[Full Length] Nature as Mentor: Wilderness Rites and Tracking — with Darren Silver
SYNOPSIS:
**Season finale!**
You may not yet know what a “vision quest” or a rite of passage is. But these traditions are as ancient as our bones. No matter whom your ancestors were, I would wager that if you travel the family branchings back far enough, you would discover that they too engaged in these ritual processes that tethered them into deeper connection with the earth’s forces.
Darren Silver is a rite of passage guide, nature-connected coach, ceremonialist, and educator. For two decades he has been working with ritual, wilderness living skills and guiding transformational experiences into land. A gifted storyteller and apprentice to the old myths, Darren weaves the power of the natural world, vision, and community in devotion to the remembrance of all that we are. We ask:
Why does human culture need rites of passage and initiatory ceremonies?
What is the role of myth in society?
How does the Earth communicate to us, and how can we respond?
What is the role of courage in all this? How can we test our limits?
QUOTES:
The natural world is always mirroring and reflecting back to us what is. The layers that stand between us and our true nature begin to be revealed.
The purpose of living is not to get what we want. What we are being invited to is to participate in life as a generative force.
To be in relationship with mythology keeps the story alive - in the same way that to be in relationship with a place keeps that place alive.
What we need is courage, and people who can go out there and surrender themselves to life.
Mythologies help us travel the landscapes of our interior.
We have to get real humble and go back to listening to the songline of the river, of the juniper, the cottonwood.