Notes from the Path: What Mother Nature teaches me
nuggets of wisdom from my time in the woods
Listen to me read the post…
There’s a path I take nearly every day, in all four seasons. It’s a wide path at the start - straight and new, hemmed in by an abandoned railroad track on one side and a lake on the other. When new gives way to old, it gets narrower and more crooked, finally splintering into a variety of smaller paths through the woods.
I love this path. It’s more than a path to me. The land on which this path lives has become my friend and my home. My soul has woven itself through the mycelium of the soil here. On days when I’m travelling or I take other paths, I miss the trees, birds and lake, and I imagine them missing me too.
The path is more than a path and the walk is more than a walk. It is kinship, devotion, spiritual practice, reverence, and pilgrimage. This relationship is shaping me, teaching me, and helping me see the world through fresh eyes.
As relationships tend to go, we are learning to know each other better each time we spend time together. I can tell you on which tree along this path you’d be most likely to spot tiny mushrooms in the Fall. I can show you where to veer off the path onto a less-trodden path if you want to see some impressive nurse trees. I can point you to the tree where a little brown songbird likes to perch in early Spring to belt out her aria. I can show you at least five good sitting places where you can sit and tune in to the exquisite tiny details of the forest. I can point to the high-water-mark where the lakeshore stretches itself during a rainy Winter.
A few years ago, just before winding down for our summer break, our teaching team met to close off the year and talk about where we saw our paths taking us next. My first book, The Art of Holding Space, had come out the year before and my second was well underway. “I think the next thing that’s calling me,” I said, “is to take a deeper look at what nature has to teach us about what it means to hold space.” When I said those words, I didn’t yet know how prophetic they’d be nor how profoundly this new quest would impact me. I am in awe of how much I’ve learned not just about holding space, but about life and relationships and myself and the way the world works.
The early days of that quest were in Winnipeg, where I walked mostly in a tucked-away park in my neighbourhood called Henteleff Park, where I could commune with deer on nearly every visit. Then I carried the quest with me as I wandered around the world, living nomadically for 18 months, finding wild places like seashores, mountains, cenotes, caves and volcanic lakes in twelve European and Central American countries. And now I have brought the quest to Vancouver Island, where, although there is much to explore beyond my lakeside village, I find myself returning again and again to the same path, the same trees, the same songbirds, and the same shore.
If you’ve been participating in the webinars for Leadership for Liminal Spaces, you already know how much this quest has been informing my work. I’ve woven it into everything, because it not only feels important, but it bubbles out of me irresistibly, like new love. There are ways in which this feels like the most important work I’ve ever done.
Humbly, recognizing I have no earned expertise here, I have apprenticed myself to Mother Earth and that has changed everything. Most critically, my paradigm has shifted from a story of separateness and supremacy (i.e. “I spend time IN nature but am apart from it.”) to one of wholeness and kinship (“I AM nature and am woven into the same ecosystem as the salmon and tiny mushrooms.”)
This quest will continue to shape my work, and if you want to see an expression of that, I invite you to join us for the next webinar in the Leadership for Liminal Spaces program. On April 24th, we’ll be talking about Systems Thinking, and I will introduce ecological and relational aspects of systems thinking that have informed me and been informed by my time on/with the land.
Another offering that is emerging out of this quest is something new for our paid subscribers on Substack. Every Friday, I will send out a post called “Notes from the Path”. This will include a photo I’ve taken, accompanied by a nugget of wisdom inspired by my time with the trees, whales, deer, eagles, and tiny mushrooms. (Note: This will replace the Lunchbox Notes from Tenderness we used to send out.)
Sometimes when I walk the path, I take a specific question along with me – like when I complete the preparation of a new webinar for Leadership for Liminal Spaces, and want to invite the land to offer a message for the closing of the webinar. If you are a paid subscriber, you’ll be welcome to send a question for me to take on the path and, when/if it feels right to do so, I’ll bring it to the trees.
To give you a taste of what these notes will be like, here is the first in the series...
Notes From the Path #1 – A Sacred Place
Where the path narrows and the trees gather closer, I take out my earbuds. Here in the woods, I want to walk in mindful presence. I want to hear the songs of the birds and frogs and notice when they change with the seasons. I want to listen for the breeze rustling the leaves and the water lapping on the shores of the lake. I want to hear even the crunching of my feet as part of the soundscape of this place.
When I turn off the main path to one less travelled, to venture even further into the woods, I feel my soul quieten as my presence deepens. As though stepping over the threshold into a temple, I pause at the entry point. Like dipping my hand in holy water, I touch the moss-covered concrete block that guards the entry. Though I’ve never gone so far as to make the sign of the cross, I consider creating my own symbolic gesture that ritualizes this crossing.
I feel sometimes like Moses, stepping into the presence of the divine. “Take off your shoes,” was his directive, and mine sounds more like “take off your earbuds”. “Be fully present,” is what I hear in both invitations. “Use all your senses for this sacred moment. There’s something special available to you here and you don’t want to miss it.”
Once, in Ethiopia, I visited the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela. Carved by hand out of the solid rock of the mountains in the 13th century, these eleven monolithic churches left a lasting impression on me. In some of the churches, priests continue to serve the public, offering blessings to those who request them. I bowed my head and received such a blessing.
In one of the churches, only men were allowed to enter the most holy place. I stood outside with the other women in our group, holding that age-old mix of resentment and weary acceptance of the limitations imposed on my gender. Uncomfortable with their privilege, our male companions later joked about what they’d seen inside.
Here, in Mother Nature’s temple, entry to the holy of holies is not limited by credentials or genitals. She asks only for my reverence, presence, and commitment to kinship. “Honour the birds,” she whispers in my ear as I cross the threshold. “Be kind to the trees. Listen to the bees and ask the slugs what wisdom they carry in their slow crawl across the path. Remember that each being is sacred to me.”
When the path disappears at the edge of the marsh, I sit down on a stump and wait for those sacred beings to adapt to my presence. When the bee-priest comes, in his yellow and black vestments, I bow my head to receive the blessing.
A few opportunities to join me in deepening your learning…
April 22-23 - Join me and my European colleagues at HUMMUS for a two-day online workshop on Holding Space & Deep Democracy in times of Uncertainty and Disruption.
April 24 - Join me for the fourth webinar of the Leadership for Liminal Spaces program. This month’s theme is Systems Thinking: Navigating complexity in times of liminality.
June 2025 - Join us for the four week online offering of Know Yourself: Self-reflection for wise living.