This is the first one, so it’s far from perfect. I’m speaking probably a little too slow and haven’t quite found my rhythm, but I feel good about the path ahead.

From our spot in the forest.

Magnolia seed pods found near me that I’ll use as a spice, thanks Bonny.

The messages I’m receiving from nature lately.. Whenever I’m not sure what to write - I can often overthink as I want to be in service, I want my writing to be in service. And as the name of my Substack suggests, I want to write what the forest, or nature, has to speak through me. I don’t want to write from my ego. I could have the same essay or same stories to tell, but the intention is what makes the difference. I need to enter the intention before I let what wants to come out.

Lately I’ve been feeling a push to share behind the scenes, beneath the surface. What is actually happening in my life. Let this be of service.

Not that I share anything to misconstrue the perception of my life. But a Scorpio will tell you they don’t like to expose everything. Some things are better, or more fun, to keep hidden. But alas the 7 placements in my 10th house of career, reputation, legacy in Scorpio serve as a strong, if not ambivalent, suggestion that I should at least try showing more of below the surface.

I’ve always had my mind made up. Always had a firm foot down (until knocked off my feet completely). My parents tell stories of me as a toddler bold and convicted. Later on my friends reflected my life back to me as ‘alternative’, although to me there hasn’t been another way.

I left home at 16 and went to art boarding school. I hiked the Appalachian Trail. I ran for/was elected to town council and started a business having absolutely no clue in either. I never took a 9-5. I’ve worked for others, but even working for upstanding people, my skin crawls when I have to gain someone’s approval.

My astrology reflects this - Ascendant in Aquarius “Your destiny is to find freedom by embracing your individuality”; Venus in Scorpio “you may have more strength, energy, and focus than most people - and what you pursue is unique”. My human design reflects this "your right angle cross of contagion is characterized by individuals marked by ambition and a desire for individual expression”. These are things I’ve known and felt, just validated.

It’s not only life decisions, but the way I move through day-to-day. In school when I’d offer my opinion, more than once I was asked if I was high.

I can’t really help it. I don’t necessarily try to be different, but I also don’t think sameness is very attractive, for me at least.

I was told I was different, and I eventually did cling to that as an identity because I didn’t really understand what it meant. Then I started to notice how very differently people see their everyday lives and the circumstances of their lives.

In a leadership class two or three years ago, we talked about strengths, and I learned some people actually like doing tasks and are oriented toward crossing items off a list, whereas I usually lose my to-do list soon after I make it. I’m motivated by ideation and creativity. I want to keep gaining newness to integrate into my encompassing theory of life and the Universe thereafter. Sameness or expectedness doesn’t teach me anything; I’m not lit up. It’s not better or worse, just different.

I have other essays mostly written: a manifesto for my new business, money & energy, who is Jesus… But for write now, this is feeling more right. [I didn’t mean that misspelling but I like hidden messages in plain sight, especially with language, so I’ll keep it]

For whatever reason, or for many reasons altogether, I’m rediscovering my life and reconsidering who I think I am and what I want. I’m dispelling my goals and projects into what it is that is actually true, even if it means removing 9/10 of what the thing has been built into.

Dispel

A word that has caught my attention. In the witchy world, ‘casting spells’ has become common language, but what about dispel. How can I unwind all the things I’ve made up down to their core essence.

Perhaps this sort of consideration comes at the height of Summer, at the height of the rollercoaster when the chug-chug-chug stops, the anticipatory slow down, and look toward the fall.

Toward the Fall.

There it is again.

I’ve reconsidered am I a person who really is slow and steady, or is that a persona I’m wearing. What is beneath it. What happens if I play with movement more.

Am I really tied to a home, as I’ve attached myself to for six years in my childhood home and then a few months in a country cottage, before moving out just three days ago. Who will I be with more mobility? I always like who I become with only a backpack of my most necessary & precious belongings, wandering through forests, towns, and rivers. My riches becoming the stranger who sneaks fresh fruit to me, a trail at dusk, and the Spirit that’s not given enough space often enough to let me know I’m always in company.

I’m reconsidering the experiences this new business offers: what is truly at the core. I know I want to facilitate the connection between our secular human experience and the animate Forest that is desperately, lovingly calling for us. But I’m feeling a shift in the shape. And I’m feeling a shift in how much my human self can do.

I’m feeling drawn to new depths of creativity.

I’ve been so infinitely deeply inspired by the experience design camp in France, by skinny dipping under moonlight just after a friend told us it was her birthday at midnight, by the baby shower of a friend from middle school, by sitting on the couch with my mom each morning while she reads her three devotions and I write my three morning pages and then we watch the hummingbirds together.

I am so infinitely inspired by sitting in my favorite coffee shops and book shops around Boone, and the devotion to placemaking.

I wrote somewhere, on some internet platform, that I was taking the month of July off. I didn’t mean from working; I meant from striving. Like in January I let the same space settle between commitments. That kind of space the Spirit asks for to be heard.

I’m listening and listening. In every moment.

Last week I went to France for an Impact Experience Design Camp, a gathering of nature-based experience designers from around the world whose intention is to change the world we live in by creating it. My mind expanded 10x, and my heart expanded 1000x. Upon returning I felt I was stepping back into someone else’s life. What are these things in her calendar? Who are these emails from? The digits on her credit card bill? How can I put these pieces together to create something new…

Speaking of credit card, I do have bills to pay and writing these essays takes a good chunk of my time and energy. From now on some personal essays will be discovered only upon entering the secret password (money), or Speak ‘Friend’ And Enter :)

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In retreats people want to gather intentionally and intimately in spaces designed to be surrounded by nature, settle the nervous system, and discover new aspects of themselves. In these places, the ego resolves and conversation deepens, and we find ourselves sharing in vulnerability and exploring new territory. We explore the possibilities of the future we’re building, together and as individuals. Retreats are workshopping the new paradigm and realizing our values.

Values gaining traction within popular demand (as opposed to the manipulation controlled from top-down) as we shift are nature, spirituality, and health. I could argue creativity is a fourth theme, but maybe that’s because those four words are my core values and I’m projecting them onto the collective.

The first three though - nature, spirituality and health - are clearly indicated by the mainstream and by “market trends” that they are growing in popularity. Katherine Johnston, Global Wellness Institute Senior Research Fellow, said “There’s been a sea change in consumer mindsets, with prevention, mental health, social connection, the impacts of our living environments, and nature becoming dramatically more important all over the world.”

Wellness as an industry has surpassed all other mega-industries, including the sports industry, tourism, and IT. Within that growth, retreats and wellness real estate are some of the fastest growing sectors.

In general consumer products, we can also see the pattern shift toward authentic health when some of the biggest brands are marketing using the language we the people demand - even if we can’t entirely trust the validity behind the greenwashing words - Pepsi’s prebiotic soda, organic potato chips, Secret and Old Spice’s cardboard tube deodorant. Big brands are changing products and language because the People demand change in accordance with their values, and the People have the power to create change.

How We Value

Our values as a society are shifting, and the way that we create and honor value is shifting as well. Specifically I mean the way that we understand money and the exchange of money.

Over the last few decades, we’ve increasingly placed a great deal of importance on non-tangible aspects of society, e.g. intellectual work, digital products and services, while devaluing physical labor and products. Consider the wage of a software engineer compared to a farmer, despite the fact that we need food fundamentally to live and do not need technology to sustain our bodies.

Consider the importance our society places on digital followers on social media accounts. Consider shopping online versus in person. Consider the value of the number in the bank account. Yet no one knows what that number really represents. We all just have a vague idea with an unspoken agreement of how much of our time we’ll trade for a number and then how much of that number we’ll trade for something we want.

Sure, I’ll trade an hour of my time for 100. Sure, I’ll trade 8 (!!!) for a fancy little latte. No, I won’t trade any amount of money for anything from Amazon.

One portion of that number could be traded for food and another portion traded for website design but we don’t usually trade food for website design. Not yet anyway. Or not anymore, anyway.

The translation of time or a product into a number continues giving authority to that number. But that number is not an objective measurement; it is deeply ingrained with the power structure of the old paradigm - the paradigm that is controlled by the parasitic class through the wealth gap, technological surveillance, and the federal reserve.

A subsidized food system devoid of nutrients described as ‘commodities’, inflation and gas prices, minimum wage - the numbers are constructed at the top, and the people constructing them are not people I want to serve.

As our collective increasingly values health and nature, a trade system that prioritizes cheap prices for watery vegetables will not keep. While we’re shifting our collective values, let’s also shift how our collective values.

Our current paradigm treats money as something to accumulate, but any example in nature indicates a storage will eventually rot. We often feel negatively about spending money, trying to reduce the amount we spend or feeling guilty for spending money. Wal-Mart has had taglines about saving money since the 60’s, but in the 2000’s associated saving money with a better life: “Save Money. Live Better”

The underlying narrative pushed with saving money is that one can do more with their money and buy something else. It’s not about being able to afford something else essential, like housing or healthcare, because those numbers are artificially manufactured to be just within/outside of what we can afford to keep us barely hanging on and submissive to the System.

The new paradigm acknowledges that we already have everything we need - both our human essentials like food and housing, as well as the intangibles like joy, that despite marketing cannot be sold to us in a product like a new plastic shirt.

The way we value needs to align with and honor what we value. If we value nature, health, and spirituality more, do not be afraid to spend money on these things.

I enjoy spending money on local vegetables. I enjoy spending money at a shop where the owner is working the register. I don’t enjoy spending money in a place that gives power to billionaires or contributes to the global plastic crisis, so I do not spend my money at Amazon or buy synthetic materials. I do not give my value to those I do not value.

Working within the outdoor industry, I sometimes hear “access to nature should be free” referencing taking someone on a guided hike, or regarding spiritual gatherings that it’s questionable someone would charge money for such an event. I agree with the sentiment, but when I look at my values, I want my money to go toward nature and the people who tend nature. I want to support the livelihood of people who invest their time and energy into creating and facilitating these events. We can often be more skeptical of giving money to the local person making an honorable living than the internet billionaire an internet away selling internet on the internet.

What values are you giving your value to?

If you want help determining your personal core values, I recommend two exercises. One is through To Be Magnetic where you audit your spending habits, time, social media accounts, etc and determine the patterns. The other is much faster but based less on actual patterns than perceived values and that is a worksheet with a bunch of words that you circle and then narrow down. Both are linked below.

Knowing core values is a major life hack. I make all decisions - what I do with my time and with whom, where I spend money, items in my home - based on these values, which means damn near every single thing in my life reflects what I care about most which connects me to my purpose and joy in every moment.

The next and final piece of this three-part essay will be about money and energy and will bring into focus more of the spiritual lens through which the paradigm is shifting.

BY THE WAY

Appalachian Summer Camp registration closes June 4. Inspired by Gemini; horseback ride, fly fish, sauna & pond swimming.

Forest Sanctuary Day, a day of embodied ecology, is June 7. Donation-based.

References

To Be Magnetic Authentic Code / Core Values

Values Worksheet Brené Brown

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As a newly-founded retreat leader, looking around it appears that everyone and their mother is now offering retreats. Old business ideology might make me think Oh no the market is flooded. But we are creating a new world, and ideas about industry, money, and economy are in shift. We can direct this shift, if we see and use the power we have to do so. If we don’t use our power, someone else will direct this shift for us, likely back toward the fear and complacency we are emerging from.

Instead of fear, ego, and insecurity, I choose to look at the retreat boom as indication that we are altogether seeking spaces of deep presence and collective visioning, and I choose to see that it is so good for us to gather in person and share earthly delights together. I choose to believe that we need a boom of intentional gathering spaces for our collective healing and transformation into our new paradigm. Instead of fear, I feel love for these spaces and the people creating them.

Retreats offer the time to settle in and know each other on new levels. People who were strangers become beacons of restored faith in humanity as we discover we’re not so different here on the ground level. Retreats offer space to deeply focus, which is an anecdote to the attention economy that slices and sells our divided attention.

I believe we’re gathering in this way because we are collectively embodying a new world in which we’re living more attuned to our authentic selves, i.e. why we came to Earth, and in deeper relationship with the Earth. We’re gathering in retreats where we turn our phones off and eat organic meals because we’re feeling the drive toward what is real in a world that is increasingly hard to discern what is real.

These spaces of real connection, real food, and real intention are basically secret meetings from the Deep State. We practice embodied community-sufficiency and experience abundant joy in a way that makes the need for Big Industry almost entirely irrelevant because when we gather in this way, we realize everything we need we already have.

New World Order

There’s no denying there is a collapse occurring. Whether it’s society as a whole or the belief in a society we were taught supported our best interest, there is certainly a crumbling, a falling away, a death of the old ways. In various spiritual groups, this time is also being called “The Ascension”, “The Great Unraveling”, the New Paradigm, a transition into the next dimension. I don’t think I’ve spoken to one person, regardless of background or affiliation, that doesn’t at least feel a deep shift in the ways we live, believe, or relate.

I think the shift is because of the stars but I couldn’t tell you which ones.

The Epstein Files mention a New World Order, but please know that they, the elite/evil class, are not responsible for the shift. It is happening regardless of them. However they are aware of it and they will take advantage of it, sucking our energy back toward them. That is unless we the people take responsibility in this shift.

How do we want the future to unfold?

I take responsibility and own my power by living into a future based on nature, health, and spirituality. Our collective future is built by each individual’s choice for the future. The retreat boom is validation that I’m not alone.

My next retreat is Appalachian Summer Camp June 11-14.

Explore my other eco-embodiment retreats here.

I’ve been coming to Wood’s Hole to work-for-stay or just visit & make art for the last six years. Once for a month, once for a week, and now for a few days in the middle of the week to prep garden beds, haul firewood, and open up the hostel bunkhouse for Appalachian Trail hikers 625 miles into their thru-hike. For the first time, I hadn’t come here to figure out anything about my life.

“The simplest answer is I’m living totally from my purpose. Everything I do - the work I do for my nonprofit, the house I’m moving into, the retreats I’m building - everything I do is from my purpose of connecting people to nature.” I smiled.

“I know the answer, but I want to ask to hear your answer-” She said, “Why do you want to connect people to nature?” I smiled bigger.

Three reasons, I told her.

The first is that if we build our lives in reverence to our relationship to nature, we are healthier. If we choose food without pesticides and GMOs, we choose plants grown in the natural system that are integrated into Earth they grow from. When we choose our clothes, if they are natural fibers, which support our bodies energy field, we are able to put them in the compost to decompose when these clothes are too worn to ware. When our city and energy infrastructure is built in respect to nature, we would rather walk down shaded sidewalks and trails, breathing in fresh air saying hello to passers-by, than ride isolated in our metal death chambers.

The second reason is that when we are healthier, we are content with less and we are connected to what is true. During this visit, I’ve been thinking how I’d rather drive the Kubota hauling firewood than drive a fancy new car; I’d rather sit on this porch and talk with a stranger for hours than meet any celebrity. I’d rather spread wormy compost with my bare hands on the garden beds than try any new biohacking device. I’d rather sleep in my car, listening to the owl, the woodpecker, the coyotes, the creek just feet from my feet - the song of the woods - than in a climate-controlled insular four-walls. I am so content to be healthy, and and my health gives me so much joy it feels like pure abundance. Thoughts of trends, social media, material possessions don’t even cross my mind.

The third reason is that our bodies are of Earth and there is a deep reciprocal relationship with it. This relationship is not only what we materially give and take (more often taking) but there is an immaterial flow of energy between us as well. In the same way I might remember the fondness of a favorite childhood tree, that tree has a memory of me as well. This is a space beyond the rational mind, and our society has taught us to disbelieve this relational connection with non-human beings. If we practice dissolving the ego, becoming one with what’s around, and if we listen, we will hear the Earth speaking to us, and if we speak to the Earth, the plants, animals, and rocks will listen.

In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer wrote that “In some Native languages the term for plants translates to “those who take care of us.” "

It feels deeply bizarre to have never felt so deeply joyful and living my purpose while the darkest parts of our society are being exposed, collapse often feels right around the corner, and accountability is nowhere to be seen.

I don’t think there’s any coincidence that this pure joy is erupting at the same time as deep darkness. I know many others who are also feeling so joyful, present, and grateful in their personal lives, and I believe this self-realization of individuals is directly related to the wave of goodness pushing up the badness to light, revealing it. It’s important we do not let the wave of corruption wash over us and overwhelm us. We need to look it head on, but we also need to always remember we will overcome it with right action. It is important that we channel our individual light that we’ve found into the collective.

On another trip to Wood’s Hole a few years ago and under a different president, telling stories on the porch, someone casually asked Neville, “What would you do if the value of the dollar dropped tomorrow?” She answered, “Well, I’d have good friends.” I chuckled imagining her back in her holler shooting the shit with friends while the world went up in flames. Instead she followed with, “I’d have a friend who’s a carpenter, someone who knows how to chop wood, someone who can garden…” By a ‘good’ friend, she meant a friend who can contribute.

It all comes full circle, or full spiral. Our reverence for the Earth is multifaceted, or multidimensional. It is both to sit by and listen to a brook for its wisdom, and it is to know how to filter water. It is both telling a tree of her beauty and to know how to chop firewood for warmth and food. It is acknowledging all that Earth gives to us and giving back, as Robin Wall Kimmerer wrote, which is sometimes simply gratitude. "When we give gratitude to the land, it heightens our consciousness of living in such a way that the land will be grateful for us."⁠

References

Wood’s Hole Hostel

I’m hosting a retreat at Wood’s Hole in October where we’ll eat food from the garden, watch the sunrise from a rocking chair with a cup of home-roasted coffee, tell stories, and meet the forest of a special little holler in Southwest Virginia.

Last month was my birthday. For the past few years, birthday celebrations have meant some form of a party at the house or going out to bars. This year of my life felt like a monumental shift in accepting who I am and what matters to me, and I wanted to honor that with my intention. I also personally have grown in my dislike of idly standing or sitting around and chatting, especially small talking. I wanted an active experience that brought us deeper.

I began planning about a month before, starting with what I wanted to honor most. The past year demonstrated to me how powerful and necessary it is to lean on my feminine community, to protect it, to grow it in depth and breadth, and to harness our power individually and collectively. I knew I wanted to focus on gathering women and create connections beyond myself.

For a few weeks I was kind of stuck there. A few other ideas came to mind: hike and yoga, visit Wood’s Hole, hire a private chef for a lovely meal at home. But I wanted it to be more involved, where people would feel a unique experience occurring around them and that they felt integral to. I wanted it to be ceremonial enough to honor the passing of my year, but also joyful and lighthearted since it was a party after all.

Feeling stuck, I prayed for an idea. I’ll take a moment here to note that praying doesn’t have to involve a dramatic fall to knees “Lord save me”. Sometimes when I’m working on my computer, feeling overwhelmed or distracted I’ll just close my eyes and say a little prayer to be directed to what I need to work on next.

From my prayer, I was given ideas of the elements, a mailed invitation, and people working together in small groups. The small groups served my highest intention of creating more intimate connections among a larger community. The mailed invitation contributed to a sense of slowness, mystery, physical presence, and commitment. The elements- fire, water, air, and earth- are a guide within my life, desiring to master the physical element and its spiritual essence, so it felt like an extension of me to form the party from this guide.

Prior to mailing an invitation, I created the small groups of people based on who already knew who, how, or who I wanted to spend more time together. I put each small group under an element team, sometimes based off what I knew of those peoples’ Sun sign, their shared experience, or what the task for the group would be. For example, the fire team were all people who went on a retreat to Shenandoah National Park with me in May, where we built fires together so I thought it would be cute to have them reunion around the fire.

My mom had told me of a party she went to years ago where everyone drew names to work on a team where they each made a recipe together. I loved this idea because it mixes up the social dynamic, and personally, I like to be a little materially engaged when hanging out, like playing a game, making something, etc. If I am sitting at a table and we are just chatting, I will probably too-quickly want to start talking about your childhood beliefs that shape your worldview and where you think we go after we die. So having something to focus on keeps it medium-light.

Anyway, it all clicked when realizing the earth team makes food, then the water team makes drinks, and the fire team makes fire, and the air team contributes the intangible.

So I had a frame to follow, and went back through the plan start to finish putting in details that would make sense later. I just love the feeling of being in an experience when you realize something that previously happened occurred for a later part of the plan. Layers. Godlike. Unfolding Mystery.

Back to the invitations: I put an icon of that person’s team on their card and told them to bring it to the party. I also asked each person to bring an item. Unbeknownst to them, it would contribute to another team’s success in their mission, e.g. asking a water person to bring fruit for the earth people or an earth person to bring firestarter for the fire people.

In the time between their invitation and the party, I also asked friends who lived too far to join to be a part of the clues. I asked my little brother to make a playlist to send to the airkeepers. I asked my best friend in California to send a clue to a Boone best friend in the waterkeepers. Each person who was asked to send a clue to a team was a mutual friend between me and that team, reminding us all of the web beyond us.

The invitation said the party started promptly at 6 pm, and so at 6 pm everyone showed up and walked a pathway lit by candles into my basement also lit by candles with a table in the middle. The table had four cards on it with the element icons. I told everyone to match their icon to a card on the table and stand behind it. From this, they identified their teams. Then I told them their first clue would be directly behind them. For each team, a candle sat next to a box, and inside the box there was a scroll. The scroll gave a riddle for where they would find their treasure chest with the goods for their task.

Off they went following clues around the house and into the dark outside. They found their boxes and got to work, while I moseyed around watching.

One by one, the teams were ready. We took a drink from the waterkeepers outside to the fire with the firekeepers, joined in a ceremony created by the airkeepers, and to close, enjoyed the feast of the earthkeepers. This all took about an hour and a half, and by that time, we moved easily in chatting in various pockets around the house. People felt ownership in the experience from their contribution, engaged with others from their team and task, and perhaps felt a little more connected to how the elements guide their lives.

My own experience of creating this experience was filled with joy at every step. It makes me think back to my senior year of art school when my thesis photography project was shaped into an experience beyond a gallery show. The photo content was of a moody, romantic lone woman wearing old wedding dresses near gravestones and abandoned houses, rather eery. I hung the photos in gold frames on clear string from the ceiling in a square in the center of the room, creating the feeling that they were floating. The lights dim, Erik Satie on the speaker, and words from “Gloomy Sunday” as my artist statement. It was an experience I think back to often as one of the proudest moments of my life.

Likewise, this birthday party instigated a pride and sense of purpose in my heart, a reminder of who I am, and an invitation to myself to create experience.

Notes:

Intention - The Art of Gathering book (link below) nails this again and again. Get super clear about your intention, whether it’s a craft night or a gala.

Paper invitation - Some told me they hadn’t received a birthday invitation by mail since childhood, or that since I asked for their mailing address, they were awaiting mail from me every day. We receive so many digital invites that I wanted to shift our attention somewhere else.

Gather with me: By The Moon Guided Gatherings for Women+

References

The Art of Gathering

In October, a friend and I walked a Charlotte neighborhood looking at Halloween decorations. Somehow God was mentioned, and I told her how the prior couple months brought me back into my relationship with God. For the last few years, I’ve called myself spiritual, believing in a Universe that distantly wants for my highest good, but God and my personal relationship to God took a backseat.

She asked me, “What is your idea of God?” While I’ve felt this reconnection in the past months, I hadn’t yet revisited what I personally thought God was since I shied away from the Christian verbiage given to me. I’ve used the term Universe to refer to the whole of material and spiritual, but I hadn’t come to an understanding how I believed the Universe and God might be different.

I grew up in the Lutheran denomination with the kind of parents who picked me up from a sleepover on Sunday morning for church. I am grateful for this rooting as the focus was on Grace and the love of God as a gift; there’s nothing I have done to receive it, and there’s nothing I could do to lose it. I learned about Jesus’ teachings as caring for one another and being One Body.

I continued my diligent Sunday church going, even when I went to a boarding school for high school and had to find my own church and a ride to get there.

The Summer after my freshman year of college, I was a backpacking guide for a youth ministry. I was in charge of creating a scripture-centered conversation at the campfire each night. Even though I was still going to Christian church, I remember intentionally choosing scripture that ideologically fit any religion, curious if I couldn’t theoretically be working at a Buddhist backpacking camp. While hiking, I pondered questions that started to peel back the layers of what I believed - why is God supposedly inherently masculine? If all of Nature is God’s Creation, why are Christians treating it as if it’s not Holy? Questions that felt like cracks.

My Sophomore year of college, a few various experiences synchronized to send me on a path of spiritual exploration. A disheartening dissonance in my college church ended my Sunday routine to this day (unless my parents are in town).

At this time, I was a class in Gnosticism, which taught me that in many religions there was often a divergence of believers: those who thought one came to be in relationship with God through a church or the leader, and those who believed the individual had an inherent, personal connection and knowingness with God, called mystics. In Islam, there is Sufi. In Judaism, there’s the Kabbalah. In Hinduism, Vedanta. The word Gnosis refers to mystical or spiritual knowledge, known through intuition. This clicked with me since it was the church itself that I had a problem with, not God.

Through Gnosticism, I also learned of a Creation narrative that wasn’t necessarily at odds with the Genesis story, but that opened my mind to a broader idea that the world is born of God’s mind, linking the creative process with a psychological process. This made sense to me as I pursued my psychology major and used my understanding of psychology to shed light on Creation. The micro reflects the macro and vice versa.

If the world is born out of God’s mind and God’s Spirit is in everything, then the world is essentially God thinking about Godself, as if each of us is a thought process reflective of God, serving a divine stream of Consciousness. There are parallels between having negative personal thoughts and the worldly manifestation of the dark and ugly of God’s Consciousness, and the magnitude of discovery and redemption that is possible within each when they are shown loving compassion.

Human brain - neural network

God brain - Cosmic web

For the following five years, I had no spiritual practice beyond meditation, and even so, it was a type of meditation to simply become aware of thoughts. I took a class on Islam, learned about Vedanta thanks to JD Salinger, and went to a 10-day Vipassana silent retreat. There were tinkerings of dreamwork and astrology, but to pray felt like talking to myself, and anything regarding higher realms was mostly just getting high.

Then I thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail, and a new spiritual connection found me. On the trail, we say “The Trail provides”, and I experienced this is such vast ways that it became undeniable to me that there is a receptive and conscious energy that responds to our yearnings up close.

On the Trail, once I ran out of food a full day before I would make it to town for resupply, and then just over the next hill I found a bag of food waiting on a post. A man told his story of needing new hiking boots after the hundreds of miles worn into them, and when he wandered off trail to dig himself a hole, he found a new pair of boots in his size sitting on a stump. Another man told me of a game he made up with a friend while hiking but they would need a 12-sided die to play it. When they got to their campsite that night, buried in the dirt they found a 12-sided die. Jobs, partnership, healing; what you seek, you will find. Or it will find you.

Having a new sense of immaterial awareness, I dove into dreamwork, astrology, mediumship, tarot, and indigenous relationship with Land. Given my Christian upbringing, I contemplated what I knew of Christian God and Jesus’ teachings while I learned new forms of spiritual practice. While these practices can sometimes be seen in opposition to a religion like Christianity, when I think about it I wonder, how? If God made the stars and put them in their place, do we not believe they would have as much intelligence, intricacy, and impact as the DNA that is also on such a different scale that it’s difficult for our human minds to grasp.

As for Tarot or mediumship, I wondered what the Bible had to say. To me, these pagan, alternative, or magical practices are not inherently excluded from a Christian faith or belief in God, and rather, they seem right in line:

^“There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them… Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.. to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit”

from 1 Corinthians 12:4-11.

But more important than the gift itself is the intention:

“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.”

from 1 Corinthians 13:1-2.

Also, Jesus quite prominently said that those who believe will perform greater miracles than he did.

In a similar way, I don’t think other religions preclude the beliefs of another religion. To me, it feels more like God dropped wisdom into the world through earlier prophets, philosophers, and leaders, took note we needed a potent message in an identifiable, relatable form, and then sent Jesus to say this is literally what I, God, am saying to you people: to love one another. But to view all the wisdom from all religions gives us a better, broader understanding of the material and spiritual world we live in, keeping in mind each religion also has misunderstandings that I’d contribute to the errored transmitter of the human mind and ego.

I was at dinner the other night with friends, and a woman who is a priest, said “I don’t think God gave any one religion the whole truth.. that wouldn’t be fun”.

While the Christian practice lacks an explicit message of caring for the Earth and personal relationship with it, Indigenous spirituality, on the other hand, is itself an honoring of and relationship with the land. Black Elk Speaks was a pivotal book for me in illuminating this sentient relationship with all beings, and given my experience on the Appalachian Trail, Nature as a Spiritual presence felt right. I think each religion, philosophy, and spirituality has a piece of the whole.

While I had a vague idea of God forming, I still didn't have a personal relationship. Then a few months ago, a momentous shift occurred in my life. I hit a rock bottom both physically and spiritually. And actually from this rock bottom I understood how intimately physical and spiritual experiences are connected, so much so that my perspective shifted from seeing a physical world with a spiritual story to a spiritual world with a physical story.

During this time, I was driving to my forest therapy guide immersion thinking, I can’t keep asking for my friends to fill me up, it will never be enough. “A God-sized hole” I heard somewhere. If not my friends’ love, then my own? Nothing. So what, God’s love? What even is that? I let the question linger, knowing answers come when they’re meant to.

The first answer came not long after I asked. I’m in a creative business cohort and our meeting occurred during this drive, so I pulled over to log on. To begin the meeting, one of our members announced it was another’s birthday and everyone began to sing “Happy Birthday”. Because of the digital mechanism of Zoom, everyone’s voices couldn’t be heard at the same time, and instead, the speaker switched every second or so between each person singing, forming the whole song from one frame at a time of each smiling, singing face. What an unexpected moment of love and joy, I didn’t deserve to experience that. An underserved gift. God’s love, I thought.

I arrived at the forest therapy immersion on some strange mountain lassoed by a river in Tennessee. I checked in and soon after, met a young woman whose eyes had the look of pure love. An angel, I thought. Over the next four days, my group spent less than three hours a day in conversation, given that forest therapy is more of an “alone together” activity. But through our few words, I felt comforted by each presence. And through our silence, I felt held in a way beyond understanding - by their unearned love, by the Forest, by these emanations of God.

How intruiging to have felt my most broken on the way to a place of generous healing. Almost like someone who knew my life gave me what I needed. Like a divine stream of consciousness found me.

References

Cosmic Web - Cosmology 101

Black Elk Speaks

While this piece references ‘woman’, this can also be read as the divine feminine or feminine energy, which I believe resides in us all regardless of gender, as does the divine masculine. Any man or nonbinary person can also identify with the Witch.

The witch burning in Germany beginning in the 15th century and later witch hangings in the US in the 17th century have scared us into centuries of distancing ourselves from any connection to a witch, lest we ourselves be convicted next.

Witches have been given a bad rap, provoking imagery of an ugly, old woman alone in the woods. It’s not unintentional that the idea of a witch has been cast in a light that is blatantly unattractive in concept and appearance.

Prior to the witch hunts, women were gaining independence and power in a society that was pushing the direction of patriarchy and capitalism. For a woman to gain power in this system is a danger.

I didn’t pay much mind to the word or idea of a witch until hearing an Expanded podcast episode about “healing the witch wound” a year ago. In it I learned of how most archetypes of women - the Daughter, the Mother, Sister, Wife - are characterized by an identity in their relationship to another, whereas the archetype of the Witch is a woman in relation to her own power. This struck me.

When I’m intrigued, I become obsessed, I admit. For the last year, I’ve been listening, watching, reading, discussing, and deliberating on the witch wound and one’s own power. A documentary called The Burning Times elaborates on what a witch is -

The Woman Alone
The Wise Woman
The Woman in Nature
Woman on the Edge of Social Change

Of course if a woman is in her power, then that must be portrayed as ugly and scary to keep all of us away.

It felt like I’d been living the definition of something I didn’t have the word for and couldn’t fully realize.

While I’ve been single most of my adult life, watching friends, colleagues, and family partner and have children, the feeling of aloneness isn’t new. Growing up with two brothers who had more in common than me, I found myself alone often. As a child sometimes ‘alone’ meant loneliness and other times it meant adventure. I traveled to Houston, St Louis, and Florida visiting family, boarding flights alone before I was ten.

Becoming comfortable with being alone influenced my leaving home when I was 16, learning to use public transportation to get across North Carolina. In my 20’s, solo travels led me to wandering in the pre-dusk dark on a mountain in Norway without a cell phone or headlight and strolling Riga at 9 pm not sure where I’d be sleeping that night. Empowered in my aloneness, I thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail at age 24 with a flip phone and a guide book, hitchhiking into town for resupply, and sleeping in the wide open.

My relationship with being alone has run the gamut, giving me lessons in deep, aching loneliness; then realizing I couldn’t wait on anyone else to make my dreams come true; and then discovering my deep interconnection to the natural world. I’ve been ashamed, curious, confused, bored, prideful, and content in my aloneness.

Perhaps hiking the AT was my right of passage into a way of being where my aloneness finally became beautiful and mystical. Living outside for six months, there is no way to avoid the darkness or facing fears. One by one as fears were faced, they dissipated. Allowing myself to be unafraid opened my heart to experience the woods at night and to sit in a stillness with nature that changes me.

In the six years since, I’ve grown in this love for my alone life. I’ve spent enough time in the quiet of the woods to learn to listen. I’ve spent enough time feeling the presence of trees to know that my presence is felt. I feel my body’s ebb and flow with the moon enough to know that this celestial relationship is power.

I used to be afraid of “ending up alone”, bitter, callous- an ugly, old woman alone in the woods. But I’ve since seen enough bitter, callous women who are in relationships and families, and I’ve seen women in grace and dignity who are alone, and I realized it’s not whether or not someone is alone that they are bitter.

Likewise a person does not have to be alone to embrace their own divine feminine power.

This is certainly not to say I choose to be alone forever or that I believe I will be. This is the arch of embracing my own power, welcoming the Witch.

Some Witch Resources:

“A woman alone is a danger” - The Red Tent

“Healing the Witch Wound” ‘Expanded’ Podcast with Taylor Paige

“Healing the Witch Wound and the Modern Witch’s Journey” Magic Hour podcast with Taylor Paige

The Burning Times - 50 minute documentary on YouTube

My Female Energy playlist

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I’m feeling closer to Death.

Not that I feel I’ll lie down and die soon, though of course I could.
I’m feeling closer with Death in a kindred way.

I spoke at an artist’s panel this past weekend, presenting my body of work since 2013. It’s the first time I looked at the collection in the last 10 years, and it was fascinating to see my long term attraction to death and the way it’s manifested in my art.

In 2013 before graduating from the UNC School of the Arts, I had a thesis show called ‘Elysium’, an underworld for the blessed to the Greek. This was my first opportunity to create work outside the confines of an assigned project, and my creative force took me to death. I created a body of photographs following a young woman dwelling on the place where her lover has gone and what awaits on the other side.

Contemplating death began creeping back in a few years ago when the depth of my ecological grief and anxiety had me considering the extinction of our species. Through that emotional journey, I came to find peace in thinking of a world without humans and the ways we abuse it. Nature will carry on, continue its evolution, and eventually form a conscious being that isn’t so obsessed with domination that it leads to its own demise.

While in this ecological grief, I had nearly one close relationship pass on from life for the next five years, keeping the idea of death near in my field. Not coincidentally, I was reading books like Black Elk Speaks and Conscious Dreaming, and learned about people who have passed communicating messages through dreams and other sly synchronicities.

Then I had a dream of two uncles who have passed a few years apart. They were pure light and in a field of light, smiling with each other, walking arm in arm happy to be reunited. It was like I was witnessing them unnoticed.

My grandma and grandpa died within a year of each other. I dreamed that I witnessed them in a home unlike any home I’d seen them in on Earth. Despite having only seen her in a wheelchair in life, I saw my grandma walking around, saying “I feel like I’m floating”. I saw my grandpa fiddling with tools, but he had a pleasant energy to him, despite only having experienced his negative, self-absorbed energy on Earth. Again it felt like I was witnessing them unnoticed, like I was peeking in on them in Heaven. The next morning, I received a small inheritance check in honor of them.

I walked the Camino with my mom last Summer. Her dad had died many years earlier, and her mom had just died the week before we left for our trip. We spent miles talking about memories of them. I asked her what little things make her think of her mom and her dad, which is my favorite question to ask about people who have died. I said eucalyptus cough drops made me think of grandpa. My mom said he always had one in his mouth because his oxygen tank made his throat dry up. Not a mile later I found a eucalyptus cough drop on the trail.

I began pulling the thread of what else is going on besides the material world and some vague ideas of Heaven from my Christian upbringing. As I dove in, I started feeling like a future version of myself was haunting me (a story for another time; let me know if this is happening to you?), connecting me deeper to myself and trust in my journey as I connected to realms outside myself.

I was hooked and fixated on absorbing anecdotes of the other side. I watched Seatbelt Psychic, a lovely & loving TV series, and read Talking to Heaven, a book I found in my own home. Both are of a medium sharing messages with those still on Earth. I binged Telepathy Tapes on long drives, learning of psychic phenomena that crosses life and death like there isn’t a division. All opened my mind wide to lives we live after we pass on from the Earthly plane and made me feel that death is shorter than a moment and rather, a turning of the page instead of closing the book.

Maybe I should have mentioned by now that I’m a Scorpio with a lot of Scorpio in my chart, a sign known for being drawn to darkness, the occult, death, and transformation.

Maybe it's the Scorpio, or maybe it’s a message I’m meant to share, but I think we live too much in fear of death, or at least avoidance of it or disinterest in it. We fear death in part because our biological bodies generally have the purpose of staying alive, and in part because our souls chose to come to Earth to experience this beautiful place.

But I think the fear of death, or at least lack of considering it, is partly what causes so much attachment, greed, suffering, and denial; because we’re not often in relationship with the whole of our life, its purpose, and its greatest values, which is what I think death does.

I ask myself the question almost daily - when I get to the end of my life, will I have wished I spent my time differently? This is why I rarely shave my legs, watch TV, or spend time with people I’m not truly connecting with. I ask myself almost daily - what parts of my mom will I miss most from the other side? How can I give these more attention right now? I think daily about when my dog goes to doggy Heaven, and I tell her often that we will be best friends forever.

Even though I do believe we’ll be together again, it doesn’t mean it’s not sad; I’m in tears now. But keeping death close and kindred means greater clarity and greater intention with each day and with each other.

References

Black Elk Speaks - One of my top favorite books.

Conscious Dreaming

Seatbelt Psychic

Talking to Heaven

Telepathy Tapes

I didn’t reference it but the song “Dinner With Friends” by Kacey Musgraves is about things missed from the other side, and the harmony gives me chills.

This letter drops into thoughts around viewing the biological and spiritual as one and the same. This is an important framework for how I perceive daily life and one I’ll write through often. I’ll offer the caveat that I do not think they are exactly the same, but enough so that thinking of them as different languages for the same phenomena offers immense understanding for the unraveling we’re witnessing and what will come.

We are one with our natural world

We’ll first look at humans as part of the biological system we’re within. It’s our first error in both biological and spiritual dimensions to separate ourselves out as an individual, or individual species, irrelevant to our context.

Our US society views nature anthropocentrically, valuing human life over other animals, plants, and beings. In the mountains of North Carolina, I find it dreadfully ironic that developers blow up mountains so that people can have a view of the mountains. They clear cut trees and habitat by laying asphalt for roads and buildings, then wonder why we are having problems with flooding, landslides, and tick-borne illnesses. We seek refuge and then destroy it once we get there. Humans are one-sidedly considering what brings them passive and entitled pleasure - trees here, but not there; this mountain there, but not the one here.

However, the health of the ecosystem directly affects the health of the humans populating it. When a hillside is clearcut for a view, the hillside has lost the living roots that prevent the slope from eroding, threatening the collapse of the home that sits on the hill.

Like eliminating biodiversity from wild land into green lawns, when we decrease diversity, we increase vulnerability. At worst, lack of diversity in the landscape or society makes us more susceptible to threats and turbulence, but at best, diversification is the natural progress of evolution, whereby ideas are shared and genes are mixed. Increasing diversity in the gene pool increases potential for evolutionary adaptability. Increasing diversity in perspectives makes for a more adaptable society.

Is it any wonder that we are in the sixth great extinction while an uncontrolled genocide seeks to eliminate a race of people? Is it any wonder that I look at acres upon acres of invasive stilt grass on the forest floor and question if it’s worth trying to remove, at the same time that we have a power-hungry political system making me question if it’s even worth trying to salvage? Is it a coincidence that as global temperatures rise, the number of global armed conflicts rises?

The breath and spirit

When I think of how biological and spiritual phenomena are the same occurrence spelled through different languages, there is no clearer example to me than a mother and child: a mother’s intuition and unconditional love as the spiritual spelling, and her biological programming for ferocious protection of her young as the biological. In both cases, the mother is entranced in her relationship with her young, and neither explanation, the biological or spiritual, makes the other any less true.

We look in awe across open fields and mountainscapes, enamored by their beauty and God’s creation. At the same time, it’s hypothesized that this evolution between beholder and beholden occurred as a result of hunters being able to view their prey or tribes who could see incoming threats. We look at the stars, mesmerized by holes in the night sky piercing the veil to heaven, and yet this night sky also humbles us with its light years, space time, black holes, and is there any life out there.

I think of the word Spirit, and its latin root Spiritus meaning “breath, or soul”. How is it that we exchange breath with the trees- their oxygen for our carbon dioxide and our carbon dioxide for their oxygen, and yet are so far removed from our spiritual relationship with them. I wonder if a baby’s first cry- breath rushing into its lungs- is the moment when its soul is embodied in its squishy little earth-bound body.

Not ironically, the root Bio- in Greek is life. When I speak about biology and spirituality being the same, there’s a reason far beyond and before me.

I think of ecosystems (my favorite concept in all of biology), and its Greek root Oikos meaning “House”. So ecosystem is the system of the home, where I live and where I belong. The system of my home is also my community.

So the soul enters its squishy little body and grows and grows until it becomes an adult. What to do with this breath, this one wild and precious life? What to make of God in the biological sense if there is so firmly a notion in the spiritual sense? The second is a question I look forward to diving into another time.

We are at a spiritual and a biological crux - What can we do? What can I do? So many of us are in denial, anxiety, or depression, or another phase of processing grief while witnessing national and world events. So many of us feel powerless, or feel the magnitude of a paradigm shift but unsure how to channel our lives through it.

It feels odd to admit within the context of a global unraveling and marvelous insecurity, but I don’t think it’s any wonder that I have found myself in a continuous streak of perfect days. These unbelievable political and societal insecurities distill in me what matters most in my life, what gives me joy, and what is it that connects my feeling of purpose to my feeling of joy. I’ve sunk deeper into joy and purpose being indicators of one another, again, if not the same thing.

My perfect days are filled with daily routines that nurture me, with flexibility to prioritize my health. They are filled with meaningful and inspiring relationships with my community at large, and with intimate and loving personal relationships. I give back of myself to the people and land around me because I know to be true that there is no health without reciprocity, and I am also learning to ask and receive. I feel privileged to tap into various sources of joy in serving my purpose in my daily work.

Health is the crossroads of the spiritual and biological, and in both true wealth. When I eat local food, I am connected to the land and the people who live on it. When I sleep deeply, I remember my dreams and conceive of their wisdom. When I meditate, my nervous system settles. When I learn about the indigenous people’s relationship with this land, I learn how to tend it better. When I tend the plant beings in the yard, the soil feeds my microbiome. When I camp, my circadian rhythm resets. When I pray, I want for less.

Some of my joys and purpose:

Local Food Sovereignty, hosted by Transition Blue Ridge for our Community Resilience Learning Series at Watauga County Public Library. August 11 at 5:30-7 pm. I have been working with this nonprofit, developing programs and designing projects that strengthen our community’s ecological, economic, and social resilience.

Women’s Beginner Backpack with The Speckled Trout Outfitters. August 15-17. I’m leading this trip down in Wilson Creek through an awe-inspiring route while sharing everything you need to know about backpacking, and some things you don’t.

Corey Anne Women in the Arts Artist Panel at Florence Thomas School. August 22 at 6 pm. This is the first show my paintings are in since my high school thesis show at UNCSA in 2013. I’ll be speaking about my art with other High Country women artists.

Wood’s Hole Women’s Retreat. October 16-19. My first open invitation retreat at my favorite Appalachian Trail hostel. Words can’t describe how special this place is and my deep, loving relationship with it. Registration info to come.

References:

Vedanta Philosophy

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

“The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver

Maybe you are in Austin, TX, Los Angeles, or Watauga County, NC. Maybe you know me because you came on a trip with me, maybe you are my best friend, my brother, a past business coach, or maybe we don’t know each other at all.

I write to you from the forest, sitting on a rock, next to a creek a little while outside Cullowhee, NC; this first draft on pen and paper. I’m in the area for the Cullowhee Native Plant Conference, and I’m writing during the last portion of a guided Forest Bathing session, when I knew I’d be tapped into the energy flow of the ecosystem.

I’ve been encouraged over the last decade to write - a book, a Substack, my silly stories, my “message”. I’ve frozen when I sat down to write - self-aware and dwelling in ego on what I wanted to share and how that would reflect on me, or watching the lines of thoughts swirling around me too restless to catch one. But like I’ve long known about my paintings, and recently learned about the food I provide for others, I am only the conduit.

A line that echoes in the chamber of my soul, shared with me by my late friend Will around 2014.

Through all of these ideas and stories I yearn to share in writing, I remember, like the painter part of me, that I am the conduit, the channel through which the forest speaks.

From The Forest

I come to you from the forest - as a place where I have been and emerge from. These words come to you from the forest - the forest has a message for you to hear, delivered through me, through this screen. Really though, the forest asks that you personally listen to hear the message. We’ll talk more about this.

For this first note, here is an overview of some of the things you can expect to follow.

• I’ll share ecological concepts and their counterpart spiritual insight and vice versa

• Sustainability & public health. Intimately personal to broadly organizational

• Stories and advice on living with nature, like backpacking as luxury, natural fibers, foraging, recipes, Leave No Trace versus Wild Tending ideologies

• Experiences I create: retreats, backpacking trips, forest meditations, farm-to-table picnics. Invitations and reflections

  

• Photography, paintings, other creative projects

• I don’t like to include links in the writing itself because the split decision to click or not is a split in attention. I’ll include references at the bottom instead.

• I won’t share moving images because they, too, are distracting for attention

• I honor your attention and don’t take it for granted

• I’ll try to keep it concise with all due intention, while also allowing for spaciousness

• At a friend’s Summer Solstice Party recently, I set an intention for myself to go off the deep end with trusting myself, so I aim to not hold back - whether that’s out of fear for controversy, vulnerability, or imperfection. I hope you’ll find them all here

• I do anticipate that at sometime in the near future, I will set a paywall out of respect to the prior point

• At this time, I’m not sure the frequency with which to expect these letters

• I won’t be offended if you want to remove yourself from this email list. Maybe we’re just on different paths, that’s okay.

• If you do enjoy this note or where it’s headed, I ask that you share it.

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Reference:

Make Me A Channel Of Your Peace - Westminster Abbey Choir