So Long 2023
Thank you for being here
Dear readers,
Thank you for being here. Thank you for reading, commenting and supporting Weeds, Wolves & Wild Women and my writing in the myriad ways you have throughout the year. It has been both beautiful and tumultuous, as most years and most efforts are. Your comments and emails keep me going here. I hope you and your loved ones are safe and supported.
I’m finishing 2023 having finished my next book and feeling more settled after an unsettling year. As I wrote and shared with you, my partner and I moved from place to place while becoming intimate with land we now steward. We will build our home there eventually, but since we want to build in collaboration with the ecosystem, we are learning from the land and taking our time. There is no house on Mount Owen and with Airbnb taking over, no long term rentals nearby either. Now, we are ‘settled’ in a beautiful house that is much further than we’d like to be. I wrote a piece back in ‘2022 about my conflicted feelings about ‘owning’ land that can never truly be owned.
Work shifted for me this year. For over a decade, I curated and facilitated nature-connection experiences that often included travel but like many, after Covid, I wasn’t sure how to approach work anymore. Sacred Warrior which had been my work-baby for over a decade also, in many ways, had become a platform I hid behind. Sacred Warrior highlighted wildlife organizations I partnered with and the teachers I collaborated with but now, as an author, I’ve had to put myself out there and am gradually getting more comfortable with it. Over the last two years, I’ve reimagined work and now, with Rewilding Through Writing programs, I have had the privilege of holding space for other writers who are looking to find, recover or strengthen their voice. I’m grateful to every one of you that has been part of it. You inspire me. Meanwhile, Sacred Warrior is in a cocoon phase and will soon emerge in a new form as Solidago Sanctuary.
It feels good to be more of a student of the land again; less of a teacher. I am taking time to learn. When we first began to steward Mount Owen, I had so many ideas about what I wanted to do, how and what I wanted to teach and offer there. But the land has humbled me. Even though the land is incredibly rugged and alive, it is also a sensitive ecosystem. With few trails, I know that I might dislodge moss or an at-risk plant like bloodroot or trillium that hasn’t been disturbed for years whenever I take a step. I want to get quiet again; to listen. I am learning and absorbing more while still speaking and writing on behalf of plants and misunderstood species who cannot speak for themselves.
There is much more to share, of course but I save that for future posts. For now, in case you missed them, below are a few of your favorite posts from this year along with a couple of my own favorites. I’m removing the Paywall today and tomorrow so you can read archived posts, watch plant videos and listen to a recorded meditation. I’d love to know what you appreciated most and would like to see and read more of in 2024. And in case you missed it, here is a post that offers end-of-year journaling prompts.
Wish you a beautiful transition into the New Year.
xo,
Vanessa
Writing For Pleasure
Pleasure requires presence, sensory awareness, and slowing down. In my experience, writing requires the same. The practice of writing helps me attune my senses toward greater awareness and pleasure. Writing also comes alive through the senses. We are sensual animals, after all.
Plants Are Collaborators In Healing
How do we digest difficult experiences? Can plants, from the perspective of herbalism, help? In my experience, the answer is yes. My approach to herbalism is holistic,and is also an approach to deepening intimacy with our bodies and with nature. So it’s hard, sometimes to know where the real healing begins.
Your Body Is A Landscape
The weather this summer has been turbulent — rising heat indexes, floods and heartbreaking wildfires. We are feeling the overwhelm of climate change in every part of our body. We are nature, after all. Our bodies are living ecosystems; reflections of Earth and ecosystems that surround us. And it is important that we check in with the landscape of our bodies, too.
Measure Time With Flowers
Bumblebees nest exclusively in the wild and can often be found in burrows or holes in the ground. When a bumblebee finds an abundant flower at a particular time, she will remember her interaction, the time pollination was completed, and visit the flower at the same place and time the following day. A bumblebee will synchronize her behavior with daily floral rhythms; essentially, measuring her time with flowers. If she’s feeling tired, she might rest inside or around flowers to take a well-deserved nap.
When I Take Time To ‘Just Be’
People always talk about how time speeds up as we get older, but maybe it’s just how we’re spending it. Five minutes of meditation can feel like an eternity while hours can be devoured binge watching a television show. When I think back to when I was young, I had fewer distractions and was easily swept away in the beauty and awe of life. I spent hours drawing, wandering in the woods, gazing and wondering at the stream behind our house in Western Massachusetts. Time is a strange thing, a few words from a person we love and moments of pure presence can shape us, and linger through an entire life.
Who Cares?
You were laying in the middle of the road. I almost rerouted, changed the direction of my walk when I saw you. Not because your mangled squirrel body made me queasy or that you were “gross” as I heard a nearby walker say, but because the sight of you made me sad. I imagine someone — a mate, a child, a mother, a tree — is missing you. There will be an empty nest tonight.
Consumed By You
Bright rays of sun pierce our sleep and pour into our bed through the skylight. You kiss and caress me gently wherever you find my illuminated skin — my back, my forehead, my shoulder. You remind me that these photons, the beams of light that touch me, are incredibly precious. “They have been bouncing around for 100,000 years inside the core of the sun, waiting to reach you.”