Our Traditions In Western Herbalism Conference, Sept. 17-19, is blessed to have not only 20 of the most respected and cutting-edge teachers of herbal medicine… but also two nights of live music featuring bands we know our registrants will love.  Perhaps the most energetic of these acts, Rising Appalachia, will be doing their Afro-Appalachian soul-twang punkabilly forest-activist boogie thing on Friday night, following our longtime friends Carlos Lomas and Gioia Tama of FlamencoWorldCompany and their heartful Nuevo Mexicano flavored Flamenco song and dance.   Saturday night is planned to include the truly enchanting psych-folk couple Arborea, though they are having trouble finding a ride here (see below).  Given the chance that they may not be able to make it, we did an extensive local band search and are pleased to have found and hired Taos musicians Tina Collins and Her Pony to play.  Tina and her partner Quetzal play mostly original tunes, a mix of vocal harmonies, cello and guitar, propelling a contemporary woman’s take on old time mountain style.  Click on the bolded names above to be directed to song samples on Amazon, or do a search on iTunes to enjoy their many recordings… you’ll likely be delighted you did.

Above we have a photo of the deft Carlos and evocative Gioia, FlamencoWorldCompany.

Above is a photo of Tina Collins and Quetzal Jordan of Tina and Her Pony.  And below, a montage of Chloe and Leah, the core of Rising Appalachia.

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Round-Trip Ride Needed

From New England to The TWH Conference for Our Band

ARBOREA

Shanti, Buck and their child

Musicians, on the whole, have seldom been fairly treated in this country, with even the relatively few high paid performers having to deal with predatory labels and management fiascos.  Indie groups in the age of file sharing have an even harder time making a living, selling CDs at small venues while often at the mercy of undependable booking agents.  Like musicians for centuries, Buck and Shanti of our conference band Arborea have faced unforeseen difficulties, without losing their drive to share their creations with attentive listeners.  Like their peers and predecessors, they do what they do for the music first and foremost, out of service to the muse, and in honor and celebration of green energy and the magical natural world.

RIDE SOUGHT

We’d like to find someone in the New England area planning to drive to and back from the upcoming Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference, that  Shanti, Buck and their child could ride with to and from the event.  We’d need you to have a vehicle large enough to hold them and their instruments, and most importantly, feeling honored and happy for the opportunity to be of help in this way.  They would need to arrive on or before July 16th.

If you are interested, we would need to know no later than Aug. 3rd, for their sake, but also to know whether to include them in the Booklet being printed for every attendee.

Thank you much.  Look forward to a most wonderful conference and music.

-Jesse Wolf and Kiva Hardin

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Why I’ve Become A Sponsor:

A Message From Tina to Anima

What follows are the beautifully evocative and ever so kind words of our most recent Sponsor/Supporter.  It feels especially timely given a reduction in financial support and our current program and site expansion, but it would feel great any time to have the involvement of someone with this kind of energy, abilities and determination to be a blessing to the world.  We’re honored to be of assistance to her as well, her friends and fellow travelers on the purposeful earthen path.  Thank you Tina… and from everyone involved in any way, “Welcome!” we must say!

“Frequent dreams of the Anima Sanctuary and canyon are what prompted me to apply for and commit to the Medicine Woman course.  I have since begun a marvelous unfolding, filled with joy and tears and laughter and magic.  I want to support the Sanctuary, School, and folks who work so hard in dusting off our memories of being sacred wild men and women.  Since starting the Medicine Woman course, I have discovered that I have already been a Medicine Woman, and that I am now reclaiming that life which has pulled on me and called to me in so many whispers and fervent cries from Spirit.  Being a supporter of Anima is one way of expressing my appreciation, and going through the sometimes messy process of fully awakening and sharing my inner radiance with others is perhaps the most sincere sign of my gratitude I can offer.”
-Tina

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Sweet Tina signing on as an Anima Sponsor, and an unexpected first donation to our solar fund from dear ally Dio, both come just as we’re rewriting the description of our School economics and personal Sponsorships for the website.  Below you’ll find the new text, approximately as it will appear.  Read it if you’ve ever wondered how we can “afford” to do this work while living here in the remote wilds… only by both spending little and wisely, and welcoming the help of people like you.

The Gifting Cycle:
Anima Sponsorship and Alliance of Purpose

The Gifting Cycle is the Anima term for the necessary receiving and purposeful giving that is one of the most fundamental systems of the natural world.  It is the grass in essence giving of itself and its energies to the deer, the deer becoming a gift to the lion, and all giving to the soil when they die.  It is the exchange of gases between plant, animal and atmosphere.  The joy a parent gets from providing for a child, and the blessings that they in turn provide.

Donations and Sponsorships are gifts in the purest sense, neither disbursed as wages nor demanded in payment, forced by law nor required by convention… ideally helping make it possible for the recipients to give back to those who have helped them, while crucially increasing their ability to give to both earth and others.

The Economics of Anima School and Sanctuary

Anima School is not yet, nor may every be an official nonprofit organization, though it has largely functioned as one since its inception in the 1980’s… minus the tax advantages that such status might offer.  All services are provided regardless of any financial benefit to the School or its staff – for the intended purpose of healing both land and people – and with only a necessary, modest amount of economic support from grateful students and folk who strongly believe in the School’s mission.  Contributors can be sure any such donations go directly to the development and implementation of effective restoration and teaching projects, given that none of the directors/staff are paid wages at this time, much of the food consumed is wild and gathered, and the Anima property was fully paid for and secured thanks to 15 years of difficult payments.

Remaining and ongoing needs include annual land taxes, wilderness restoration costs such as tools and seeds, satellite internet service, website hosting, laptop and program upgrades, promotional printing costs and outreach, the self publication of Anima books and recorded materials, cooking fuel and solar system repair and improvement, as well as water system, guest cabin and vehicle maintenance.

Donations and Support

Anima School and Sanctuary subsists almost entirely on voluntary donations from students and participants, along with the vital support of a few, committed individual Sponsors.   Contributors are absolutely essential to the teaching, counsel and restoration work, with almost none of the hundred or more helpful magazine articles submitted and published each year receiving monetary compensation, and with none of the directors/instructors having any savings, insurance or supplementary incomes of any kind.  In addition, much of the Anima work is done for free, and nobody applying for courses or retreats or requesting counsel or books are ever turned away for lack of money.

Unlike with the vast majority of schools, every Anima book, blog, home study course, counsel session and retreat are available to anyone who can benefit regardless of their ability to contribute financially in turn.  The School sets a sliding scale donation amount for each service, to be determined by how much they personally value what they’re given, but also by their present economic situation.  What’s asked for is a commitment to eventually send at least the minimum donation – in installments of any size, or even in barter –  yet we serve a third of such folks without any compensation besides the satisfaction of doing all we can to inspire, assist and equip them for a more natural, meaningful, effective and actualized life.

It is because of this that our never plentiful Supporters have been so crucial, from our earliest and longest lasting aides and friends Nick and family to devoted Resolute, and both the smallest and the most recent of Sponsors.  And ongoing, nationwide economic stress has reduced the number of such Sponsors, making each commitment all that much more valuable to our efforts and shared aims.

Individual Sponsorships

Sponsors are private individuals pledged to assist with consistent donations, whether monthly, quarterly or annually… integral partners, further affecting the world through the Anima work that they personally support.   Regular contributions of any size make it much easier to plan the extent of our projects and limits of our budget, and help to avoid suspended service accounts that could really hurt our work.

You too can become a Sponsor, for as little as $50 per month.  This can be in the form of a simple, scheduled donation via PayPal or postal money order, or you can opt to sponsor and take part credit for the success of a specific project, such as:
• Paying for the publishing of any of the Anima manuscripts waiting to see print
• Covering a variety of onetime purchases such as an upgraded laptop, an improved solar system or a rain water catch and storage system, etc.
• Underwriting riparian restoration projects, including purchase of rare plant starters
• Assuming responsibility for a regular bill, such as for a mailing list service or Post Office box fees
• Arranging to provide any regularly needed service or product, from sponsoring ad placement in magazines to monthly shipments of fruit, organic meats or other needed foods
• Or covering specific emergency costs as needed, such as vehicle or computer repair, or even an unanticipated medical or dental expense

Those who have followed our evolution, know that Sponsors are what we used to call “Supporters,” the new term denoting the enabling of projects and events rather than merely “helping to hold up.”  Sponsorship is an opportunity and means for a purposeful alliance of intent, through which allies far and wide can feel good about working together to carry this meaningful work forward.  No matter how you make your income, an Anima Sponsorship is a way to transform some of your labors into the the products and services we offer, and thereby to the purposes of educating and inspiring, inciting and empowering, healing and helping.

There are many ways to assist, from much needed help with outreach to volunteer labor at the Anima Sanctuary, and a wide range of ways to contribute to the good of the world from teaching and the arts, to civil disobedience and resistance to injustices.  Some may at first glance appear more glamorous or exciting than a financial Sponsorship, and yet there can no contribution more valuable, versatile or timely than simple monetary donations, being both a means for – and the fuel and propellent for – nearly everything that Anima does.   There could be no blogs or books, magazine articles or Home Study courses, wildlife reintroduction or willow plantings without you… and your strong determination to give.

——–

If you are considering becoming a Sponsor, please download, fill out and return the

Sponsor Application

For more information or to read about current Anima Sponsors, go to the soon to be updated

Anima Website Support Page

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Those of you who know me, know that I shy away from birthdays, feeling that my mother deserves the credit and attention for my own birth, and preferring to surprise my loved ones with gifts – instead of Xmas and birthdays when they are customary and expected.  That said, I love to see birthday lovers enjoy theirs, not only youngsters like Rhiannon who will be having her 10th on August 4… but also Kiva, wise, respected, potentially formidable adult who still lit up like a child as her 30th was honored last week.

Here we see her with the vest I painted with the TWHC logo, knowing that anything leather – and anything plant related – was sure to be a hit.

Most precious, though, was the fantastical painting of her name that Loba did for her, and the wonderful Velvet Rose doll that Rhiannon made for her with Mama Loba’s help.  Rather impressive, don’t you think?

So much did Rhiannon enjoy making her first doll, “Velvet Rose,” that she worked hard making another to send as a thank you note for a much appreciated gift… and now she is nearly finished with another that she hopes we will sell for her online or at the herbal conference.  She wants to do a series, among all her other planned and hoped for projects.

Loba’s parents are visiting for a week, after years of her not seeing them.  Parent/child relationships are seldom free of expectation and disappointment, and whatever effects that has, but time apart brings to the forefront what’s most dear.  I’m happy she has this time, connecting with them not around shared lifestyles or even interests so much as shared love and caring that is deeper than differences, founded now more than ever on unfiltered regard and lasting affection.

We continue to face a few thousand dollar upgrade of the solar system, in order to be sure of being able to do this work through the Fall and Winter, and to not further damage our expensive storage batteries.  We will start a solar fund soon that anyone can contribute to, giving me a chance to write a piece about our solar adventures, setting up a system, and the latest in grid and off-grid technologies.

On a related note, we extend our welcome to new basic level Sponsor, Tina, whom we hope to acknowledge and profile here and on the site soon.  The costs of this expanding work have gone up even as the number of folks able to afford to contribute has gone down, so thanks to Tina and our devoted supporters now more than ever.

Lastly, Loba just finished a new recipe for you that we will post shortly.  She can’t wait to share it.

We thank you for birthday and other wishes that have come in lately,

-Wolf

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Our Sanctuary partner Van of Stream Dynamics led volunteers from Upper Gila Watershed Alliance, Sky Island Alliance and Anima Center in planting 550 willow starters on Forest Service land downriver from us, with permits kindly facilitated by John Pierson and Justin Schofer of the Reserve Ranger District.  Willows have spread effectively northwards (upriver) from our rewilded private inholding, primarily spreading by root and no longer assisted by us.  Downriver, however, there remain a lot of uncovered and untethered river banks, one section of which is now thickly planted with willow starters.  These bank stabilizing trees are so hardy, that any branches pruned off have a high likelihood of growing into whole new trees when stuck a foot or more into moist sandy ground.

In this first photo are the plantings the day they were placed, thanks to the hard work of the land-loving volunteers.

In the second, we see the same stand one month later, already leafing and branching out.  All of the environmental consciousness and Mother Earth bumper stickers in the world won’t do for the planet or ourselves what a single direct action, restored park or yard or planted heirloom garden will.  Groups like the UGWA and Sky Island count on volunteers such as yourselves, to find meaning and satisfaction in giving their time to make real their priorities and beliefs.  Heartful Hand-Work.

Confrontation and resistance have their place in any movement or cause, as do education, litigation and legislation.  What is great about watershed restoration in comparison, is that it benefits all manner of land user or owner and can therefore enlist the support and even assistance of a wide range of folks.  The same revegetation that lessens erosion and contributes to wildlife habitat and proliferation, is also the best known means for ensuring the continuance and purity of surface water for human use.

Our gratitude to everyone that came this year to help out, and we look forward to future groups.

-Jesse Wolf Hardin & Family

Anima School and Botanical Sanctuary

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BEAR TRUTH REALITY

and Montana Grizzly Encounter Sanctuary

Trust me, the photo above is not a photoshop composite, but an actual photograph of Brutus the 800 pound grizzly bear joining the family for lunch.  Brutus is one of several bears saved from being euthanized by impassioned naturalist Casey Anderson, and displayed in natural environs at the Montana Grizzly Encounter Sanctuary.  The sanctuary serves not only as a home for cage-raised animals that could never survive being released, but also as an educational facility to help dispel the stereotype of the grizz as always being a blood thirsty man eater.  Busloads of school children regularly get fairly close to these admittedly exceptional tempered examples of bruinhood, thrilled to watch these giant critters interact in relatively natural surroundings.

As Casey well knows, there is danger in making all big bears seems as docile and approachable, which is why he teaches about caution in bear habitat as well.  For balance and perspective, it is important to take to heart not only the gregariousness of friendly and faithful Brutus, but also the case of bear activist Timothy Treadwell who insinuated himself into a wild group each year in Alaska.  As the excellent documentary film Grizzly Man describes, most of the animals were indeed accepting.  He used his films of these often playful animals to help win support for their protection, putting their images to work for the cause of improved public relations.  One such furry browed individual, however – the one that decided to kill and eat the well intentioned Treadwell – apparently couldn’t care less how his behavior reflected on the species.

The bottom line is that bears, especially wild ones, are potentially unpredictable and dangerous.  On the other hand, they are not and never were the exaggerated threat that civilized humans have made them out to be.  We evolved with them, not in spite of them, coinhabitants of a wild and magical world where we are not the top of the food chain, but a conscious link… finding not only nobility and beauty in the great grizzly but also inspiration for healing.

To read more about Casey’s sanctuary or to support its work, go to the BrutusTheBear.com For further bear reading I invite you to enjoy my piece below, a rather lengthy article entitled “The Medicine Bear”.

-Jesse Wolf Hardin – www.AnimaCenter.org

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BEAR MEDICINE:
The Grizzly as Healer Archetype and Agent of Heightened Awareness

By Jesse Wolf Hardin

Anima School – www.AnimaCenter.org

beartooth set in silver
heavy at my throat
I wander into the morning
carrying a basket of flowers
and roots
barefoot in the remnants
of a heavy dew

and I am singing an old song
the blood song
of animal and woman
bound together
into one body, one spirit
-flesh, fur and bone-
-Kiva Rose

A heavy presence pads through the forest primeval, heavy like nightfall, heavy like the weighty body of the universe.  We feel its approach, even as we swim the glare of the midday sun— its corporeal mass slowly moving towards us, intent on enveloping us.  It is the spirit of a giant that survived the Ice Age, tearing apart the fallen trunks of ancient trees, knocking flailing salmon and furry golden marmots high into the air, continuing to stalk the darkly hidden caves of our dreams: the bear.

It comes not to silence but to awaken.  To consume distraction and illusion, to put an end to the irrelevant and trivial, to draw our attention to what matters most in us and around us.  To lead us to the ways and plants that can help us heal.  To deliver us back to our whole, primal, magical, responsive selves.  Some of us may feel the bear inside, raising up and helping us stand strong and straight, driving our hungers and feeding the growth of our insight and wisdom.  Some may claim the bear totem as their own, as though the bear had claimed and inhabited them.  And for all of us, it is a potential teacher that we would be unwise to ignore.

–#–

Grizzly!  The sound of their name is enough to pass a charge, like electricity through our bones,  enough to cast a long and deep shadow across our rapidly shrinking arrogance, illusory sense of omnipotence and fragile certainty.  One glance at a grizz’s unmistakable claw marks eight foot up the side of his scratching-tree and every nerve comes instantly to attention.  Every sense is alerted, every light turned on at once in the mortal housing of the soul.  Enlivened!  Every cell open-eyed and open-mouthed, every molecule on tip-toes, straining to perceive.

Awakeness.  Intensified perception.  These are the first gifts of the great bear.  With their slow lumbering thunder, comes the excitement and clarity of lightning bolts: sudden, penetrating, en-lightening!  Truly, one perceives more in grizzly country.  Sees further.  Hears more acutely.  Smells deeper.  Notices more.  Our senses honed to a fine, irreconcilable edge.  Without ever actually seeing a bear, the mere thought of it is as a claw stripping the opaque film from our perceptual lens.  The civilized traits of inattention and indifference are swiftly gutted like fish, and left to curl and dry on hot river rocks.  Sloth joins nonchalance, pawed into a carrion pile beneath a layer of sticks and dirt.

More people are hurt in California shower stalls each year than are hurt by wild animals in the entire country.  The fact is that there’s a greater probability of being hit by lightning than attacked by a bear.  Our heightened awareness in grizzly country results from the possibility of a bear attack, not by its likelihood.  Systematic and almost complete removal of this wilderness potential allows for us to sleep-walk through most wilderness experiences on “automatic pilot,” the way we may be used to functioning in the “work-a-day” world.  Reduction in any wilderness potential reduces our own ability to experience.

Since our Paleolithic ancestors first contested proprietorship of a cave, the great bear has been a reminder that humans are not at the top of the “food chain.”  Ask any grizzly you meet.  Or, if you’re below a certain size, ask a starving mountain lion.  If anything, soil is at the top, since it gets to eat everybody .  Civilized cultures fear dirt for this very reason, fighting back with soaps, detergents, and above-ground mausoleums.  But they fear the bear most of all.

At its worst, civilized human existence can be unnatural, reduced, confined, insulated like a padded cell, buffered from danger and thus from adventure, heightened sensation, spontaneity and awe.  A great effort is made to ensure the urban environment is the opposite of grizzly country: constrained, predictable, metered, pacified, and inflexibly scheduled.  There’s a singular lucidity to grizzly country, a brilliance and clarity like sunlight dancing on a curved tooth. Time spent in grizzly country is infinitely and necessarily flexible.  Spontaneity and attentiveness are traits that contribute to both our capacity to survive and to enjoy.
But the grizzly, and in fact all species of bear, have more to teach us than merely being alert.  They are intuitives, seers, shamans, travelers of the soul and instinctual healers that have influenced our development and psychology for ages.  Our species evolved in close relationship with Ursus, serving alternately as the bears’ food and prey, as their destroyers, their fawning bards… and their rapt students.

–#–

The earliest physical evidence of human reverence for animal spirits was discovered in various  grottoes high in the mountains of Franconia, Switzerland and Germany.  Along with numerous tools and fauna remains, they discovered purposeful collections of cave bear skulls stacked neatly on shelves, or protected inside stone cabinets protected by slab “doors.”  Some were encircled by a formation of small rocks, while another held a leg bone in its mouth.  Here were not only the tools for killing and fleshing these powerful animals, but proof of their veneration by what must have been a bear cult.  It seems that from earliest times the bear was seen as the “Animal Master,” the strongest of all.  Right relationship with the bear, however each tribe defined that, would determine what other animals made themselves available.

I once came upon some Pueblo Indian friends of mine way back on a dirt road, north of Taos.  Hung upside down next to them was a young black bear carcass.  I’d read how human they look with their baggy hide removed, but nothing prepared me for what looked like a skinned man with his chest opened, the pink muscles layered like a teen wrestler with a size #18 neck.  They salted and rolled up the skin, fur side in, while I watched the flies probe the exposed body.  The hide would be carefully tanned, and the meat left for the coyotes.  For them, eating a bear would be like cannibalism.  For they are the creatures most like us.

The bear’s fierce maternal devotion helps explain her role as the Mother of All Animals.  In her book Gods and Goddesses Marija Gimbutas contemplates the hundreds of ancient terracotta “bear nurses” that have been excavated from various Euro-neolithic sites.  Many are enthroned female bears, or women with bear masks on, and most are nursing a cub.  She sees these as the primordial animal goddess, the Great Mother, nurturing the new gods and goddesses of vegetation and agriculture.  The cub, then, becomes Zeus on the bear’s nipple, Zalmoxis and Dionysus, Artemis and Diana.

Our ancestors in both the “Old” and “New World”  watched the bear go into its den every winter and emerge every Spring— an obvious herald of rebirth, the return of life to a hungry land and hungry people.  The people of civilizing Europe harnessed the bear, and the bear’s mythology, to the purposes of the field and plow.  In England they had the “strawbear,” while in Germany he was called the Fastnachtshar: a man dressed up in a straw bear costume who would be led in early Spring to each house of the village.  There the man-bear would dance with all the women.  The more enthusiastically they danced, the richer the coming crop would be.  Pieces of the straw costume would be snatched by the young girls, and placed beneath their pillows to insure fertility, or placed in the nests of their chickens to encourage the laying of eggs.  The bear has forever represented as going into the self, into the Earth in order to be refreshed, revitalized and reborn again.  Those who would be students of the bear travel the discomforting trail into their inner self, only later returning to the busy surface with the strength and secrets found within.  They know that out of the icy sleep of winter comes the regeneration of life.

Entering into an initiation rite is often like going into hibernation.  The initiate is likely placed in the dark and isolation of a secluded hut, pit or cave.  They may be further wrapped up, blindfolded, or otherwise have their senses and mobility limited as it would be in the womb.  As with hibernation, the initiate would seem to die inside, giving up one persona and climbing out in a new, empowered form.  For this reason, the Dakota refer to a boy’s rite of passage as “to make a bear.”  The coastal Pomo included both boys and girls in an initiation where the children are symbolically “killed” by the kuksu  spirit, with the help of a costumed grizzly bear.  They were then removed to the forest for four days and nights.  When they were “reborn” into the tribe, they brought with them the secret medicine songs and plant knowledge learned in their travels to the middle world.
For the Ainu of northernmost Japan, the bear was “The Divine One Who Rules the Mountains.”  To the Cree they are the “Angry One” and “Chief’s Son.”  The Sami translation is roughly “Old Man With Fur Clothes,” while the nearby Finns say “Old Lightfoot” or “Pride of the Woods.”  Most often, wherever they are found they’re called “Grandmother” and “Grandfather” out of respect.  Long after the adoption of firearms in both Europe and America the indigenous people continued to hunt bears with their most primitive weapons, insisting on honoring their quarry with the personal engagement and inherent fairness of hand to hand combat.
The totemic energy of the bear was invoked by both men and women of one of the select warrior classes of “barbaric” Europe.  They got their name “Berserkers” from the bear (“ber”) skins (“serks”) they wore instead of the uniforms and armor of their more civilized antagonists.  Men and women are said to have fought together, biting at their shields, and raising such a tumultuous animal roar that the earliest Roman invaders fled in a total panic.  They were famous for their ability to ignore pain, facing unfair odds with uncompromised ferocity.  Their characteristic ability to continue fighting in spite of numerous wounds may have been assisted by the consumption of certain psychoactive mushrooms, no doubt showed to them by their rambling bear guides.  Among the Great Plains tribes of America they were called “Bear Dreamers” and “Bear Warriors.”  Known for running head long at their foes, at times with no more than a bear-jaw knife.  They believed the bear spirit would protect them, inspiring incredible feats of courage.

The Pueblo name for bear is often the same as for doctor.  The bear not only ushers in the spring vegetation, but then shows those who watch close enough which plants and roots to eat, and which herbal medicines to gather for their people.  In this country the bear showed the people where to find the kinnickinnick (also called Uva Ursi, or “bearberry”), the yarrow and osha root.  The Lakota emergence myth describes the people being tricked into leaving the middle earth by the Trickster Iktomi.  For leaving the embrace of the Earth Mother the people were subjected to disease, cold and hunger for the first time—  possibly an allegory for humanity’s progressive disenfranchisement from the rest of the living planet.  It was the bear, the doctor, that felt sorry for the wayward humans and showed them the plant remedies they would need to ease their self-inflicted suffering.
In both America and Europe the bear spirit was considered to be the ally of the shaman.  Like the medicine man, the bear could both heal you and kill you.  Both are solitary travelers, garnering their power from the lessons of Nature and the experience of solitude.  Both are feared at the same time they are revered.  Like bears, those with bears for guiding totems, typically make people uncomfortable.

And to be fair, bears can be hard to live with!  People with bear energies or traits are not just strong willed but stubborn, sometimes to their own detriment.  Uncooperative, unless something happens to please them.  Able to withdraw into themselves, to the exclusion of others.  Distant and inaccessible, when they’re feeling either melancholy or bored.  Impatient about anything that matters.  Dangerous when they are crossed.  They are hardest on themselves when they lack a purpose, and hardest on others when they are judged and misunderstood.

Unless and until they develop self discipline, such people may gravitate to extremes of mood and behavior, giddy and playful one moment and perturbed the next.  They may find themselves eating more sweets than are healthy, and sleeping more than they need.  They are not lazy people, only extremely particular about what they commit their interest and energies to.

On the other hand, these bear-folk have the ability to search the inner labyrinths of their creature beings and wild souls, resulting in a deep understanding of self that they can make use of if and when they decide to come back out.  They have the inherent strength and determination to accomplish great things, moving aside immense boulders in order to get to a self-assigned goal.  They are self motivated and function well at solitary work of any kind.  At the same time, they can make incredible mates, so long as they live with someone who not only truly knows and understands them, but who also shares their preferences, desires, intentions, missions, destinations and designs.  They are capable of being some of the very best teachers, authors and parents… and the most dependable guardians of integrity and truth, spirit and magic, land and home.  They make the most powerful healers, whenever they have first done the work of healing themselves.  Those who marry the bear, never want to go back.

It’s not a matter of physical size or shape.  Being bear is in the way one walks flat-footed, and swings their head from side to side.  In the deliberateness of motion, and the absence of frivolity.  In great persistence and high intelligence.  In playfulness that is as intense and focused as hunting or sex.  In the father’s force of purpose, and the mother’s protectiveness.  In the earth-warrior’s devotion, and the inimitable bear-hug.  In the Medicine Woman’s affinity with plants and intuitive relationship to medicinal herbs.  In their huge hearts and berry-chomping smiles.  It’s in the way that they dream of the bear… and the way that bear, in turn, dreamed them into being.

–#–

what is sacred, and
who walks with  naked foot.
the earth below and the mind’s echo in
the long night, the body turns
on poles of cold wind and fire.
what the dream can touch
and the heart hear
(the cracking of gray ice
like a mirror in her eyes)
give yourself to the star, give
yourself to the last bear
-Barbara Mor

Acceptance of the wild bear is tantamount to acceptance of the untamed wilderness, of the untamed energies of womanhood, of an untamed life.  It means acceptance of the dualities of nature, of all sides of the Earth Mother.
I am reminded of Artemis, Greek daughter of the original Animal Mother, grown into the Lady of The Beasts, the Lady of Wild Nature, priestess of the moon.  She was Diana the huntress, but also served as the defender of wildlife.  Her companion was a bear, and together they ruled the plant kingdom and thus determined feast or fast.  She served as protectress of thieves, slaves and outlaws.  She was at once the destructive, all consuming “terrible mother” and the defender of the children, guardian spirit of all pregnant women and “Opener of the Womb.”  Artemis helps us understand how our difficult embrace of the bear is actually an acceptance of the death that must precede any planetary rebirth.

For many thousands of years humankind has looked to the bear as both reality and symbol, seeing many different things in both.  A few land-based tribes in Siberia and North America continue to actively revere the mighty grizzly as a worthy rival and invaluable guide.  Conservationists and nature lovers may continue to see them as important aspects of a healthy ecosystem, and some still draw on them for inspiration, example and power.  But for most people, the relationship has progressed to one of estrangement, with all wildlife becoming distant curiosities or televised entertainment.  They are no longer even trophies to “bag,” let alone threats to avoid at all cost.  To them, the bears are veritable historical artifacts, barely breathing throwbacks to a wilder and more intensely realized time.  They’re magic, and they are indeed disappearing.  But they’re also as real as we are.  And in another way, they’re always here.

Primal humans found something distinctly familiar in the great bear.  In the way the mother gently plays with her cubs, and stiffly defends them against all comers.  The way she gently sniffs the beckoning blossoms, or stretches in the sun.  The bear appeals to that part of the human psyche still pondering its own untamed nature— with perked ears and raised hackles!  It strokes the Paleolithic sensibility that even now revolts against enforced civility.

There is something like destiny, climbing inexorably over the nearby ridge, heading unhurriedly but deliberately our way.  It is a playful dream, a sensual overture, a fur-covered agent of the wild.  It is awakeness, and it is healing.  It promises, in silence, to take us into itself… into its very center!

It is the great bear.

And it is us.

Go ahead
turn around
see the shape
of your footprints
in the sand
-Leslie Marmon Silko

–#–

(The above essay is from an upcoming book by Wolf Hardin.  Feel free to share and link.)

(Beautiful painting “Medicine Bear” is by Dark Natasha)

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Greetings Again to our devoted readers and dear friends.  The long holiday weekend has just come to an end, with Kiva driving guest Resolute back to the nearest large airport 4.5 hours northeast of here.  She takes with her a stained and etched glass owl that I got as a reminder of the needed return not just to the places of connection but to self and purpose.  It is the focus on mission and purpose, on the gifts we each have to give, that can bring the deepest sense of fulfillment.

The unbearably hot weather this time last year has been replaced this time around with a remarkably pleasant Summer.  While the NE of the country swelters and southern Arizona bakes, the wild Gila is having moderate days that are cooled each afternoon by daily monsoon pattern clouds.  No rain to speak of yet, and lots of small wildfires in the high country, but the most wonderful weather and a choice lushness of animal and plant life.

We had a great 3 day event here, with Kiva teaching a plant walk, Loba leading medicine sweat, and me doing a couple of sessions.  It was instigated and prompted by the participants, even after we had canceled the Shaman workshop over lack of time to promote it.  Their desire for what’s offered, and insistence on continuing to learn and grow and manifest in their lives, their dissatisfaction and in some cases deepening connection to this canyon are the seed and root of what was a very personalized intensive.  The first teaching involved exactly what they needed and not what I might have otherwise planned, discussion about the false dichotomy of being versus doing, a call for Burden Basket work and a letting go of the traps of schedule and obligation long enough to ascertain authentic self, direction and purpose.  Like the cliff swallow in the story I often tell, it can be more harmful to hold back than to make the scary leap into limitless sky.  Thank you Sati, rather than thrusting new tools into your hands, I have placed some along the path for you to pick up for yourself.  They can make things clearer, though not easier.  Melissa, thank you for continuing to come back here, stronger and more determined each time.  Please believe me that it is time for you to own your calling as well as already existing knowledge and abilities.  You will learn ever much more, but the time to wear the mantle and hang the shingle is now.  Jenny, many gifts and lessons await your belief in your ability to follow-through.  Decisiveness and commitment are what will serve you best, as you find the strength to shed of the rest.  The intentions of you three are as good as can be, we hope your connection to us and this land serve those intentions fulfillment in every way.

Loba and Rhiannon started the special weekend by surprising Resolute with what Rhiannon called an “Owl Grape Leaf Fairy Celebration” or some such thing.  Adding to the excitement for this soon to be 10 year old imp, was word she was being given a music and video player as a gift by such a sweet supporter, spinning around and around and shouting out her thanks.

Power for our computers and satellite internet has become an issue, after finding out our problems with it have to do with mismatched panels and batteries that were donated over time and cobbled together.  We will be forced to somehow cover the costs of system renovation, the conference, our courses and submissions all dependent on it.  I’ve begun writing various solar companies to see if there are any donation programs, discounts etc. for low income conservation or public service entities such as Anima.

We heard from one of our conference bands, the awesome couple Arborea, that they have had trouble with their agent and label and can’t make it now without a ride.  We will be looking for someone coming to the conference from New England who might be happy and honored to drive them, can’t imagine not having their magical contribution.  Nevertheless, to be safe I did a great deal of research and found another amazing act, two really powerful women who play original songs in our favored, emotive Appalachian style.  We are determined to make a slot for them even if we’re able to get dear Buck and Shanti of Arborea here, so look for an announcement about them soon.

Today’s featured blog article is another that I wrote as much for magazines with a “general” and non-alternative audience as much as for my progressive and always understanding blog subscribers.  Once we are publishing several focused online magazine sites, this piece on my years as a teen runaway and the danger of fitting in would likely appear in the ReWilding and Libertarian focused one.

This Runaway post contains the first ever publicly published photos of me when I was a youth.  Note that while I was happy in military school, I was even more blissed out after I split… a true fact, in spite of the typically teenager look I demonstrate in the later pics, either too cool to smile, exuding seriousness or hinting at distaste.

Blessings from all of us, and have a great week.

-Wolf

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Tales of a Runaway:
The Problem With Lines, and the Makings of a Proud Misfit

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

Anima School  www.AnimaCenter.org

I’m often asked for the story of my first leaving home at age 13 and again at 15, as the first peach fuzz began to form above my lips.  Their queries are usually a response to the way I present my teaching credentials, offhandedly describing myself as nought but a self taught, onetime 7th grade runaway with a certain talent for detecting bullshit and intuiting truths, connecting the dots and rocking the proverbial boat.  I would never have used such an expression in the day, however, being far more focused on those things I was running towards than anything I might have been hoping to escape.

That said, I was without question running – not walking – in what often seemed the opposite direction of my family, fellow students and neighbors, supposedly representative government and the vast majority of humankind.  For whatever strange reasons, I could somehow relate better to principled oddballs like Quaker pacifists and gun toting guerilla soldiers, to socially stigmatized bookworms, bookies and bootleggers, troublesome juvenile delinquents and maverick hard-spurring adults than to the well behaved who blindly toed the line.

It was the toeing that I had least use for, growing up a witness to all the fearful folks remaining rigidly within the boundaries that others proclaim, the children ordered to line up and fly straight, the teens told to get their futures lined out, the wives who never speak up because they might sound out of line.  I blatantly disrespected and stepped over established economic lines and race lines, national borders and social boundaries, ceilings and caps, lanes and limits.  I eschewed using lined paper and avoided any people who seemed to strictly follow party lines.  I snuck into theaters, or else waited until the long line of movie goers were seated before making my way inside, and I would have rather eaten out of a dumpster any old day than to have stood for even an hour in a welfare line.  I had – and still have – a problem with any person or agency trying to line me up or line me out.  While youngsters I knew were trying to get on a football squad or nail down their first job at the phone company, I found I had no desire to become either a linebacker or a lineman.  Nor did it matter if my ideas and direction were aligned with either special interests or the common-sense trumping majority.  I ignored the so called fine line of the law, in favor of doing what seemed right, avoiding hurting people because of either inherent compassion or the usual absence of a pressing need, rather than because some instrument of law chose to proclaim it illegal.  I made plans early to one day be buried under a tree, and not planted in a root-resistant coffin in some cemetery’s grim grid of lines.

Not even sitting in a line of school desks was easy for the wild-card boy looking for freedom, experience and adventure.  I inevitably scooted mine back or forwards just a little, in allegiance to my sense of aesthetic and order even as – from the first grade on – I alternately got into trouble for either asking too many challenging questions or slipping out the window to wander and play.

It was in military school at age 12, that the full extent of my aversion to straight, unwavering lines came to light.  I was enrolled there not as punishment for home infractions but at my own request, in preference to the noodley anarchy of “progressive” schools as well as the paradigm reinforcing public campuses with their often low benchmarks and even lower expectations.  I asked for that opportunity to prove myself and to excel, to study the classics and learn to shoot, in spite of being subjected to a degree of regimentation that I knew from the get-go was going to drive me up the proverbial wall.

Or, rather, drive me up a tree… specifically, the thick gnarly limbs of a giant avocado at the edge of the school’s marching field.  I was content enough during lengthy classes since the teachers let me progress through the material as fast as I was able.  Unfortunately, every afternoon we were compelled to march like trained ants in the heat of the sun, something I couldn’t seem to tolerate.  By taking the position of guidon at the rear of a squad, I was able to drop out at just the right moment and quietly clamber up the avocado’s trunk without ever being noticed, so fixed were the eyes of my fellow students on the placement of their feet, and so unwavering their attention to orders!

This fortuitous tree was situated adjacent to one of the ten feet high concrete walls, built to both provide privacy and effectively contain the academy’s spirited young cadets.  From my vantage point, I was able to view the straight-arrow students – marching in straight lines on a perfectly flat and well-mowed plane – in contrast to the scene on the opposite side of the wall, with its dirty faced street kids wildly wrestling and reveling there, with its overgrown and highly uneven terrain.

These days I am far more likely to think of rivers when making an analogy about lines, such as how unhealthy they are when deforestation has them running fast and straight, flooding often and carrying away their precious burden of finite soil, or how the healthiest watercourse is usually the one with slowing curves and restful meanders.  Back then, though, it was boxes and cages that I visualized as the marchers traced repetitive squares with their measured steps and abrupt ninety degree turns, while it was the sirens of liberty and magic that I believed called to me from the other side.

My inevitable emancipation was gradual and incremental, beginning with my waiting until the rest of the cadets were snoring before tip-toeing out of the barracks and into the streetlamp glow of an urban night, stuffing the uncomfortable metal bunk each time to make it look to the officer on watch as if were securely asleep.  In time there could be no more returning, of course, a moment when risky sojourning would take ultimate precedence over finishing the semester, graduating with a high school diploma, going on to college, getting a good paying job or being able to afford insurance.  This I knew even then, and freely chose.

Dropping out worried my mom, of course, but not because she wanted to push me into becoming anything in life except other than what I myself wanted.  Nor could she realistically expect me to be concerned about a future steady income, given the archaic emphasis on honor and adventure that I’d so often professed.  What worried her most was that her “baby” would end up unhappy, due to never having learned how to fit in.  After all, what employer, sports team, association or club would ever have me, when I rejected not only uniforms but uniformity, took pride not in likeness and team cooperation so much as in individual initiative and dramatized dissimilarity?  If I’d gone into the army, it would have had to special forces doing self directed recon.  If I’d been cut out to be a doctor, it would have had been in the field or jungle and not the harsh lined cubicles of a modern hospital.  Fit was, quite frankly, one of the very last things on my mind.  Too snug a fit, I realized, could be like a fashionable garment whose design restricts movement.   Too comfortable of a fit, and one could end up less inclined to try out either new venues or vessels.

If anything, it was precisely the fitting into predictable and acceptable norms that I was running away from.  Even as I looked to what I ran so purposefully toward, I clearly also sought distance from the normality of passive acceptance, placation and resignation, restrictive customs and rigid rules, from linear process and mechanization, predictability and conformity, stock solutions and any certified assistance.  On a quest for the unusual and exceptional, I did all that I could to leave behind my rote personal habits as well as the controlling regulations of both the academy and of society in general.  I sought to emulate the twisty individuation of artistic root structures, the insistent growth of the outlaw bamboo busting its way out of every yard’s confines, and the rascally dandelion poking up through the subversive cracks of predictable sidewalks, unstoppable by herbicides, absolutely determined to do its dandelion thing.

Unlike many another urchin who’s ever slept under a freeway bridge to the hum of passing traffic, I certainly didn’t run away from home due as a result of neglect or abuse.  I had parental support in taking art lessons, martial arts lessons, and lessons in motocross racing.  Heck, on the day I announced my departure my dear father offered to buy me a car to take my leave in!  I gave it some consideration, but clearly accepting such help would have been contrary to my aim of opening up to and facing the test of a chancy, difficult, and ever changing real world.  What I sought to escape from was not violence or deprivation but security and sameness, the trap of everything being taken care of for me.  I ran from what I’d come to see as the oppression of the sterile suburbs, the matching white stucco walls in every cookie-cutter tract home, the painfully bright and nearly incessant incandescent lights.  Shallow conversation, faux woodgrain, mass trends.  The artificial, the replicated and the horrendously generic.  The contrived events, faked satisfaction and often phony “I’m okay” smiles.  The trained politeness, masking honest dislike and obfuscating our caring intent.  The gerbil-like rush to consonance and accomodation, even at the cost of personal tastes and opinions.  Just getting along and accepting things the way they are, when it is exploration, investigation and alteration that is needed most.  Tolerating what should be intolerable.  Sacrificing excellence and distinction for refuge in feigned sameness.

Feigned, I say, not because people have some self destructive desire to be phony, but because the premise and goal are impossibilities.  Humans can be pleasantly or painfully similar, but we are never exactly the same.  Not even twins with apparently duplicate DNA are truly indifferentiable.  Nor is sameness anything to strive for, as individuals with very distinct manifestations and blends of potentials and unique collections of experiences, varied natural abilities and propensities, personally defined and expressed purpose and seemingly customized calling.

I subsequently spent many years on the streets hustling to get by, and on a chopped Harley acting wild, cooking on low fires in the wooded corners of remote public parks well past the age of 18 when the youth authorities no longer cared where I was or what I was doing after dark.  This was followed by more years on a long and windy road, in a search for my self and what it might mean to feel totally at home in not only my place but my purpose.

In the ensuing decades my image and designs have evolved, my horizons widened and means increased.  I’ve even grown to the point of valuing natural and personal boundaries, the defining and sometimes protective perimeters sketched around my healthy being, known truths and what most matters most.  That said, any boundary of mine will always be an infinitely adaptive and highly uneven one, and not an irrevocably straight line… proof there are at least some things in the universe which change little over time.

(Post and Forward Freely)

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