Retreat

Part 1

Wild Dharma Pilgrimage

"When we walk the trail, we renew the trail." Fletcher Tucker

What do you get when twelve people gather together with backpacks accompanied by three enthusiastic wilderness guides, all prepared to enter the rugged terrain of the Santa Lucia Mountain Range for five days?

A Wild Dharma Pilgrimage.

First, the guides.

Fletcher Tucker

Our intrepid leader and co-founder with his wife Nöel of the immersive wilderness program, Wildtender (https://www.wildtender.com ), Fletcher led us through the wilderness as brilliant educator and spiritual guide, teaching the art of expansion, relationality and introspection while cultivating kinship with all the beings of this planet. He is both visionary and trustworthy, his unique talents multiplying as we shared time with him. Communicator, wordsmith, poet, wilderness expert, artist, scientist, he is witty, profoundly kind and deeply convicted, his presence and leadership creating a transformative experience.

Ariel

Our Supernova, Ariel is a former participant of Wildtender, now a wilderness guide extraordinaire. She is beauty and strength personified. Always smiling and laughing, Ariel is a somatic coach in her other life and knows how to make any person feel felt. Her knowledge of plants kept amazing us while her playfulness and joy invoked an atmosphere of both lightheartedness and reverence. We delighted in her presence and she delighted in ours. She is a powerful leader and a compassionate presence, making sure everyone’s needs were met.

Mike

Our Zazen (meditation) master, Mike is a Buddhist monk with piercing blue eyes and an infectious laugh. He led us on our twice a day meditation practice while also providing childlike enthusiasm and wonderment. He shared many stories about his six years residing at the Tassajara Zen Center while also leading us in Dharma (instruction) talks. He embodies the essence of a spiritual being, moving effortlessly from playful companion to spiritual instructor, offering deep acceptance to both himself and others. He often found unexpected moments to drop into a Dharma talk, whether on top of a mountain or gathered around a fire.

Our Sangha

What is a Sangha? In a strictly traditional sense, a Sangha is a group of disciples who have renounced the worldly life. In our modern world, a Sangha is a community of friends who gather together to practice “awareness, understanding, acceptance, harmony and love (Thich Nhat Hanh).”

Meeting each other for the first time at the trailhead, there was a bustle of activity. Packs had to be weighed, supplies checked, water bottles topped off. Anything that was needed or not, this was it for five days. If you brought it, you carried it and if you left it, you lived without. My pack was overweight and this became my initiation into the practice of letting go. What could I surrender? Turns out, my choices of what to bring and what to leave behind weren’t exactly stellar decisions and it became one of the many things I eventually laughed about–choices and consequences. I left behind vital snacks while carrying rain gear that was obviously not going to be needed. My first day on the trail, with much time to contemplate my choices, I was left feeling annoyed at myself and preoccupied with food. Turns out this was a beautiful lesson in experiencing how much we need. Not really so much…

Our first instruction before stepping foot into the wilderness became known as our primary practice of silent walking. Fletcher guided us immediately into a space of reverie and introspection. We walked, leaving about fifty feet of space between each of us, adjusting our pace if we approached someone from behind to allow them to continue undisturbed. “We are a string of pearls on the trail,” he said. “When we approach a fork in the trail, you wait until the next person arrives, so that no one is ever lost.” This was known as telephoning. From that moment onward, whenever it was time to walk, Fletcher would repeat to us, “let’s get back to our primary practice.”

Our Sangha coalesced on our first morning after about an hour on the trail. We stopped under a giant shade-providing oak tree and introduced ourselves. Not one of us talked about our professions, our families or our worldly concerns. With Fletcher setting the tone for what embodied our time together, our self-disclosures and reflections were meant to facilitate a deeper knowing of each other, outside of our worldly ambitions and worries. Not until much later did I discover what people did for a living and what their family compositions were. I learned that we had four psychiatrists, a pulmonologist, along with others in the field of neuroscience, mental health, social anthropology, plant scientist, psychedelic medicine and healers. We all showed up with deep intentions to receive whatever lay ahead.

The Landscape

The Santa Lucia Mountain Range outside of Big Sur belongs to the Esselen people, having occupied the land for over nine thousand years. It is a spectacularly beautiful landscape, rich with the abundance of ever-changing biomes and a diverse array of plants and animals. The steep canyons and rugged trails are home to over ten thousand plant species as well as animals that are not accustomed to human encounters. For this reason, we did not have to carry bear canisters, a typical backpacking staple. Fletcher taught us that in general, animals not accustomed to humans tend not to bother us or seek out our food.

When the Spanish arrived with their weapons, diseases and desire to occupy and colonize, this apocalypse wiped out most of the Esselen people, including their language. At one time, prior to the arrival of the Spanish colonizers, it’s estimated that California had over ten million inhabitants from different tribes, living in kinship with the land for thousands of years.

Fletcher has developed a deeply reverent relationship with the modern Esselen people, committed to teaching his guests the history and the way Esselen people built relationship with the natural world. We learned much about how they inhabited this mountain range and thrived in kinship with the mountains, plants, animals, creeks and ocean.

Our Practices

Within just a few short hours, there was ease and camaraderie amongst us. Our primary practice of silent walking provided each of us the space to settle into our own rhythm until we arrived at our camp. Given our large group of fifteen, negotiating the real estate at the end of the day came with a challenge. Do I grab the flattest spot I see before anyone else can grab it, just because I arrived in front of them? Or do I offer this to a someone behind me, forsaking my own (limited) comfort? In the end, there was enough of everything–flat spots to sleep on, food to share, time to connect with others or to be alone. Our needs were always satisfied beyond any possible expectations that we may have brought with us.

Zazen, the meditative discipline of the Zen Buddhist tradition, was practiced every morning and evening led by Mike. We were summoned by a bell and prior to tea or coffee, our day began with a twenty to thirty minute silent sitting practice. This was repeated in the evening before bed. We practiced in meadows and on top of mountains, gathered around the campfire or by a flowing stream. Birdsong was all around us in the mornings and evenings, accompanied by a chorus of frogs, wind in the trees and the crackling of the fire. Many of the participants, already practicing Buddhists, chanted effortlessly with Mike, having memorized the sutras.

This practice of meditation within a sangha left a deep imprint on me, as most people, including myself, practice at home alone the majority of the time. There was a felt sense of a higher presence, magnified a thousand-fold by the bigger world we were inhabiting.

Mornings were generally unhurried as we gathered together with our oatmeal, hot beverages and light-hearted chatter. We were led into movement by Ariel, connecting with our animal bodies by imitating the act of climbing over and bending under. We acknowledged the warmth of the sun on our skin and the variety of trees that provided us with shade. One of the other members of our sangha led us in Qigong, a practice of movement, breathing, balance and harmonizing with the energy of life-force. Our moments together were generously expansive. Some mornings, we spent considerable time exploring our surroundings, learning about the abundance of life thriving around us.

We practiced learning to observe a disturbance in the pattern. A basic principle of animal trackers, observing the landscape from this vantage point makes it possible to see who is privately living in your midst. What animal has created their home with what resources? What looks different?

My personal favorite was the wood rat. We discovered her home, an elaborate fortress with an impeccable design. Wood rats run a tight ship, their homes containing several different rooms for a variety of purposes. Just like humans. At the very least, they have a storage room, a sleeping chamber, a latrine and a living space. Their homes are extremely tidy and are passed down from one generation to the next. They surround their homes with bay laurel, which keeps out lice and other unwanted parasites, AND, they are matrilineal, meaning that the female offspring get to take ownership of the home when it’s their time. I literally fell in love with wood rats, although I’ve never actually met one.

We learned how to correct our use of language so that we are not placing humans as superior beings. We were gently encouraged to replace words like it or that with them, him, or her. She or he is a beautiful tree feels so different than saying “it”. We were asked to reconsider our assumption that human intelligence is superior to other beings.

Take the Elderberry tree, for example. This remarkable species offers an extraordinary array of medicinal purposes, with their berries and flowers being used to treat a variety of illnesses, provide pain relief and nutrition. They are widely revered around the world since ancient times. Seems pretty intelligent to me.

This perspective was reiterated over and over as we learned the deeply intricate ways that other beings thrive, living in harmony with one another, interdependent and adapting to changing environments and climates while providing powerful medicine for those who discover their healing properties. This is true for plants, mountains, rocks, streams and animals, adaptable and resilient, maintaining presence for millions of years.

Plant Medicine and Tea

Our guides collected plants during our daily treks and every evening we had wild tea while communing around the fire. Ariel, a student in the art of Japanese tea ceremony, instructed us on this ancient and sacred art. We poured tea into the mug of the person sitting next to us, bowing to one another in reverence. We chanted the names of all the plants that made our tea before we sipped. We learned to recognize coyote mint, golden feece, yerba santa, nettle, yarrow, thimble berry, fragrant everlasting and mugwort, both in sight and in taste, as these medicinal plants found their way into our nightly beverage. We ate blanched stinging nettle and miner’s lettuce one night with our dinner. We washed our hands with plants whose flowers produce soap and stung ourselves with nettle to promote blood flow to sore joints and muscles.

We drank monk’s tea after meals. Let me explain what this is. We did not cook and only ate dehydrated food. That being said, we each had one dish to clean after meals and to conserve water and labor, water was heated and a small amount poured into each vessel. We then swirled it around until our dish looked relatively clean and drank it. While this might sound disgusting, it honors the principle of not discarding our human food scraps contaminated with our scent into the wilderness, which then signals to animals that humans equal food. Brilliant. We all did it and no one minded.

Wildcrafting and Relationality

Wildcrafting–utilizing what is available to create art. From the charcoal of our evening fire, we made ink and painted on scrolls, for example. The results resembled the Japanese art form Suibokuga, the monochromistic style of black ink and water. Or we were taught an activity called the many ways of being. We imagined ourselves as non-human beings and described our experience to a partner. What is it like to be the six hundred year old oak sitting in the meadow? What would she have to say about her experience as her massive branches start to fall off, as she considers who she has shaded over the hundreds of years? Or the rock sitting by the stream for millions of years, changing shape and color over a period of time that is beyond our comprehension as humans.

We visited important Esselen sites, such as the Valley of the Grandmothers, where in our exploration I discovered a pounding rock, likely thousands of years old. We sat in the sacred wind caves, high in the sandstone rocks, quietly meditating within their venerable and ancient embrace. During these privileged encounters we were given ample time to sit, breathe, absorb and connect, places where for thousands of years people traveled to for birth and death, sacred ceremony and to resolve conflict. I was so impacted by these moments I have no words to describe the experience. It’s the difference between visiting ancient ruins as a tourist, which most of us have done, versus visiting as a participant interested in a deeper and more elevated experience.

We frolicked in creeks and hiked for hours in silence. We communed at lunchtime and someone always pulled out an unopened bag of something yummy that was shared with the group. Fletcher and Mike read us poetry in the mornings and evenings, deepening our sense of presence or preparing us for our primary practice of silent walking. We were never hurried and understood deeply what Fletcher meant when he encouraged us to “conjure kinship and trust instinct as original instruction”.

Deep Learning

I understood a great deal about what is needed versus desired. There were very few things I missed. We all wore the same clothes for five days. We didn’t think much about bathing but welcomed any opportunity to shed clothing and immerse in a deeply refreshing stream. I didn’t miss my bed, my routine, or comfort. I definitely did not miss my phone. I mostly missed snacks. Yet, what I also came to realize is that my desire for snacks comes from my habit body, a routine of reaching for food for any number of reasons besides hunger. My needs were always met.

Then, there’s relationality. Imagine this–we breathe in what the tree breathes out and the tree breathes in what we breathe out. This is the truest meaning of interdependence. There is no effort made, it just is. As a relational therapist, I feel deeply informed by this perspective. We are so deeply interconnected. As humans, we often distort and fight against this, with our codependent and individualistic tendencies. This is particularly true in Western culture, where individualism is promoted and over-valued.

There was so much laughter and a sense of deep connection within our sangha. The ruggedness of trails was met with the ease of relationships, both with the world around us and the sangha in which we created. We looked out for one another, we respected people’s space while nurturing closeness. We were constantly and gently reminded to be fully present. In what seemed to be effortless, Fletcher orchestrated an organic flow of learning, playing, exertion, ease and above all, connection.

As we entered our final day on the trail, we were reminded to stay present in the wilderness rather than becoming horses heading to the barn. Our final destination, the remote and extraordinary monastery, Tassajara Zen Meditation Center, would be ready for us once we arrived for our three days of meditation retreat.

"Look for the one who is lovely." Fletcher Tucker

to be continued…