Weekend Nature Solo

Come and be a part of our first weekend nature solo experience. September 20th to 22nd, Glastonbury, UK.

As our Becoming Crew offerings have developed over the last 18 months we have always been intrigued by the complex inter-relationship between being ‘on-line’ and ‘on-land’.

As a crew we’ve always felt that our work needs to be rooted in place, alive with the possibilities that this brings. Everything we’ve offered has been birthed following on land experiences - walking through the spring meadows and orchards of Somerset, embracing the invitation to hutzpah deep in a wild and wet Dartmoor valley, wandering and wondering around the edge lands of Bath. To become crew, we simply have to become an active participant in the places around us.

Yet much of what we’ve offered has been on-line. The power of simple practices - showing up in community, sharing our experience of how it is to be alive right now, our deepest questions and longings. So we’ve built an online crew community through our offerings like the winter Community Solo, The Remix and our seasonal crew check-ins. We’ve been blessed with crew from all parts of spaceship earth, a diversity of voice and experience bound together by a collective desire for becoming, to be of service, to be alone yet together in the great unravelling of it all.

Finding the balance - hi-tech / hi-nature

Yet for all of us as a basecamp crew, when we strip it right back, when we lean into what we most crave in the days when the weight of consequence in an ever distracted, always-on world feels overwhelming, then it is simple - we need to head onto the land.

For as long as humans have been around we have taken our longings, questions and intentions out to the land. Not as a place for our pleasure, or as a place to receive our personal healing even though these things are very possible. But rather as a place where we can take a step back, away from the noise into a different state, an older state. To be truly alive. To become a part of the everlasting interweaving of story between human, tree, fungus, running stream, deer, hare and buzzard.

Only then can we return to the on-line world resourced with an abundance of gifts for our community, for our wider crew.

On Land

So this year we’re launching our On Land programme, a series of in-person experiences across the year. We’re intrigued by the possibility of offering this work in places that are themselves seeking to heal from human influence.

Is it possible to regenerate ourselves and regenerate the land?

Can these two things work in reciprocity?

As with all big questions like these we decided to take them to the land and in April as a core group of guides we arrived into a lush green valley close to Glastonbury in Somerset, UK.

It is a beautiful spot, down an old track you arrive at the bottom of a slope at an Orchard, planted for commercial cider apples before human tastes demanded a sweeter flavour and the crop was no longer useful. The blossom still blossoms and the fruit swells in the summer heat but nobody comes to harvest anymore. A commodity, no longer needed. So many metaphors abound. So much grief and gratitude for those trees.

Around the orchard is a patchwork of old meadow and ancient copse. The landowner is slowly allowing the land to regenerate, a combination of natural process and a helping hand with the hillsides full of saplings. At the bottom of the land a stream weaves its way through. From the highest meadow you can see the scaffolding for the Pyramid stage of the Glastonbury festival in the distance.

As we explored the place we encountered many more than human friends, surprised to see humans on their patch. It was almost as if Fox, Hare, Buzzard and Roe Deer were curious about us, as one by one they emerged from the thicket to watch these four, two-legged creatures walk amongst them.

That afternoon we each chose a spot, Evva tucked away deep in the Orchard. Dan continuing his conversation with two old Oak trees, the two Mark’s went up into the high meadows, seeking a vantage point.

That night we sat around the fire and as day gave way to dusk and we shared what was alive for us, we shared our questions and longings. And as a crew we listened. The land listened too. As it always does, in my experience, when you really mean it.

“You don’t know it, until nature points it out to you”

David Wendl-Berry

Then as the light faded we stepped across the threshold to re-find our spots. It was a dry, warm night so we simply slept in bivvy bags or hammocks. Just the bark of a startled Roe Deer, swoop of Bat, ‘ke-wick’ of owl and parade of space station for company.

In the morning we woke with the most glorious of dawn choruses and one by one we returned across the threshold to coffee, porridge and the warmth of the fire.

Later as the welcome spring sunshine emerged from behind the clouds we shared our stories. Gifts were received, and we returned to our homes with gratitude, reminded of the unique power of this experience.

Here is Mark D amidst the dawn chorus and his beautiful reflections on his night out.

Nature Solo. September 20th - 22nd

So here we are, one of the gifts from that time. A new offering, this autumn on that land in Glastonbury, as the apples ripen in that orchard.

Join us for a guided, on-land nature solo weekend; a rite of passage in times of great transformation.

Bring your deepest questions, longings and intentions to the greatest teacher of them all; our Earth.

48 hours on-land, followed by an integration process online.

The experience will be stripped back and basic.

You bring your own camping kit and sleep out on the land.

We’ll eat nourishing vegetarian food as we gather around the fire.

There will be 12 participants.

Read more about it

Apply here if you are interested

What next?

We’ll be deepening our On Land programme with an intention to offer grief ceremonies to support our resilience in these times and ‘walkshops’ to nurture our creative responses.

We’re also exploring new places of regenerating land in the UK and Europe where we can offer this work.

In time, working with guest guides, we hope to bring to deepen our offering building to our own Becoming Crew Vision Fast.

If you want to explore our human relationship with the nature solo experience, and wilderness as a rites of passage in these times, then it is worth diving into these conversations with David Wendl-Berry and Natasha Lythgoe recorded recently.

We’d love to you welcome you on the land.

Please join us and do share with friends and colleagues.

With Love and Courage