulos-Lloyd (they/them) is a non-binary rites of passage guide, designer, and Integral Coach. Her love of guide; diversity, equity & inclusivity (DEI) consultant; and the big questions like “who am I and what am I to do?” led her co-founder of Queer Nature, an ‘organism’ stewarding earth- to a degree in Transpersonal Psychology and Ecopsychology, based queer community through ancestral skills, nature- where she fell in love with wilderness rites of passage. She is the connection, and vision fasts. Enchanted by the liminal, Pınar creator of New Moon Rites of Passage, which connects people is an indigenous futurist of Huanca, Turkish, and Chinese to their to earth, to themselves, and to each other in order to descent. Their inspiration is envisioning chthonic initiation support a collective jump in consciousness and build a more in the Chthulucene. Their relationship with queerness, sustainable human presence on the planet. neurodivergence, indigeneity, and belonging guided their www.newmoonritesofpassage.com development of queer ecopsychology with a somatic and depth approach through a decolonial lens.
Sofia Nicholson was born and raised in Flagstaff, Arizona where she climbed ponderosa pine trees and tickled tadpoles Sophia (“So”) Sinopoulos-Lloyd is a white queer Greek- in perennial streams. She attended college in Connecticut, but American who grew up in the northern hardwood forests of quickly returned to the Southwest in search of sunshine and Alnobak territory (central Vermont). So’s work is animated by red rock. Her greatest adventures include: planting 200 trees studies of identity, place, and interspecies relationship within in Ireland; seeing twenty-five humpback whales bubble-feed in contexts of colonization, globalization, migration, and climate Sitka, Alaska; and assisting five women on their vision quests on change. So founded Queer Nature with their spouse where they the Green River. Sofia currently works at Zion National Park. develop nature-based programming for LGBTQ2+ people.
Darcy Ottey: Nature-based rites of passage have been Darcy Anne Stine has been an active member of WGC since 1990, Ottey’s life since her own coming of age at 13. Over the last and is founder of Wilderness Rites. She is seasoned practitioner two decades, she has guided hundreds of youth and adults on with 42-years of experience as an ecotherapist, licensed transformative journeys. Darcy’s ancestors include Quaker psychotherapist, mentor, and rites of passage guide. She is settlers, British coalminers, and Ukrainian peasants. Her happily embedded in the natural world of the Rogue Valley passions include dancing under the full moon, making folk and southern Oregon, continuing to offer wilderness quests, dolls, and helping restore justice, trust, ancestral connection, mentoring, and earth-based practicing groups, as well as an and love. She serves as part of the core leadership for Youth ongoing ecotherapy and multi-disciplined psychotherapy Passageways. www.darcyottey.com, www.youthpassageways.org practice.
Susanne Petermann has been co-leading a women’s vision Corinna Stoeffl did her first Vision Quest in 1989 and began fast with Anne Stine and Wilderness Rites since 2010. She training with the School of Lost Borders in 1991. She became is the author of When I Go, a collection of translated poetry a member of the WGC in 1994. In 2007, after her move to by Rainer Maria Rilke. Among other hats, she wears those of New Mexico, she became a full time photographer. Today, she writer, collage artist, personal organizer, and Creative with a facilitates people in becoming more conscious through a variety capital “c.” of workshops. Check out her website www.beinginawareness. com. She started an online community called ‘Exploring Consciousness.’ James Shipman has been leading vision quests with his wife Beau Leonhart for almost 40 years. They have taken well-over 1500 teenagers to the desert in that time, and now have begun a Jennifer J. Wilhoit, Ph.D. is a writer, spiritual ecologist, program to take those same teenagers, now adults, back out to and longtime hospice volunteer. She founded TEALarbor stories the desert. Beau is a founding member of the Wilderness Guides through which she supports people’s deep storying processes: Council. James has been practicing Aikido since 1976, which “compassionate guidance through writing, nature, & life’s has informed his vision quest work immensely. They live in difficult landscapes.” Her work focuses on the human/nature Northern California. relationship - the inner/outer landscape. She spends her leisure time hiking and making beauty in natural landscapes, reading, traveling, and dabbling in creative arts. Jennifer thrives in the beautiful Pacific Northwest landscape where she lives. www. tealarborstories.com
41 Circles on the Mountain 2019
2020 Circles Theme
Compassion, Understanding, and Unity
Through our work, we give our hearts to our people and the earth. We know from our own direct experience that ceremony, intention, and solo time create a container in which the heart can crack open.
As hearts open, we can hear and honor the voices of life. We awaken more fully to our own voice and life, the voices of all beings, and the voices of the earth and the cosmos. Our perception of the “other,” of whom we may have been suspicious or judgmental, can soften. We may begin to sense our oneness with all of life and be more willing to give our gifts and take our rightful place in the unfolding and evolution of life and consciousness itself.
In this next issue, we are looking for stories that remind us that love, kindness, and compassion are fruits of this path.
We want to hear how even small moments have altered your direct, heart-centered knowing of the value of all of life.
What have you had the privilege to bear witness to in the awakening of the heart of another?
What has been a direct result of your opening to the oneness with the earth and all beings through this work?
What are your stories of how this work has opened more kindness and compassion in your life, the life of a participant, or a community?
Your poems, stories, and photos are welcome. We need to come drink from the well of our heart stories again and again.
Please send us your submissions, photos, poetry! Deadline: January 10th, 2020
All current, dues-paying members of the WGC are eligible to submit original work. Please limit the length of your piece to a maximum of 1500 words. Please also include your bio of 50 – 75 words max. File formats for written work should be .doc and artwork should be .tiff or .jpg Send your contribution electronically as a Word document to: [email protected]
42 Circles on the Mountain Issue #24 These Challenging Times 2019 circles on the mountain These Challenging Times 2019
Managing Editor / Sara Harris Copy Editor / Laura Brady Proofreader / Denis Marier Design & Production / Kinde Nebeker Photo Editor / Corinna Stoeffl
Cover photo by Corinna Stoeffl
© 2019 Wilderness Guides Council Circles on the Mountain is an annual production of the Wilderness Guides Council www.wildernessguidescouncil.org
Past Issues Circles on the Mountain has been published since 1988. It began as a quarterly and after Fall 1991 became an almost annual journal written for and by the members of the Wilderness Guides Council. Contact the Netkeeper for the Wilderness Guides Council at [email protected] for information about past issues.