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.