I just spent my weekend listening to indigenous wisdom. Now my thoughts are running wild but swift, like an own in the moonlight.

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like knowing is a right

like seeing is a given

like attitude isn’t something we have agency over

They said life wouldn’t grow for 75 years after Hiroshima was split open

A white flower opened its pedals in the middle of the epicenter one year later

Cowboys and hippies just gathered to break bread together

At the Old Salt Festival in central Montana

They gathered to talk about treating land as kin

Who are we to doubt what’s possible

Who are we to rhapzodize doom

Especially Here

Especially Now

Get to work believing

Beyond limitations and made by things that needed overcoming.

We were lifted by those things. Like a platform or a mesa.

It got us here. Alive and full. Ready for something we cannot name yet cannot lose.

Nothing ever leaves us. It only changes shape.

We call this a new dawn. I’m okay with that, mostly. Okay with the changing and blending. Touched by the newness, surprised constantly. And yet…nothing feels new. All the things that ever were are holding our hands to walk this ground.

Humbly, and in gratitude.

Tomorrow is already here. The dèjá vu is astounding. The ripples of time and space continue to tickle our skin like waves on a shore, and I’m glad to see you with me, walking. Floating across the universe with feet and smiles. On a planet so very beautiful.

Slow down. If you’re asking. That is my demand.

If you’re asking of me an answer then slow down.

Let me choose the right words so that I do not misspeak. There are words to put in order. They are not jumpers or noisemakers. They do not seek distraction.

Ask me like a mountain asks, with receding ice and a trickle in the direction of the sea.

Give pause. If you’re asking. That is my request.

If you’re asking for a story then give pause.

Let the listening come forward like the swell of an ocean wave. Like the thump of wings on water.

Listening is a currency and a space. Make room for what you call in with your questions.

Bring yourself. If you’re asking. That is my dream.

If you’re asking for a reflection then bring yourself.

I’ll meet you there. We will ask not for an answer, but for a question. For a crack to bring a breakthrough.

Come to think of it, ask away. As you are.

Be a buzz. Be a flutter. Never mind.

I’ll be here.

Not asking.

I don’t know how without you.

When I do, I will.

I grew up in Minnesota. And though I belong to Montana, there are parts of me that I cannot separate from the place that grew me. They exist in the way I move through life. Things like the call of the loon, my inability to take the last nacho on a shared plate, or the sense of neighborly duty to act when a friend is moving houses or a tree has fallen on someone’s fence.

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They capture our sense of wonder when their wings beat water.

They lift into shapes that change color with direction.

They display a knowing that is deeper than our thoughts. A thinking that comes from their being.

And from there, they fly. To re-mind us who we really are.

May we rise like wind and shift like seasons. May we move from the space of knowing our togetherness. And fly the day awake from the spirit of all of us.

Moon Pull

Nothing left to do but trust

The wind whips

The ocean rises

And the horse breaks into a sprint

We make our entrance this way in the year of the horse

All of us propelling forward

Perhaps pulled by our magnetic moon

By a dance of the water we are

May this be horse power like we’ve never seen before

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When I was in Japan with a group of peace leaders, I listened to a wonderful woman named Pat McCabe. She is a Diné (Navajo) elder who shared with us wise words. “Culture is an expression of nature through humanity.” She insisted on it being part of life; that it was not worth deciding what’s good and what’s bad. It comes from the ground and grows us certain ways.

My people are the sting of frigid wind and the sweaty sun through corn stalks. They are harsh, to be exact. And yet, as I open to receive more truth I see how their ways are full of commitment and strength. I see the loving offering wrapped in brittle bark and sand paper. I know this as part of the earth, too.

I never felt like a fit for my culture. I was born soft, and though I come from Germans, without schadenfruede. What’s considered funny as an element of story, to laugh at someone’s misfortune, never worked for me. Furthermore, emphasis of declaring fault never made sense.

In a world where everything is connected, it makes no difference who did what to whom. Yet, I belong to a culture of storytellers and they like to shape things that way. Should you declare yourself a victim, you’ve at least got a whole league of storytelling that’s pro you.

What about being pro we?

It feels like a place and seems to come from removing the ideas around life. It’s bigger than how we’ve held story lately. There’s room for both; a place where something I did effected someone else, and a place where we’re all in this together. It’s lit up with grace and full of forgiveness.

Things are. And there we are with them. Not trying to capture anything for later, not trying to sculpt story to fit a model that we think works. Or sells. No, none of that. Just us. Living.

Now that we are critters on an earth who can mix like never before, now that we taste the grapes of France and the rice of Japan in the same sitting, now that more rivers have turned to steam and been breathed, what is my culture? Who are my people? And where am I at home?

I don’t know where I’m supposed to go or how I’m supposed to behave, but I’m grateful that I don’t fit. At least today that’s how I feel. Because I was born here, now, for this. And what I came in with is part of where we are all going.

And the only thing I know for sure about the place we are going, is that we get there together.

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I feel responsible for bringing myself better words. Like foraging for the specific medicine for our people.

How about Rise? By coming together in the uplift.

How about Shine? From the inside out.

How about Walk, Speak, and BE of life, for life, and by life.

Pushing against is useful when it’s five pounds of pressure for a waltz. When we see that our efforts, courageous and well-meaning though they may be, are not budging the boulder that blocks the path, we have the opportunity to walk each other over it.

Meanwhile, if we don’t feel love, respect, or appreciation for what we are pushing, then what is our intent?

Against won’t move us.

Love will.

You cannot change what you do not love.

Be for what you’re for. Love like it’s your job.

Steady Steady On

When you lose your way

Steady Steady On

You are on your way

Steady Steady On

When you move through time

Steady steady on

You’re in time

Steady Steady On

You don’t have to force

You don’t have to fight

You are on your coarse and it’s alright

Steady Steady On

When you lose your mind

Steady Steady On

You remember

Steady Steady On

When you close your eyes

Steady Steady On

You see

Steady Steady On

You don’t have to force

You don’t have to fight

You are on your coarse and it’s alright

Steady Steady On

May we stand like sequoias

May we expand like lungs

As we call into the dark sky

May we permeate ourselves into stars

and burst in like a supernova remembering

As I look to the moonless sky

May I see you, dear friend

Hear you, soul family

Listeners

Watchers

Believers of the unseen

Feelers of the deep

And walkers into the unknown

We are here

And we move to become

It’s a pretty big loss for me. My therapist has been one of my most powerful witnesses and guides over the last three years. My understanding of my mental health was tended to through spiritual health, and she was well-versed in the practice of both. Like the systems of the heart and the lungs, they cannot be separated.

Most of my transformation has been witnessed through a lens of what feels like pealing back the layers of how I think. My linear brain, if you will. The shape of my thoughts has been changing, and walks with nature have invited this in by showing me a web of connectivity that is multidimensional and has no hierarchy. Like a forest sharing nutrients through its underground networks and taking care of its parts as one organism tending to itself.

There are many cultures who’ve held this way of living throughout time. My lineage requires a deep dive. A relationship with land is known beyond my thought patterns.

I’ve been on a journey of this in a big way for the last 3 years. Through my spiritual teacher, Chi, in western Colorado, and through many gatherings, webinars, and conversations at spiritual centers, I’ve been learning new ways to think. Actually, they are old ways, and I’m returning.

In one of my earliest lessons with Chi, he advised me to examine the modality of my thoughts.

That was easy for me. “Words.” I said. “I think in phrases and terms.”

He nodded and replied, “Thinking in words can be useful to name things and to manifest. Still, it is quite limiting. In time you will learn to think in pictures, colors, symbols, or perhaps vibrations.”

3 years later, I’ve learned to think in shapes, sensations, and colors. Sometimes. I use words as a vessel, a carrier or a way of teasing something out. A myriad of profound happenings has come with an openness of thinking through my heart and body. I ask my brain to be a tool in service to my heart. It’s through this practice that I’ve been able to communicate with Bears.

I know that I am safe. I have trees, freshwater, and warmth in the winter. And I have fear. News about my health coverage came on the same day that one of my niblings, a trans-woman, communicated embodied fear that she could be grabbed off the streets under the guise of being a terrorist.

I think about what it means to believe in life right now. In this part of the world under these circumstances. And when I drop in, I feel souls all over the globe doing the same and then some. Every time I think of leaving America for good, I am drawn back by remembering that some of the greatest displays of human tenacity have happened on this ground. That the fight-no-more forever place is here. Embodied. And Known.

I had the good fortune of attending The Spirituals Project Symposium at Denver University in 2024. The key note speaker was Dr. Tammy L. Kernodle, a professor and President of the Society for American Music. During her presentation about Black Spirituals and their evolution into modern movements, she used words with great precision and named something that still sends tingles down my spine.

Embodied Resistance.

Africans called themselves from places of inhumanity back into their own humanness. In song, it walked with them.

Many powerful people have shown us the way to walk through whatever this is.

I look to the ley lines. To me, they are song lines set upon this land.

I shift perspective. To understand by standing under the surface and seeing the network that keeps us bonded to life and each other.

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Dear Bear,

It’s understood

Shapes of your footprint

A life guided by its nose

Beyond senses we know each other

We’ve done this before

Be for

Language unnamable actually says.

Deep.

Raw.

And real.

Through knowing you, Bear,

We know the forest

Mossy mounds

Snaps of broken branches

And Mist-backing away from a sunbeam like yielding

Like letting go

There’s courage here, Bear Sister.

It lives in the heart and it sings like the silence of a cedar grove.

Together, we know water. Its bond.

And how it doesn’t.

Through our kinship we know snow like a blanket

Wind like an echo

Rain like a friend who sometimes visits

Thank you, Bear. For safety within wisdom.

While change does its dance, the part of us that is constant paints the sky.

And we walk

Siblings of the mystery

Dreamers of the peaceful

Belongers of the ground

Calling all Believers.

May we walk hungry, knowing that there will be nourishment.

Calling all Dreamers.

May we walk willingly, knowing that it’s going to hurt like hell. May we smile while we cry into each other’s laps. There’s blissful unawareness, but this, this is laughter in a hurricane.

Calling all the Courageous.

May we lose it all, so that we can actually look. So that we see what we have.

Calling all Givers.

Keep it at the ready. Keep it in your fingertips.

Calling all Healers.

After you fill your own cup, it’s the effortless that will save us.

Calling all Freaks.

Let’s walk! It’s time. Come out and love yourself.

I’ve got your back. I always have. I’m out there loving you like water. Like sunlight. Like photosynthesis. I’m out there loving my bones because they are like yours. Laughing at my crazy heart because it’s capable of such unparalleled foolishness.

Run parallel to me. Let’s hit this wall so hard we break through it!

I’m committed-I promise to be that fool.

Come with me.

Sacred Earth I walk to meet you
Place of birth I hear your call
To the fight no more forever place
Where the land can set us free
As we give ourselves to peace and grace
As one may we be

Sacred Water I flow to meet you
Heart of hearts I hear your call
To the fight no more forever place
Where the river meet the sea
As we wash the tears upon our face
As one may we be

Sacred Sky I rise to meet you
Breath of life I hear your call
To the fight no more forever place
Where the Eagle goes to see
In a boundless world of light and space
As one may we be

Sacred Fire I bow to meet you
Morningstar I hear your call
To the fight no more forever place
Where the dream has set us free
Eternal witness of human grace
As one may we be

http://mateoandshayla.bandcamp.com

On the last full moon, I was walking in Massachusetts. Vermont was on my mind. And my dry boots. For all the years I’ve been part of hiking culture, that state has been regarded by it’s nickname, Ver-mud. Yet, my feet were unsoiled.

Where did all the water go?

That evening, I walked through a concrete and metal tunnel between grass and gravel, which provided a passage over Interstate 90. I waved westward, toward my Montana home as I walked across it. Then within the hour, the same irksome feeling I’d had in the pit of my stomach intensified. Something’s out of whack in the forest.

I had talked to a local farmer about it earlier that day. He agreed, and had much to add in his experiences connected to the land. The bugs, the weather, and the water were all quite different than he was used to. It felt like a big jump to both of us. New normals are the new normal, but this feels like more than that. Like the end of something that we’ve loved and attached to. Like time to change. I mean really change, from the inside out, and do what needs to be done to feed and honor life, rather than all the things we think we are obligated to do.

And what would that be for me? I recognize my attachment to thru-hiking. That the idea of having to walk in one consistent line across certain land might be questionable. Lord knows the Pacific Crest Trail and Continental Divide have had their ways of telling us that’s not always possible. And why are we doing it? More importantly, how are we doing it and with what intention? If it’s all about the doing then what happens to the beings?

With those thoughts, I began to approach my hiking day as though it could be my last. I stopped for an early breakfast at a place marked for its ‘hangliders view.’ On a rock overlooking a rolling valley, I ate almond butter crackers with coffee. Within moments I was joined by the sound of rustling leaves at the base of a nearby tree. A small creature clawed its way up a trunk. For a second, I thought it was the tiniest bear cub I had ever seen. Then the leaves parted to reveal the critter’s gumdrop body as it scaled its way up. I smiled. A porcupine, the animal I enjoy watching most in the woods. It stepped out on a tree limb and ate leaves, facing the same view.

I once recieved heart-warming thru-hiking tips from a dear character called Baltimore Jack. His phrase, “Quit on a good day,” saved a few thru-hikes for me. On the flip-side, how much better can it get than breakfast with a porcupine?

Part of me still thought I was bluffing. Another part of me wondered which part of me was deciding how I felt. Could I be tired or lonely? Could I simply be unenthused about coming to the lowest and most humid section of the Appalachian Trail? Was I making up a ‘no’?

Then I saw what I needed to see. From 50 feet below my feet on a ridge, I heard claws scratching at the ground and earth ripping open. The long, muscular arms of a male bear were the source of the digging.

“Hello Bear,” I said and turned to face him. He stopped digging and looked up toward me. I was happy to see him, and said so, in a line of greetings and salutations that was suddenly halted. As I held its gaze, an overwhelming sense came over me. “Are you alright?” I asked. The way his eyes peered into me was worth thousands of words. Like I knew exactly what’s been going on, and haven’t been brave enough to face it. “I hear you. I’ll give you your space.” I kept walking.

I could feel his stress and need to survive. Not so unlike how a lot of humans are feeling these days. In the mid-Atlantic, the bears already have a pretty small corridor in which to do their living. Maybe I could pick somewhere else to do my walking.

That night I made my way to the town of Kent, CT and slept behind a candy store. I found a ride to the nearest train station the next morning and have been on a very different kind of journey since. I’ve been visiting with locals and going for walks in the woods to sit and ask.

I believe nature is telling us to listen. To honor when it’s a no. Something grave and drastic is going on with the water. It has to do with wanting what we want and taking what we take with no regard of how it affects everybody else. So I ask myself, what can I do? How can I back off and honor the things that sustain me. How can I be a storyteller who is devoted to nature’s voice. To show the forest that I am here. That I truly love it. And that I don’t want anything more than I want the earth to thrive.

It never occurred to them that she’s been to the future and back.

They say she is off tune when her voice wobbles as she sings

They can’t imagine a voice so tuned that it wobbles with the earth.

Some call her rebellious; uncommitted to everything

They may not understand how much she has been willing to carry.

She may appear empty of words and they’ll call it a lack of education

She builds life with words and leaves unsaid many things which need not form.

Containers do not expand far enough to hold her knowing

And she does not mind what they think she does not know.

Art by Savannah Ehlers

Imagine the life born after the shift

The ones made of crystal light and canopy blankets

Imagine the feels of the safe and the loved

The system that lifts

The business of joy

Imagine the politics of Earth and Sky

The place where infinity all comes together

Dream it all With open eyes