the slow school

of earth.

I am sitting in this quiet yurt, surrounded by candles, awake well before dawn, sipping chai with goat milk and a smidge of ashwagandha tincture. I checked out this little mobile hot spot from the library. The woman at the desk told me it was fast, 5G high speed technology, but so far, the little green light is blinking, blinking, blinking, but no such connection has been made.

It’s for the best really, because the warm, pre-dawn air, the last remaining twinkle of constellation magic and that unspeakably mysterious blue rising in the east, are much better for the heartmind than staring at this odd glowing screen, periodically lighting me up neon green from the blinking mobile hot spot light.

This morning was the first morning I really heard the coyotes. Their howling yipping ecstasy tells me winter is well on her way, and with that, so much preparation has to be done. Hauling wood from the forest, processing it, stacking it; winterizing the yurt by covering windows, layering the walls and floors with blankets; remembering where the heck the chains are for the truck, pulling out our winter boots and socks and jackets. Moving everything back inside, for the long, quiet, snow-filled wonderland we get to be part of for another winter.

I have been experiencing a major turning point in my psyche, really, in the way my mind is digesting the natural world (almost three years in to living in the wilderness like this). Last week we were visited by Medicine Bear, a 78 year eccentric fellow who was the last person to sign up for our Headwaters Gathering at the end of August.

When he arrived I was tinkering away making copper jewelry, in heaven, while our dear friend Wendy was following Amara around, finding frogs and mushrooms and all manner of unexplainable natural magic.

He walked down the little path beside the tipi, where I was working, and said “Santa Claus has arrived with a sleigh full of gifts!”

He was wearing overalls with a button-up striped shirt underneath, untucked in the back, a hat, under which his white hair haphazardly reached out in all directions, and an unmistakeable twinkle in his eye. We greeted him with warm curiosity, he showed us his generous donation to our “project” and we all proceeded to sit fireside for dinner and stories.

He began telling this incredible story of the man who was the source for what came to be known as the Tom Brown’s Tracker School. Something deep within me stirred at this beautiful, heartbreaking story and way of knowing and for the first time since Amara’s birth, I felt a major “yes” around an educational model for my child.

He also shared stories of his journeys across the Gobi dessert (twice!), life in Kenya and with the Nomads of Spirit, his current pursuits across the sea with 3D printing and many, many stories of his time with Jon Young, Tom Brown’s main predecessor.

The next day, as he was walking back up the dirt path towards his enormously rugged suburban, he turned to us and said, “See you next time!” In Swahili.

A few days later we were visited by another extraordinary being. She has been living up on Grand Mesa for over 20 years in an intentional community, growing corn, making offerings at her shrines on the mountain and lake, dancing the story of creation, and making pilgrimages twice a year to the Huichol people, where she has spent most of her adult life apprenticing.

We ate dosas and yak meat, sipped nettles tea and listened to amazing stories of a very different way of being, seeing, connecting, listening to the living world around us. Her stories were absolute music to my ears. Mountains, feathers, weather… ancient spiritual technologies.

Meanwhile I have been hammering away at creating this incredible school of ancestral wisdom, where all nations have a seat at the table, restoring Mother Earth is the foundational mission, and our curriculum centers around spiritual and ancestral technologies that reconnect humanity with the living Earth.

The sun is almost rising.

I have been listening to the audio of Tom Brown’s incredible book Conversations with Grandfather. Nothing has grabbed the entirety of my being like this book, these teachings, this way of knowing, in a long time. I am hooked. And I am realizing, though it may sound silly, having lived with next to nothing in the wilderness of the West Elks for almost three years, that this, this tapestry of life that surrounds me in all directions, IS the mystery school. This IS the infinite, timeless, spaceless, ever-deepening, mystery school, in which all things can be known, seen, witnessed and in which such miracles are possible that my colonized mind can only begin to comprehend.

I am feeling many threads of my life meeting together here, now, in this place. Teachings I have cherished for years, my innate longing to live closer to nature, cultivating my child’s capacity for imagination and self-knowledge, the inexplicable drive to feed the earth, the watershed, the mountains, the animals, to give back in some substantial way to the living web of life that makes my entire existence possible. To find real meaning. Not meaning sold to us on t-shirts and coffee mugs, curated by cultural vampires and the insatiable greed of modern industry, but real, feet-on-the-ground meaning, taste-it-in-your-mouth meaning. Meaning that erodes and de-constructs my own inner empire of instant gratification, greed, and ultimately, complete blindness.

So I took Amara out on a nature walk, with new eyes. With new eyes, we discovered many, many things. In a very small area, we saw things we had never seen before.

With new eyes, we will watch this miracle of life carve us into something closer to where we belong, as human beings, as stewards of life, as heartminds dancing in reciprocity with that which gives us all things.

Enjoy your day, and thank you for reading.