Blog – Awake in the Great Turning

Notes from a blood orange moon, a thunderstorm, and the quiet between

Last month, I participated in a Vision Fast with the School of Lost Borders at Dragonback Springs near Saguache, Colorado—an expansive high-altitude desert mountain landscape at about 9,500 feet elevation. I’m still processing, still integrating, and still holding much of it close. But I feel grateful to share a few images and reflections from the land that held me.

Dragonback Springs is the land of the Tabeguache Ute people and other Indigenous tribes who traveled through this area of the Colorado Rockies. The Ute lived and hunted in this abundant land of elk, buffalo, deer, and bear before white settlers came and forced them onto reservations in southwest Colorado and Utah.

I chose to do this 10-day ceremony because I heard the call to step away. From the noise. From the doing. From the speed of life that so often drowns out the deeper voice within.

I was supported by Ponderosa Pine, by Aspen, by wild roses and fluffy clouds, by the murmur of a soft creek, and by the raw magic of this untamed, high desert wilderness. What pushed me most wasn’t the stillness (being alone in silence is something I cherish), but the intensity of the environment itself. I hiked farther from basecamp than I anticipated and ended up exposed on the side of the mountain, sleeping on an angle, uncomfortable and unsure. The sharp shifts in weather. The thin, dry air. The discomfort of endless insects and a burning sun. The wind. The altitude. The feeling of being stripped down to the essentials.

And it wasn’t just physical. The landscape touched something in me—old wounds, current challenges, things I’ve been struggling with but haven’t fully named or figured out. As someone who has been studying ecopsychology for some time, this is one of the things I treasure most about being in nature: the way the external environment becomes a mirror of the internal one. The land reflects what’s unresolved, stirs what is buried, and brings it gently (or sometimes fiercely) to the surface.

There are places inside us that no other form of therapy can reach. And nature, in her rawness and honesty, has a way of unlocking those places. It’s uncomfortable. And it’s powerful and healing.

I was drawn to the land because I heard the call to get quiet. To be in my own company and in the nourishing presence of other women, each of us choosing to mark, through ceremony, an ending and a beginning.

What I feel ready to share is this: I am deeply grateful to have had the privilege of pausing. To step away from technology, from work, from the endless news cycle and digital noise. The volume of the world feels so loud right now. Alerts of disasters. Injustice. Grief. Harm to people, animals, and the Earth. To unplug and simply be with the land felt like an act of remembering.

On the first night of my solo fast, I watched a blood orange full moon rise above the mountain, its light filtered through a haze of smoke. I knew wildfire was near. I could see the signs and feel them in my body. The texture of the sky. The smell. The way the light bends. It was all too familiar. I know the signs and symptoms of wildfire all too well. This is the time we are living in.

Alone on the side of that mountain, exposed to the elements, I was reminded that in our human attempt to dominate the Earth—referring to her limbs, her organs, her womb as “resources”—we forget her power. This mindset is a symptom of capitalism, industrialization, colonialism, and all the oppressive systems rooted in extraction, domination, and power over. Amid the climate crisis and rising destruction, it is not the Earth who won’t survive. She will. It is us humans, and our more-than-human kin, who may not make it through.

On the final night of my solo, a thunderstorm rolled in. Lightning cracked across the sky, striking the nearby peaks. I was afraid. Gaia is powerful. She is fierce. And we are small. Our time here, in these bodies, is brief.

So how do we want to spend it?

In the middle of that storm, a double rainbow appeared. A moment of beauty. Of wonder. Of miracle. A reminder: we don’t have to wait for the storm to pass to feel joy, connection, gratitude, awe. We are in the middle of a storm right now, collectively. So much is shifting. So much is ending. And beginning.

Just days after returning from the land, I learned that Joanna Macy, one of my deepest teachers, had passed away. Her work has shaped me profoundly. Joanna called this moment in time “The Great Turning”—a time of great change and great remembering.

I’ll never forget a workshop I attended with her back in 2018. I talk about it often. Out of the many powerful moments, one simple exercise has stayed with me more than anything. There were over 100 of us in the room. Joanna asked us to pair up. One person would represent someone living today, and the other someone living 100 years in the future. The person from the future looked into the eyes of the person from the present and said: “Thank you so much. That must have been really hard.”

I think about that moment all the time, especially now, in an era marked by one unprecedented event after another. I see the overwhelm, the exhaustion, the dissociation all around me. I’ve felt it in myself. Systems are collapsing in real time.

And in the midst of it, my time on the land helped me remember my place in all of this, both within the collective and within my own personal spiritual growth.

It was more than just a reminder. It was a reawakening. A deep remembering of why I’m here. It helped renew a sense of service, a longing to be someone the future can look back on with gratitude. Someone who stayed grounded in the storm. Who showed up with care. Who planted seeds for a kinder, more regenerative, more just future.

I feel it in my bones, our capacity for beauty, joy, love, and kindness as humans. And I also see, every day, the devastation we cause. The horror of a live-streamed genocide in Palestine, funded and supplied by our own government. The dehumanization, detention, and torture of people seeking refuge, immigrants who are being stolen from their families, caged, criminalized, and discarded. The poisoning of our water and soil. The stripping of bodily autonomy. The criminalization of protest. The erasure of histories. The destruction of ecosystems. The theft of land. The theft of dignity.

There are too many injustices to name. Too many wounds open at once.

It’s not an easy time to stay awake. It would be far easier to shut down, to numb out, to scroll past, to tell ourselves it’s too much. And yet, we can’t fall asleep. Not now.

We are being called to remember. To remember our interconnectedness. To remember what is sacred. To remember our responsibility—to each other, to the Earth, to the generations to come.

Even in the face of so much pain, I still believe in human potential. I feel it. I see it. In acts of courage. In mutual aid. In healing circles. In sacred ceremony. In the quiet ways people care for one another. In the fierce love that continues to rise.

Sometimes I question myself—am I being naive? Is this hope too much? Is it a kind of spiritual bypassing? But my training and life experience say otherwise. The work I do guiding forest bathing experiences, the care I witness in communities impacted by climate disasters, none of it is naïve. It’s rooted. It’s real.

When I’m working at clinics supporting first responders and communities impacted by destructive wildfires in California, I see so much dedication to life, to service, to helping. Amid the trauma and exhaustion, there is also immense heart. People show up again and again—for each other, for their communities, for the Earth.

In the people I guide, I see an extraordinary capacity to connect—with the Earth, with love, with stillness, with something deeper. I see people remembering what it means to belong to the living world. I see them waking up to the possibility of a new way of being.

The conversations I’m having these days, often with people I’ve just met, are blowing me away. People are asking the deeper questions. They are hungry for connection, for purpose, for healing. It’s something I never could have imagined even five years ago.

We are waking up. I feel it.

I won’t give up. I can’t give up. Because even in the middle of the storm, a double rainbow can appear.

I believe we are living through a massive turning on this planet. It will not be easy. But my time on the land at Dragonback Springs helped me remember: I am capable. I am resilient. I can do hard things.

And so can you.

Together, we can.

I am feeling the intensity of these times. I’m also feeling the urgency to remember how to step away. To unplug. To listen again, to that quiet inner voice, to the Earth herself. She is still speaking. She has not given up on us.

And neither have I.

I return with a renewed devotion to life. To staying awake. To listening deeply. To protecting what is sacred. I am ready to get even more focused, to walk forward with greater clarity and intention, and to keep doing my part in ushering in a future rooted in reverence, resilience, and care.