Our Wild Nature
Embodied Experiences through foraging, writing, reading and reflection
Earthly Bodies is now out in the wild. As a book that seeks to bridge the gap between conceptual understanding and embodied experience, my event collaborators, dear friends Boyuan and Jahan, and I designed the launch to foster meaningful conversations and connections among our guests. We aimed to create a space where attendees could engage with the book's themes and share their own experiences of rewilding, emotional connections with other species, and remembering their animal nature.
Here are a couple of the questions we shared:
• Share a time when the “wild” within you came alive. How did that experience feel? What was challenging about this experience? What was joyful?
• Share an experience, in nature, when you felt most at home. An experience that reminded you that the wild is not just “out there” but is also in you.
My answer to the last question was foraging, herbalism and ethical widcrafting. It wasn’t until I studied herbalism and learned to forage food, becoming truly intimate with the land under my feet, that I began to feel like an animal aware of her ecosystem. A veil was lifted that had stood between me and the natural world. Home to countless plants, insects, birds and fungi — whose health and well being is inextricably connected to ours – the land around me came alive. It was then that I realized my work: to reconnect people to nature and, in my own way, remind humans that we too are animals.
When we forget that we are nature, we destroy the very home we and all other animals depend upon to survive and to thrive.
Like poet and environmental activist Gary Snyder writes, “Nature is not is not a place to visit, it is home.”
Woven together in wild beauty, we belong here. We need not feel so lonely.
I’d love to know how you would answer one of the questions above. Here they are again:
• Share a time when the “wild” within you came alive. How did that experience feel? What was challenging about this experience? What was joyful?
• Share an experience, in nature, when you felt most at home. An experience that reminded you that the wild is not just “out there” but is also in you.
YOU’RE INVITED:
ONLINE EXPLORATION:
SEASONAL MEDICINAL PLANT WALKS
Autumn session: Today, Sept. 28th at 11am EST 🍂
MINDFUL FORAGING & NATURE JOURNALING
4 sessions starting, Oct 8th at 5:30pm EST
WRITING FOR THE WILD
The interactive lecture series with Project Coyote begins Sunday Oct 13th
BOOK EVENTS:
Earthly Bodies at Unnameable Books in Turners Falls
October 5th, 5pm Join me in conversation with Owen Wormer, award-winning author of Lawns into Meadows
Earthly Bodies reading and signing at Toadstool bookstore in Peterborough NH
Saturday Oct 12th, 11:00am Join me and bestselling author Sy Montgomery
Earthly Bodies book signing with Merritt Bookstore
Saturday, October 19th, 12-4pm at the NY Sheep and Wool Festival
READ A RECENT INTERVIEW IN PSYCHOLOGY TODAY:
‘Embracing Animals’ Wild Voices Rewilds Our Hearts and Souls’
Just tonight - visiting a beautiful park that I used to spend time at in my 20’s (now 48). Having moved back to this area just recently I decided to walk around the lake at dusk tonight. All the memories can back of my time here as I listened to the wind in the cottonwoods and the ducks and geese chatting amongst themselves. Though I lived in many homes - this was a time of feeling I was returning to place - both physically and to a place of deep memories.