On Tracking and Truing

Is it possible that we are each needed, no different than a river, tree frog, or the sun that rises every day?

Home is where your gifts are welcome!

Oh, to not doubt for a minute, that I am wanted, that this spinning earth and all her kin wants me, that she never lets me forget the gravity of love she has for me, and all of you, as she pulls us onto her with a magnetic force like no other!

I’ve been mulling on the word ‘truth’ inspired by my son’s art journey.   What might it mean to be true to ourselves?

Can truth come without reconciliation? What does it mean to reconcile? Hold the opposite poles of grief and gratitude, above and below,  holding and release,  dark and light, sky and earth together, side by side, like twins, lovers, or two sides of the big story we are all part of?  

What roles do art, story, ritual, or co regulation with human and wild kin play in these?  This is my deep study this Winter @thetwiningtrail 

What does it mean to truly belong?

How do we get there?  

Is it possible that we are each needed, no different than a river, tree frog, or the sun that rises every day?

If so how to we recognize and nurture that ecological niche?  What roles to the brothers and sisters of creation: our more-than-human relations have? What about our communities and families and teachers? 

My sense is that how we tend the story fire is at the core:  

Who and how often to we share our story of the day? Who catches our stories? Do we even listen to our own? What are the stories we live by? The stories that raise us and tell us what is important?  Whose stories do we listen to? Our elders? Myths? Fairy tales? Our neighbours and friends? Our children’s or parents? The stories nature tells? The hard truths, the pain and grief? Where is the space and time for this?  

And how to we listen well, integrate, map each of our personal stories into the larger story of life? Whose voices are missing?  Is grief related? If so how do we do that?

This is my great project, my calling, to remember these truths, and to hone the tools of ‘truing’: bringing into relation and balance that which has been forgotten, thrown out of balance, pitted in opposition.  Reconciliation.  Peace keeping: pulling opposites back together. 

I’m excited.  I want to inspire you…. Sometimes it hurts a lot.  The disconnection wounds are big.  It’s ok, I have friends, allies, and many unseen helpers.

I want to come home, I want all of us to come home, and exchange gifts.  

Will you join me?

It’s rare that I get a candid photo of me really in my element.

Again, Home is where your gifts are received. Thsi phrase has really sting, really hurt. I haven’t had that home, or at least, my relationship to it is wracked with problems… That said, as hard as the past 4 years have been, personally and in the world, I can truly say, I have finally truly been coming home.

I think what that means for me, is to be welcomed back by folk who see me and my gifts and wounds, and want to hear the medicine of the true story.

Was it all for naught? The lonely nights, the wondering looking for treasure or simple sustenance, the battle won and lost, the magical meetings and love affairs with two-leggeds and other wild kin? When we are welcomed back and the table is set for a night of story, then…

Then the gifts emerge like Spring from the dark earth.

There’s magic in this capture! Something trailed and witnessed. Can you see it?

There’s a stag in the flames!

This image is captured by my friend, Jeff Lush, who just shared it along with an announcement of a year-long hunting program that he’s offering.

It’s a picture of one of his students lighting a fire with one paper match and only supplies that she gathered from the forest around her. A basic survival skill, but not one to be scoffed at!

Survival skills do that, they ignite something deep within us, that is simultaneously without and larger than us.

They take us on a journey to the vast inner plain of our heart.

We practice observation, stealth, tracking skills, and end up discovering that something wild is also tracking us.

Along the way, there are all kinds of signs, that let us know that we are on the right track. They might show up as dreams, gut feelings, or images in the fire.

They tune us to inner knowing that ignites purpose and place. We just know we are on the right track.

We are symbol trackers, meaning makers…. we live and breath story.

Our nervous systems, our whole biology evolved tracking signs in nature to stay alive….find food, and avoid becoming food. Following the stories that were literally written on the land, we evolved to painting, carving, singing, dancing and eventually writing ‘words’ to read, to remember, to map, to retell the story of the hunt.

What the land writes?

What is written upon the land, tracks in the mud, snow and sand

What the wild furies, gentle rains, and bird song write upon the soft substrate of our bodies, or our souls

The land remembers our trails, trials and tales

The body remembers her trails, trials and tales

The land speaks back to us, she leans towards us with tenderness, she pulls us with gravity to her body,

Oh beloved, she sighs, take these and tell our story well

She gifts us ocher, minerals, rust, leaves, seeds, and flowers, tannin and iron to fashion our pigments, inks to stain our bowls and paddles, dyes to weave our colourful wool, and even black dye for shrouds of mourning.

I won't get into stones, and bones, and bark, and sinew, and deep metals and oils for tools, tools, tools...ah the sorcerer's apprentice.

With these she and I write together, our story inseparable, each tracking the other, each following the wild animal of our hunger, our need, our desire, each holding and sustaining the other

What does the land say to you? Does she sing to you, feed your dreams, share stories of belonging?

It is said that we all have an innate knowing, a capacity to tap into our erotic~intuitive intelligence, to feel that gravitational pull of desire, that north star of purpose. How though? What if your 'nature connection' is just an information exchange, something you learned about the law of gravity, or the fauna and flora in your bio region that really doesn't register.

Or, perhaps, nature connection for you is that gorgeous week on a tropical beach, flying through the powder on the snowy peaks, or that epic view at the end of a hike. It's recreational.

You might even be lucky enough to feel a deep relationship with nature, an interdependence. Perhaps you garden, farm, fish, forage or hunt. Perhaps you are an activist and commit a lot of energy to protecting land. Perhaps you are a land steward. Perhaps, like me, you practice core routines of nature connection, gratitude, sit spot, nature journal-ling... and see nature's kin as beings with whom you are in counsel. These are deeply nature connection experiences. How lucky we are!

But there is a fourth layer of connection that Jon Young describes in the process of Renewal of Creative Path, more than information, recreation, and deep nature connection. It is deep nature connection that is shared among your community. Where your stories of deeply connective experiences are shared and harvested. What happens when we have that?

1. Renewal of Creative Path and Story Catching, in person AND online zoom 2 Tues monthly mid Jan to May 

2. Story Council: Courting the Shadow. Medicine from three old stories, folk and fairy lore, and myth.  

3. Curious to learn the who, what, why and how of the reStory-ing work I am passionate about and how it might support your journey? Last chance to sign up for my FREE Intro session tonight 6:30-9pm pst on Zoom Renewal of Creative Path and Story Catching here:

4. Join our Wild Days Facebook group and stay tuned for an announcement of our first Nature and People Connection weekend gathering coming soon!

Blessings as we slowly spiral out of the dark days of Winter,

with love Belinda White @thetwiningtrail