About Us
Our Mission
WE GUIDE PEOPLE TOWARD BELONGING, MEANING AND A CONVERSATIONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH THE NATURAL WORLD THROUGH CAMPING PROGRAMS, MENTORING AND COURSES
Remembering our way
As a collective, our approach weaves together threads from each of our lives. We draw heavily on “eco-depth psychology” principles, entering into conversational relationship with the natural world and opening to the way life mirrors our deepest nature back to us. This involves remembering the long-time human practices of ceremony, dream tending, grief tending, meditation, talking circles and relationship practices, creativity, music, song, dance, and sacred play.
And because we live in the modern world with modern psyches navigating difficult cultural constructs and tumultuous intergenerational histories, we gratefully draw from the wells of trauma-informed somatic psychology, Internal Family Systems, and regenerative cultural design principles. By bringing together the ancient technologies of belonging and the modern developments of ecological and psychological science, we cultivate dynamic healing spaces for the whole messy beautiful spectrum of being human.
WHAT WE DO
The way to soul, the way back home to belonging with our earth-bound selves, goes through the territory of intensity. By rooting ourselves in the dreaming of the wild world, Remembering Earth cultivates group containers capable of holding the fiery depths of the transformative process. Utilizing trauma-informed, soul-centric practices, our offerings flow between group work, dialogue with the other-than-human world, and solitude, opening you to the edge of your own deepest conversation with life.
Our retreats and programs cleave to the seasons. Following the cycles of the moon and sun, the shifting tides and swirling winds, listening to the webbed relationships of place-based ecologies, we recognize the interdependence of humanity with all of creation and align our group intensives with the flow of Earth’s movements. For countless generations, our ancestors listened to these very rhythms and by connecting together, we revive that timeless wisdom.
Utilizing both in-person and online formats, RE programs begin from the foundation that your longing is trustworthy, that your gifts and wounds truly matter, and that a soul story uniquely yours is waiting for you. By coming together, we step into a “new and ancient story,” remembering that belonging occurs in a relationship.
Meet the team
The three of us found one another in mysterious ways and wove our mythic selves together into this beautiful offering, Remembering Earth.
Jacob Erickson
Kristopher Drummond
Madison Ledgerwood
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Jacob guides people to wild and ancient places for them to uncover their gifts in this precious life. He believes individuals befriending death and darkness opens doorways to fall in love with life and further prepares them to be the gift we were meant to be.
Jacob desires to tend the flower beds of our individual lives so we may be the bouquet of flowers to offer death, to make beauty with our life. In these times of rapid unfolding and unraveling, he believes we can still orient to our unique service to the world and one another by bravely going forth amidst the perilous storms ahead by carrying a light amidst the darkness.
Jacobs relationships with the night and her creatures, death, the hunt, and stewarding the wild world guide his work. Through deep imagery, dreams, trauma-informed care, mindfulness practices, wilderness backpacking and nature immersion, Jacob feeds the internal and external world. Email Jacob.
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Kristopher is an earth-rooted guide, writer and activist focusing his work at the intersection of grief and beauty. He believes that each person carries unique gifts that the earth needs at this intense cultural moment and he embodies and guides from a soul-level permission that encourages and supports people to step into their deepest selves. Kristopher sources his guiding from a decade of training in insight meditation, contemplative practice, Authentic Movement and other embodiment practices, men’s work, ritual grief facilitation, creative writing, and three years of intensive ritual, wilderness, and depth training with the Animas Valley Institute. Email Kristopher
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Madison’s work is greatly informed by elder community organizers, organizing in social and environmental movements for over a decade, teaching young people at Northern Arizona University, and being raised by two sets of grandparents who loved land and life. She has taught, facilitated and worked with ages 13-70 for over 10 years. Madison is practiced in holding space for people and cohorts to move through and with personal, climate, socio-cultural, and ecological grief and brings skills in eco-depth psychology, dreamwork, ceremony and ritual, facilitation, psycho-spiritual resourcing, and parts work.
Her trainings and personal work are primarily with Erica Rhinehart at Moonpath, mentors at Animas Valley Institute and mentors from her MA in Sustainable Communities. She is continuing her education in trauma-informed grief support with Shauna Janz at Sacred Grief, in nature connection with Luke Cannon at Astounding Earth and on death and dying with Katherine Savage at Death Seeding Life.
You can see her full CV here.
Values
Three Days Deep - As mythologist Martin Shaw says, our culture is “three days deep” because it only takes three days in the wild to start remembering our ensouled, enmeshed belonging on earth
Imaginal Homecoming - As part of the dreaming Earth, we can embody wholeness through our imaginal conversation with the wild world
Serving the Future - Remembering is for the generations to come so that the perennial dream of a life-serving, soul-centric human presence on Earth may someday be realized
Wholeness is Already Here - Drawing upon the archetypal energy of the four directions, we witness you as whole and remind you it’s already here
Soul is Slow - The soul moves at “geologic speed.” The alchemizing of trauma, wounds, and experience happens outside of conscious control
Wild Reciprocity - Our belonging is found amid intersections of relationship. We strive to give more than we take
Listening to the Seasons - Remembering begins with listening to the wisdom of Earth’s cycles
Liberation, Restoration, Regeneration - We embrace the responsibility of showing up for the trauma, violence, and destruction of colonialism
Queering Boundaries - Binary consciousness limits participation in an entangled world. We make space for trans-dimensional and interrelating experiences of identity
Resources for spiritual and soulful land-based connection
This is a list of our teachers, trainers, and co-conspirators as well as videos, articles, and more whose work informs Remembering Earth and who are aligned with our foundational principles, beliefs, and activisms.
Astounding Earth - In-person courses on birds, ecosystems, plants, and trees
The Sacred Space Foundation - Relational spiritual direction in Northern England
Earth Path Education - Rites of passage programs in WNC
MoonPath - A mystery school for women in CO and online
The School of Lost Borders - Elders and teachers of wilderness rites of passage
Theravada Buddhism and the Dharma - Seated meditation and emptiness practices
Dr. Bayo Akomolafe - Teacher and philosopher of the otherwise
Joanna Macy - Teacher that helps people transform despair and apathy into life changing action
Animas Valley Institute - Soulcraft practices and eco-depth psychology
Francis Weller- Author and courses in soul, grief, and initiation
For The Wild Podcast - An Anthology of the Anthropocene
Last Born in the Wilderness Podcast - An unflinching look into elements of collapse
Emergence Magazine - Chronicling the intersection between indigenous wisdoms and contemporary life
The Dark Mountain Collective - Art and language about what comes after this civilization
Dr. Martin Shaw - Beautiful writing and speaking around initiation, storytelling, and imagination
A New and Ancient Story - An online community based on the work of Charles Eisenstein
The Deep Adaptation Forum - A community space for considering the work of Prof. Jem Bendell and connecting around climate breakdown
The Nap Ministry - A hub for decolonial activism and recentralizing of the importance of rest
Orphan Wisdom - A hub for the work of Stephen Jenkinson, a writer, performer and death-worker
JOIN OUR COMMUNITY
Stay in touch with a community of soul-seekers, mystics, activists, and wild tenders.
“Action on behalf of life transforms. Because the relationship between self and the world is reciprocal, it is not a question of first getting enlightened or saved and then acting. As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us.”
— Robin Wall Kimmemer