Annie

What an immense blessing it has been in my life as a wilderness guide to have had numerous relationships of mentoring organically evolve over the years.  While awe and gratitude have always been present for what emerges in working with groups of people in the wilds, I have experienced the deep anchoring shifts of consciousness in individuals most keenly when working one-on-one with someone over a consistent and lengthy period of time.  There are so many layers in a person’s life, and doing the work of courting the mystery of our soul lives takes time and conscientious integration over time.  

Mentoring is a beautifully unique relationship. You entrust me with your ever evolving story, and I guide you into living ever more deeply into your story.  I consider myself to be a re-memberer.  It is a gift I have to remember people’s stories and all of the exquisite details of their stories and in the remembering I can assist in weaving all of the threads back into the whole of a person’s life.  Whether you are doing the tasks of dis-membering a life that you no longer fit into, or have a vision of bringing into manifestation what you are most passionate about, it takes the work of discipline and steadfast application and attendance to all the voices that you have within yourself, and I provide guidance and tracking of the subtle and elusive soulful moments you have experienced, and will gently but fiercely keep directing your attention to your larger story.  All of this is in service to your most authentic expression of the gift you are here to live into this lifetime.  

In mentoring I offer an abundance of reflection, tasks to engage with what is attempting to unfold into awareness, dream tending to draw up from the soul depths the messages from the unconscious, deep imagery journeys, intensive work with the Nature-Based Map of the Psyche and the 8 selves that reside in the 4 compass directions(Wild Mind by Bill Plotkin), somatic inquiry, ceremonial suggestions, and whatever is needed to guide you into what is asking for attention.  

Mentoring is over the phone or on skype and my fees are sliding scale from $125 to $65.

I am devoted in being a Keeper of the Old Ways and a storyteller who remembers the source of these ways. At this stage of my life, I am keen to mentor with youngers, passing on the lineage of beauty making that is in our hands: making fire, making music, making the instruments that sing the music, shaping clay vessels, working in the soil in attendance to the seeds that give us our life, engineering and building the things needed for this little homestead, and infusing these with the remembrance of their origins and prayers for the holy place they come from.  In the words of the venerable poet Stanley Kunitz, when pondering the task of an artist, he says simply and profoundly “That it is to make our life”, and the poetry or art comes from THAT fullness.  It is the story of living beautifully and nobly while feeding the holy in nature with song and the things made with our hands, and in this we can pay the debt of our lives back, and begin the work of making culture that understands how to raise our children into initiated adults that know what intact indigenous people know of such a way to be in the life of this world.

Annie and I garden as if our life depends on it, which it does, because as we grow our own food and make many things in the old ways with materials we know the origins of, or at least the stories that the old people remember and pass down about those origins, we become present and our whole lineage starts to live again as we metabolize the dross and mediocrity of this culture and time we are checkmated in.

This place – this home – this small farm – this shop – this wild place we are in the center of – this is where I can teach and pass down some of what I have acquired in this shaggy-eared, rough and tumble, pulling myself up by the bootstraps time and again life I have lived.