Last week, one week after the socially distanced campout that coincided with summer solstice we went for a responsible distanced meet which was long overdue at least to us - and where is safer than the outdoors to do this?
We all made our way separately in our vehicles in alignment with the current guidelines. We started in separate groups, both leaving from Chancefield to get to the Tyndall Tower without being seen by the others. Each group had to make something en route (a carved spear and a bow and arrow), and Ethan who was at home was rolling a dice for them which created consequences, and he was on the phone giving them words which they had to find things to represent. Edward was the messenger. It worked well despite words such as cyanide! This was balanced with words such as flourish, ally, remorse and such like. After lunch, we engaged in a lot of climbing on and around the tower. Some of us even ran up it. We made comfrey salve and did an activity to reflect on our different voices.Thought about: are our gaming voices the same as the ones we use to speak to our grannies? Or when we are pissed at our friends? Don't we all have a hat-trick of voices to pull out for every occasion? Can we engage these consciously instead of reactively? We finished off our voice discovery with a sales pitch playoff between Angus and Edward trying to convince the other to purchase mushy orange peas. Yes really. Would you fall for it? The voice may swing it. Just as we left the tower, the thunder and rain arrived, and we made a hasty return to Chancefield our familiar haunt. We were so keen that we were like homing pigeons set free. AND….it was just as we left it three months ago...more or less. Some folk were delighted to see it. Some circling into the known was a homecoming. We are so grateful to have had these structures and friendships through all the unfamiliarity.
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We met on zoom again last week – it's getting a little tiresome being alone (well with our families ) but seeing familiar faces makes a big difference to our sense of continuity. We did story making activities and games in the morning with professional storyteller Douglas Mackay again– and we practised conjuring up words for lockdown with a wordmaster - which is a novel way to generate new words in a group setting using prompts and random assembly. If any time ever called for new words, it is now !! Have you ever made up any words. It's incredible the visceral feeling you can feel from some words. Mythologist Martin Shaw talks about how objects and situations may have a language that is picked up on by humans and translated rather than the other way round. A real shift in perspective! Anyway, we ventured out to our sit spots to do visualisation at our respective favoured local (socially distant) haunts. We had the invitation to make a storytelling stick with foraged twigs and whatever we could find. We also had the prompt to make up stories and record them tangibly on the stick in some way with what we could find. We then spent the afternoon working on our stories, and all had a chance to share a 1-minute trailer upon our return. It was fascinating to witness the range of the stories. Its not quite the same playing games through a computer screen but it is better than no matches at all so of course playing was a part of it all - we played and chatted and engaged in some much needed messing around! edit. We have all been keeping our wild momentum through zoom tech and some pacing with solitary missions. Solo nature missions are all very well, and it’s something we always did before lockdown. But it is even better when you can come back and share your stories with a group who know you well. We are feeling very appreciative for the community we have nurtured over the past few years.
So last week, we made a game of inventing futuristic technology for someone in the group. It said a lot about what we knew about each other as to what we thought they would use the most. We did a re-telling of the Dog & Fox story as a group – each person told a part of it, some bits became longer, and other bits changed utterly. The evolution of the story. We also came up with a survival journey scenario for each person – they were each “sent” to a place they have secure connections with but at a time when things are not quite right and asked to think of 5 things they’d bring with them. We all then ventured out to our sit spot places with a set of three questions and three tasks. These tasks were bird related. We tried building a nest without hands and a human-made beak, and harvesting comfrey. All the more admiration for our feathered friends. For how many thousands of years have we been learning from them? The questions could have led to more profound myth or towards looking at issues of climate change and apocalyptic scenarios. Every generation faces the end and beginning of some aspects of culture - what are we taking for granted? What skills do we bring forward? We also started harvesting stories from our imaginal/real places – mixing real and fantasy – and recognised there is an interface - how can we utilise our imaginations for resilience and future building as well as working through difficulty. Rhiannon also shared ten pages of her Morris comic – which has been an ongoing project it is fabulous, and she got lots of great feedback from the group. We are all feeling very grateful for the weather we are having on the East Coast of Scotland at the moment. We are also pretty proud of the strong foundations of Wilder Ways as an entity. Wilder Ways, we have been going strong and steady even in these distanced time, it has been an essential scaffolding in our outdoor time and connection with each other.
Every week on Fridays we have been meeting on Zoom and then embarking on our solo adventures. Setting time aside to reflect and hold ourselves accountable feels supportive and encouraging and reminds us that we are continuing to develop despite the broader freeze that is going on with our regular interactions. The things we have done over the past little while are: We have explored freedom and fun. Who needs more of that !? We discussed who and what freedom is, concerning the lockdown and throughout history. There were lots of interesting conversations that came out of this, and it certainly planted seeds to consider over a more extended period. They had fun challenges to do on their time out alone – probably best not to mention them here as they were top secret !! In the end, they had multidimensional and unprecedented experiences. Ollie ended up rescuing a pigeon, Ethan became a ninja and disappeared, Rhiannon was a bearer of gold ( ie, loo roll ) to the people of Anstruther and Henry did an Irish jig with a well-written limerick. We are not allowed to release the footage. Then just this weekend they all had camping and solo cooking experiences to welcome in Beltane. Not everyone had the best sleep, but it was good to stretch those camping muscles and think of adaptive and creative ways to camp within the lockdown. Every time we meet up, we also keep chatting about our personal goals - some of those goals need to be acted out throughout the home only but stoking the fire keeps us energised. And as ever the Sit Spot has been our anchor. Thank goodness for the beautiful spring - wasn't it snowing this time last year ??! What have you been doing? How has everyone been ? It has been such an intense month. We would be just starting out Easter Holidays as of the start of the week and instead a lot of us have been away from Schools, if we do go to School, and Workplaces for a while now. We hope you are all doing well out there. Generally Wilder Ways is about getting away from screens and learning hand crafts, being connected to nature and owning our attention. These days though call for something different as getting together isn't an option. We would also be off over Easter but because we are more isolated than usual, carrying on seemed like a good idea. Last week we explored our head, heart, hands and body and our purpose, which is something we do on a weekly on camp. Purpose feels really important even when we are being held up by the current sitation, reminding ourselves of what motivates us can be very healing and empowering – this continuation also feels very affirming. We also went out on our separate adventures – bird surveying, foraging for dandelions, searching for frogspawn, to a calm sit spot and to photograph rabbits. Among us we saw a fox; a heron, a kestrel, some thorny stuff and ducks reclaiming the road. The wildlife is not on lockdown and this is an amazing time to use a daily walk for some healing nature connection. We also had a story from Marylou and an end of term quiz, it's great that Marylou can get more involved in real time as she has a large part in shaping Wilder Ways. This week we joined on Zoom again – we explored what Easter is. We also talked about what we love and how well we know our local landscape. This is something we are all invited to aquaint ourselves better with right now - and it can be a new horizon if we are used to travelling elsewhere for our social activities. We talked about what we don’t know – plants, and birds voices. We explored pausing for Easter – what do we need to do for our pause to really mark it when so much is in pause right now ? We thought about how well we know our local area through some questions on birds, trees, direction, water We all went out on the land again – some of us went back to old sit spots and some decided to explore new ones. Then we got together on Zoom again and shared our days story and photos – we talked about identifying new plants – and what we loved. There was a big need for peace and rest today, everyone is feeling the weight of what is unfolding. We hope you are all keeping well <3 We heard a story from Martin Shaw – the Lindworm. Watch it HERE So, as of last week all gatherings within the UK were strictly prohibited so we had to get creative! It was also Equinox time and the world is churning into life.
Outdoor excursions were also limited to solitary pursuits so we decided to set ourselves a challenge and used the zoom platform to discuss our approach and check in with each other. Then we went on a solo mission to gather gorse and nettles and encorporated a sit spot. After that we gathered together again on zoom and chatted about our individual adventures and made nettle tea to gift to the people we lived with. Together but separate. It was great to know that we have found a way to nurture our Wild Community and ourselves. We've had a few challenges with the corona virus legislation and new risks of gathering. Before the lockdown we had a great meeting over the weekend. Guidelines were already in place so we were careful with personal hygiene, avoided public transport and kept our distance.
Caring and tending day – this last week we were lucky enough to explore the concept that if we don't look after ourselves we will struggle to look after anyone else. How valuable and rewarding will this be in practice for all of us !! It is certainly needed especially between us all as we battle weather and small hardships week in week out ( not mentioning the Oreos and afternoon naps ). We had a chat and brainstorm through the following questions: How do we care for ourselves? How do we not? It was interesting to see ourselves reflected as well have respect for the differences between us. We shared some A&E accident stories – Lewis, our outdoor first aid trainer had the most gruesome one, hands down,from Kings London. We won't share for those of you with sensitive minds. We also played a first aid quiz for the Oreos – Ollie won with Edward a close second, thank goodness as they were feeling hungry and looking faint. Anything becomes possible with biscuits as the prize. Lewis gave us a run down on most things first aid that we may need at Wilder Ways and in our wider lives – we covered situations like: choking, bleeding, burns, bites, stings, cardiac arrest. It was so through and engaging. You will now be much safer around us ! After the training we went to the sports field for some very welcome sun and looked at our own needs. We reflected on what's important to us right now and chose a need individually that we were going to address over the following week. Before we went home, we played some games. It wouldn't be Wilder Ways without games. We hope you will join us one time, in the meantime have a look through our photos. We've had a lot happen over the past few weeks.
Some of the things we've done are as follows: We asked ourseleves the question if we knew we'd succeed what we would do? It was inspiring to let our optimistic visions for ourselves and the planet soar. Then we asked why not now? What stops us? This was a fantastic way of digging into our most treasured hopes and dreams. Following on from that, we hear the story of the Two Wolves. This illustrates the power of our choices over our destinies. It is a reminder of the freedom we have to feed either negative or positive thoughts and attitudes. A tale to carry us through life perhaps - both individually and collectively. We did the sit spot of course – and in the freezing wind, sleet and rain pondered solemnly what animal would we like to be on a day like today? As usual, we also spent some time working on our personal goals. It's great to hear how others are getting on, as well as share in the humanity of obstacles. We smoked some fish around the fire and cooked vegetables in the dutch oven, this warm fare was very welcome in the inclement weather. Brrrrr We played a game called. stag and doe It was Rhiannons birthday, and she made a birthday river - a drawing charting her journey thus far and also looking into her goals for the future. Birthdays seem like a good time for this! The boys made a Wilder Ways river card for her too. Looking at the constant seesaw between negative and positive again, we reflected on how we had done positive /negative thoughts when working on goals To cap this particular day off, we then wrote full-page positive affirmations to keep us on the right track. The group witnessed and agreed with them all. The following week: On friday we: Asked the question if we could change one thing about how humans evolve what it would be? (Some ideas that were generated: an extra hand, instant healing, being shorter and living shorter lives). What would yours be? What do you think is likely with what humans around you are encouraging in themselves now? When we did our sit spot today we thought about how we landed upon finding the right one for us, can we pick the perfect one – whats our criteria? What about you - what makes a right sit spot right? Proximity to water, likely animal passers, being under a tree, in tall grass? Like so many things, there is no definitive, one-size-fits-all answer which doesn't mean exploring the question is not fruitful and revealing on the individual scale. We then went on to play the zombies & humans game where humans had a chance to evolve by answering questions linked to sustainability – we had 1 human left with 1.5 mins to go and then we failed! Failure is an influential teacher, this is what we tell ourselves... We spent time working on personal goal projects – which were oven building; fire starting; overnight shelter building – all of this in the incessant sleet/snow of February in Scotland! We also processed firewood for the store, this will be needed for some time to come by the looks of things. Using the power of our inner "seer" we worked with the imaginal realm. We visualised ourselves as doing something on an alternative day and did some journalling afterwards, either drawing or writing before going on to share our stories. Lot's of gold mined. In our story of the day, we reflected on how the weather affects our activities and what kind of day we had. According to the feedback, it was slow, awesome and as well as scattered with some boring bits as we battled the hardy weather. We then made a rainy day bag of things to pull out to do when the chips are down. This is taking responsibility for our own experience. The agreement we came to is we are all committed to each one in there. We said our goodbyes promptly as we were going to be there the next day for... ...Saturday There were quite a few additional new and familiar faces that joined us today as Saturday is our open to those at high school day. It was great to catch up. To start off with so many other bodies and a slight relief in the harsh weather, we made the most of it by playing games: birthday line up, hagoo, ninja, stump. Please get in touch if you want details of how to play or better yet get in touch to find out how to join us for the next Saturday escapade! We then did some pole lathe turning – made spoons, clubs, bats, fish batons – used a side axe, different chisels and a billhook. Overall we used our bodies a lot by sparring, arm wrestling, falls of trust, human pyramids, human bridges – lots of energy expended and generated. What a cycle of abundance. To settle ourselves, we gathered and discussed our next month's workshop and to top off a fantastic, challenging and productive weekend made our own acrostic poems. As always subscribe for updates and get in touch - we love to hear from you !!! |