One of the wanderers recently asked why I had chosen Dartmoor for the wandering wild retreats, it was such a simple question yet I did not have a simple answer, in fact, it doesn’t feel like I chose it at all it might be the other way around in some unfathomable way.

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Sure I love large mountains and dramatic sea cliffs, but the moor calls to me in a very special way. The ancient beautiful forested areas on the edges of the moor with their mossy stones, lichen draped old crooked oak trees and meandering rivers are straight out of a childhood fairytale.

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The Tor’s which is the name given to the high places of the moor sprinkled with enormous granite rocks in curious balancing piles like massive stone sculptures are mesmerizing, when the weather is bad this is where we all go to seek shelter between the stones, wild horses, sheep’s and humans alike.

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The many Bronze Age stone row and circles connect me to an ancient history of human civilizations and sparks my imagination on how we along with the surrounding landscape has changed around those stones, still standing patiently tall. between earth and sky.

But it is the open moor that I love the most, it is an acquired taste and it doesn’t surrender itself as easily like a beautiful forest or a mountain view does, rather it carries a quality of silence, visual silence it is an oceanic land where the majestic sky meets soft grassy land as far as the eye can see.

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On a Wandering wild walk, we walk without speaking so we can begin to notice the greater “silence” which is what we all share animals, plants, stones, insects and humans alike.

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The open moor is a place for reflection and meditation, it’s a place that can feel oddly empty and lonely...but trust and walk with this landscape for days on end, and it will take you places words can’t describe.

inside out.

Meditation is a very wide word it covers a whole lot, so I thought to explain what my approach to meditation is like on a wandering wild weekend.

Sitting cross-legged focusing on our breathing trying not to think, is not the kind of meditation we do. I think to a relative beginner it is easy to get all sorts of ideas about what meditation is and how it looks like, but there is an infinity of ways to approach the actual state of being which the purpose of meditation is all about.
I have spent a whole lot of time meditating the cross-legged way, I think I added it up at some point to be something like 8 months I have spent in silent full days of meditation on retreats. To some that will be not very much at all, and to others unthinkable long. I only mention this because right now it seems there is a whole lot of people talking about meditation and it is hard to know their level of commitment and experience.
At some point during my years of that kind of meditation I recognized that the deep stillness in my being which showed itself to me in meditation is there to be found in any situation, it certainly is not easy but it is there.
It isn’t a stillness that is devoid of sound, it is a stillness that comes from nonresistance to the flow of life and to the moment.

When we pay attention to the ever-changing myriad of shifting emotions and thoughts that any human is subject to, it is possible to hold the moment in a lighter way. We get less caught up in particulars of agenda and preference and instead can experience the freedom that comes when we swim with the current, instead of against it. Meditation is being in harmony with the flow of life whatever that flow looks like, it is not a perfect state of being!!!!! At least not to me. rather it is an attempt of a nonresistant approach of acceptance and love towards life and the reality of each moment with all that it entails.

It is a willingness to be in truth, without being attached to how the truth looks like.
AND it is something that we fail at over and over countless times during our days, that is the truth of it and we have to accept that too. The usual reaction to the thought of this kind of acceptance is a fear of giving up control, and of not being able to act when it is important to act.
It is ever so funny because as human beings we spend a relatively large amount of time not sure about decisions and how to act in our state of illusory control, whereas when we actually enter the flow of life action springs from a unity of the heart, mind, body, and soul and very little uncertainty is left.
Being fully submerged in wild nature is being submerged in a soup of the state of meditation if you like, we are swimming in it out there.

The natural kingdom is in that wild flow all the time.
I remember distinctly from my first solo walks the incredible contrast between my own energy and that of the surrounding landscape and its inhabitants.
I was like some crazy powerhouse all muddled up by modern-day stresses mixed with a good portion of worries and fears that comes with being out of the usual comfort zone, out of control and alone in the wild.
Being in wild nature invites us to reawaken our senses to be less in the mind and come into that wild flow of life. That is meditation, awake and present.

Revisiting the same route that I did on my very first wild camp several years later, I was struck how that first trip had been so much about fighting. The 8 days were so challenging!
I couldn’t find the way, it was raining nonstop, I got stuck in several boggy areas, and I was so cold I ended up unfolding my survey map as the last bit of protection against the cold in the night ;-) How strange and magically different the experience was on the revisit, my body trusting the land and harmonizing I found routes that were easy to navigate, I slept well without being cold and the daily walk took considerably less time without actually walking faster.

When we go on a wandering wild weekend you will be new to the landscape, the stillness, and the flow. The journey has been created with the intention for you to have a soft introduction to the wild and the meditative aspects. But it certainly will be wild and challenging at times, nature will touch you deeply where it tickles along with prod at the sore bits too, she will shake you and kiss you all the same.

We walk in a slow pace, we have long periods of walking in silence allowing us to settle in ourselves and into the landscape so to pay attention to our experience through our senses, we have time to sit and just be and observe in the mornings on our own, time to journal and we have guided meditations.

But the heart and essence of spending time with nature or in meditation for that matter are to give ourselves up to the moment to allow ourselves to be present, to open up our eyes and ears and heart so that we can be with it all!

There is no surrender without something to surrender to though! And nature will give you exactly what you need, you can be sure of that.
Meditation in the wild is powerful, it is real and stillness is the inclusion of all things not the exclusion of anything, it is a graceful dance a dance that we humans are quite clumsy at and that is ok, we can be gentle with ourselves and each other!

Women have an ancient history of living closely with nature, caring with herbal medicines, keeping of sacred wells, living with the phases of the moon. To connect with nature is essential for a woman. As a modern city female, I grew up feeling alienated from nature, even scared of it.

It seems wild nature has been masculinized, only for the tough and daring so to speak. Well, that is just plain old bull, you can be in nature ANY WAY YOU ARE! Learning to get to know nature to trust her and your self in nature, as well as nature, is a journey to become whole for any human being whether he or she.

But for a woman it is different. Many of us grow up uncertain of our psychical strength and doubting our abilities. We tend to have a different approach to nature a slower one a more careful one, that is in the best sense of the word... we are full of care. This approach is worthy in fact it is needed right now. So many times in my Wandering Wild walks I meet women whose faces reflect a slight embarrassment as they hesitate to leap between stones across the stream, or get stressed and judge themselves for being slow. Well, what is wrong with being slow? You can bum scoot across the entire moor if you like on our wandering wild walks, but please just claim your right as a woman to be in wild nature!

When I first started going out on long trips of solo adventuring into the wild I had so much fear, fear of being a single woman on her own exposed, fear of heights, fear of slipping, fear of sinking, fear of falling, fear of pain, fear of fear! But I wanted to feel a sense of belonging on this earth, aside from our human-constructed cities. And frankly, I was pissed off that I as a female felt so inadequate in nature, something was surely not right there as WE ARE NATURE. And so as I spent more and more time in nature I learned and am still learning to trust myself and to trust nature, and in that trust, my feet find their own way and my being finds a sense of home.