We are seated in a circle amongst ferns and cedars, on a backdrop of big leaf maples and a wetland that slowly filters the winter rains over months – the water we will drink one day. I know some of the people here as I have guided them in previous land-based retreats. There are a couple of new faces. We specifically designed this monthly gathering to be a support for those who have experienced our ReWilding retreats inspired from the Wild Mind model, originally put forward by guide and psychologist Bill Plotkin. Our vision was to offer a landing and inquiry space for those who want to come back again and again to their deeper understanding of their place in this world. Like for most transformative experiences, leaving the retreats and coming back to our day to day means facing the mundane and less enchanted world we have been placed in and contributed to. Most but not all participants had experience with what we call Soulcentric practices, which refers to invitations meant to awaken our sense of belonging to wilderness, and open us up to a deeper sense of our gifts and values.
After a group check in and some musing, we invite participants to wander on the land for an hour, with the intention of turning to their sense of reverence, and to search for elderhood within themselves and out. During these wanders in the wilderness, we open up to possible encounters, to being surprised, called, and to listening. We then return to hear from each other.
This is our first short gathering – usually we meet for 5 days for a deep exploration of our psyche and relationship to the World. These monthly meetings were dreamt by the several local Wild Mind facilitators. I expected this to be a short dip back into remembering that we are part of something wider, but nothing more.
After participants gather back in circle, share in council, the first couple of stories brings up an image in me: colorful, magical pages from a book of deep wisdom. It feels as if the people in this group went and gathered back what seems to be wild wisdom which had been scattered in nooks, bark and rocks and the millions of resting and generous spaces of these woods. These humans had left for their wander accompanied by their honest longing, confusion, grief, unfinished dreams, imagination and hopes, and came back having been called, touched and passed on a piece of the knowledge that I sometimes fear is lost. I look at the way we modify and pave nature so much that the caring whispers, wild cries, songs and stories of the original Mother feel at best stifled, at worst unfindable.
But in this moment, each of the humans here is carrying a precious leaf, each of them has entered a conversation and each of them feels alive in a true way, in relationship with the beings of this land. Each was re-enchanted, even the people who came to this type of practices for the first time. For instance, one who was looking for direction and purpose ended up finding ground in the form of the peace and the strength of the rock bed underneath and of the stones above. She opened up to its guidance, explained her own humanity and challenges, remembered her own unshakable solidity, and was shown her life in the context of an eternal cycle. Another person retrieved a sense of the interconnection of loss and birth, and while it was a known concept to him before, as he lay down on the decomposing soil of this magical mother that sprouts magnificent beings out of death and decay, the knowledge became palpable and embodied. And he remembered he is made of life and death, and that he is entirely part of the endless whole. As for me, I walked through the wetland, manhandled many years prior until only pasture grass would grow within it. There, little branches adorned with coloured rubans were sticking out: I understood it as the work of many little children of the wilderness school hosted on this land, hands who had planted water loving beings this past spring, willows and cat tail and many others. The summer had dried up many of them, but some of them thrived, extending little green leaves, nodding to our invitation to join us in the game of life. I felt an extraordinary amount of joy at welcoming these new beings, as well as a sense of privilege and responsibility for these that were like newborns joining our community and ongoing story.
As we all sat together in our circle, we reminded each other of the wisdom that is available to us because we are children of the Earth, and we can turn back to the Earth in devotion and openness to be retold its stories and wisdoms. The book of Wild Wisdom appears as humans re inhabit and re-sew, for moments at a time.
I must admit I had a few instants of grasping, imagining we could draw, paint, write the pages down, hang them on the walls, so they would be available to us. The fear of being disconnected from these teachings fuelled these thoughts. Then I remembered what I was being taught right here in this circle: these pieces of wild wisdom are available. They are never gone. And from longing, yearning, and feelings of scarcity and fear, gratitude and trust finally rose. Trust that even if we don’t turn to our original Mother for millennia, when we come back and come back toward the Earth in openness and devotion, she will speak to us again. She always does. The invitation is open.
Some of the intentions for this type of work is to have people awaken to their inherent belonging, sense of deep time and perspective and to be re-enchanted. The ultimate goal is to anchor deeply in one’s own values, access our personal vision and gifts and have these become our center of gravity, to eventually serve our community and the Earth. My work with psychedelics and integration are held by of the same intentions and hopes and is deeply infused by my work on the land. In my experience of many modalities of healing, Soulcentric land-based work and psychedelic experiences both support deep transformations toward true Adulthood most radically.
Written by Dr. Stéphanie Marchal
As published in TheraPsil