Would you like to join me in a tiny, tiny, tiny cottage in the wilderness?
Scroll down to #4 for details!
Bullseye
Ryan died homeless on the streets of Los Angeles in 2020.
Before I got the call, I knew he was dead. I hadn’t heard from him in three months, and he would have called to check in on me at the start of Covid, no matter what he had to do to get to a phone. Whatever worries he had about himself, he would have worried about my autoimmune disease more.
When we were young, we spent the time we could wrangle away from our crowded lives playing Scrabble, listening to music, eating ice cream and chasing waterfalls. Ryan couldn’t stay in one place, wouldn’t commit to a job or a relationship or a region, a political party, an institution, a faith, or even a fitness club. He was everything the cult had taught me to avoid.
Ryan valued personal freedom above all else and he loved my wildness.
Decades ago, we explored the high desert, a region both geographically and philosophically outside of Los Angeles and its suburban sprawl. The wide spaces cracked open the night sky, the stark sunsets and vivid stars pierced me like a dagger, and the hidden streams and enclaves we took the time to discover together would etch their way into me like a first home.
Ryan gave me the freedom to love more fully and widely than I knew was possible.
One day, when we were playing darts, Ryan told me a story. When he was a teenager, he slept with many girls, while his best friend Pete slept only with Erika, who would later become his wife. Ryan said for him, having sex was like throwing darts, looking for real connection, but barely hitting the board. Pete asked him once if he should leave Erika and mess around, so he wouldn’t grow old regretting not playing the field. Ryan laughed at him.
He told Pete, “You hit the bullseye, dude, why would you want more? The rest of us are just trying to get to where you are.”
Back then, when Ryan lived near me, he shared his cd collection, letting me take home whichever ones I wanted, as long as I agreed to tell him what I thought about each one, and why. He taught me to recognize and celebrate the music I was attracted to— the wildness of the beats and what they drew out of me, all those dangerous and unpredictable parts, which, where I come from, were feared and ostracized.
Why we forage
Before Ryan died, I thought of foraging as a survival tool. Eating off the land was a way to stave off the discomfort of hunger, thirst and cold. But since his death, I’ve recognized that the skill of foraging has shown me that wherever I am, no matter how lonely, something around me is growing, and that paying attention is a form of connection.
Over the years, I’ve been lost more times than I can count, and sometimes, I’ve made things worse for myself. I’ve felt my surroundings closing in on me. I’ve run or wandered frantically in a direction that took me back to where I started, unaware that humans are prone to circular movement. I failed to notice landmarks or failed to remember them. I lost track of how far I’d traveled, and in which direction. But even when I thought I had nothing, everything around me was an invisible web of information and communication. I just needed to learn to read it.
I spent my young adulthood fascinated by people who felt safe in the world, who received the nurturing, comfort and belonging they craved as children, whose physical and emotional needs were met by adults who recognized and validated them.
But those are not my people.
My people are those who have clawed their way out of a life that didn’t make sense to them, who climbed out of poverty or conformity or narrow-minded intolerance, people who were hurt in the name of love. I stand in solidarity with those who have found tools to hoist their way out of dark holes toward a light they once couldn’t even comprehend, people who have scratched and clawed and fought for every ounce of affection they could find, so they know what love tastes like, what it smells like, and how to find it when the shadows fall.
My people know what love costs, and what it’s worth.
Ryan loved my wildness. He uncovered it, layer after layer, rejoicing in my billygoat feet as we hiked waterfalls, and the full range of my emotions as I plunged in headfirst, over and over. I saved hundreds of pages of letters he wrote me over the years, celebrating the intricacies of his independence, as he lived off his wits, traversing the globe. After our brief time together, our lives diverged and we didn’t see each other again. He chose be itinerant, without the confines of employment, partnership of offspring; I chose rootedness, marriage, family, and a stable job in academia.
I suppressed my wildness in exchange for belonging.
Can wildness be a path to belonging?
I often define myself by my relationships, none of which feel wild. I am one of three sisters, I have three daughters, and soon, I will have three granddaughters.
My oldest twin daughter and my son-in-law bought a house just up the street from me last week. My second twin daughter gave birth to twin daughters yesterday. She named them Odette and Madeline. My son and his partner are expecting a daughter early next year.
I value each of my relationships. Like you, I’m most vibrant when I give and receive love and my definition of family is wide. In addition to a large biological family, I have lifelong friends who are also my family.
Can you have it all?
I have found inside of me a new space to nourish that doesn’t define itself relationally. For the first time in my life, I am choosing to spend time alone.
Sooooo….drumroll…..I am building a tiny, tiny cottage in the middle of the forest, where I can work without the disruption of virtual or face-to-face connection.
And yet, the paradox of this journey is, I’d like to bring you along, if you’d like to share the experience. Maybe you’ve dreamt of creating a space like this and want practical tips; maybe you want to experience an wilderness cottage vicariously (like I do with van life); or maybe you’re creating your dream in an entirely different way and want to connect with other dream-builders during your process. If so, I got you.
This is the land where the magic will happen. Each week I’ll post a picture of some element of progress. Until it’s finished. At which point, I’ll send a picture of me in the tiny, tiny, tiny cottage, with a time-lapse video of the whole experience, start to finish (hopefully, 3-6 months from now). And host a drawing inviting a reader to visit.
Bullseye.
Thank you for joining me on this journey!
We will eventually transcend the need to dominate nature and will instead work in partnership with it, harnessing potentialities without causing harm. And we will transform the fallacy of independence into the righteousness of interdependence recognizing and honoring the mutuality of relationship that we have with every other living creature.
~Elise Loehnen
Who or what is your bullseye?
How do you celebrate your wildness?
Who protects your wild self?
I’d love to hear about your experience with wildness. Respond to this email, or share in the comments below! And if you’d like me to showcase a photo of one of your wild experiences, respond to this email with a photo attachment and a caption.
I work hard to rewild myself, so that my work smells of wildness. The wildness comes, if I am lucky, in the form of a touch of genius, a gushing flow of creativity, a lush animation, and a fierce energy. I am not saying that I always get there, only that I keep trying. In ecology, rewilding means rebuilding diversity and abundance. In life, rewilding means:
grounding
reconnecting with the song-lines and the energies of the earth
reconnecting ourselves with the energies of each other, strange as they can be
regularly discharging the energies of the internet
decolonizing the Western mind and becoming native to place again
~Janisse Ray
Thank you for reading Forager Fridays — your support allows me to keep doing this work.
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Thank you for being on this journey with me. I am grateful for the gift of your presence. Walking this path, knowing so many of you are walking it too, gives me hope. May we continue in our recovery, in relationship with one another and the anima mundi, supporting each other’s growth, like a mycelial network. If you’d like to continue this conversation in person, consider enrolling in my small group writing workshop at the Maloof this October. Feel free to respond to this email or engage in the weekly comments section below.
Congrats on your new family members and may the Almighty Creator bless them all! Finished and enjoyed your book, it blessed me with powerful insight and painted a beautiful picture of your desire to share your love of the wild....creation....just like my namesake did. You asked to share some of my wildness, there are many moments, but at the core is the desire for Freedom. It is such a wonderful gift that cuts to the true inner unique self of pure humanity that makes us crave being close to creation and the Creator. Your words certainly embrace this desire and lift it up for others to see, feel, smell and taste. Thank you for sharing your words and life-road with us.
To me the wildness comes in the experience of unconditional LOVE, my true nature. Circumstances have no power over that LOVE that is my essence, your essence, the essence within each of us. Nothing is impossible when addressed by the power of unconditional LOVE. Seeing you soaring in your tiny home, nurturing your wildness with nature!