How Earth Craft Gap Semester Was Born

by Tracey Forest, Spirit Hollow Founding Director

Spirit Hollow has been in operation as a non-profit for 23 years.  In that time, many, many humans have shared their hearts, their grief, their hopes, their healing and their love of Earth with all of us forest dwellers here on this sacred land.
 
As the steward of this forest sanctuary, being in deep communion with the other-than-human ones has been my steadiest form of prayer and reverence.  My relationship with this place is one of the deepest of my life—sometimes, I feel like the child of Grass Mountain, sometimes like the lover, sometimes like the emissary between the forest and the humans, sometimes like Devana, the Slavic protector of forest, wild animals and kin to the moon or Celtic Nemetoma, she of the sacred grove.  
 
I have lived here longer than anywhere else in my life, and now after two and half decades, through nighttime dreams and somatic invitations, this place has been alluring me to previously-unrevealed spots deep on the mountain:  the singing headwaters of the brook that hugs the boundaries between Spirit Hollow and the National Forest, groves of white pines, grandfather Ash trees with wise faces, and portals into the depths.
 
Perhaps because my own two children, who I raised here their whole lives, largely as a single mother, are now essentially grown and flown, I now have time.  Now that the driving three hours a day to school and activities, the active daily mothering through all the teen years of tumultuous tears and triumphant joys, have passed, I find myself with newly-accessible life-force energy and creativity.
 
All of my mothering energy is transforming inside of me (menopause too) to be a one who is more committed than ever to a wider, open-armed embrace of her deepest service to the world.  By sourcing that which lies deep in Earth, I offer myself to the mythic way I can deliver my gifts.  
 
By listening deeply to the other-than-humans and the Dreaming of the Earth, I have heard how important it is to care for the vaster world in these days of unraveling.  

Now when I awaken every morning, my thoughts are about “how can I plant seeds for the future ones?  How can I create sanctuary and sacred community so others can find their inspiration to be truly alive in these hard and holy days?  How can all of Spirit Hollow’s offerings be stones in the bridge that stretches from this outworn, dominator culture to the yet-to-be-realized world that is life-enhancing and truly healthy?”
 
While holding these questions last winter, and wandering into the forest, I crossed a threshold between two maples, stepping through into the magical dimension of the woods.  
 
Peeking out from the snowy slope ahead, I saw the tips of young white pines like arrows pointing to the sky.  As I approached, offering my breath through song, I found myself in a huge patch of these saplings—of various heights and ages, none more than 8 feet tall.  Such a big grouping of white pine on this mountain is rare, as usually they stand alone or groups of two or three in the midst of this hardwood forest.
 
As I was marveling at all of these young pines, I suddenly heard “look to your left.”  I turned, and gasped. There, lying in the snow, was the mother tree, fallen, cracked at the base, branches spread out all around her trunk like so many wings and feathers.  How long she had been lying here I could not determine—some of the needles were still green, while others were dry and brown.
 
I gasped and my whole body began to tremble with a déjà vu—a powerful knowing.  I sat for some time with this fallen mother, her babies that had sprung up all around her, and I listened to the story that emerged.
 
I heard the tale of a mother of abundant love and powerful resilience—one who had boldly grown tall and old, drawing up nourishment from the soil, whose love was for the ones yet to come, whose work was to produce cones that fell to ground, that seeded, germinated and sprouted under her boughs.  
 
This was her life’s work—to seed, protect, and at last, to die doing what she loved.
 
That story penetrated me to the core, and I lie there in the snow, my back against her fallen body, gazing out at the young pines—at least a hundred of them—all around, weeping with recognition.
 
I recognized that, as an aging woman committed to the remaking of the world, I, too, would do as this mother pine had.  
 
My work is to grow boldly through any conditions, rooted in the fecund and dreaming earth, to grow to fruition, to never stop growing and producing seeds until the day I die.  Never to ‘retire,’ to capitulate, to give up, but to offer and offer, protect and nourish, to give my life to the young ones in my every action.  To do so until I, too, fall over and return my body to the soil.
 
As one who made this vow, one of the most aligned offerings I can make is to use the resources and tools I have learned my whole adult life to really support, nourish and inspire young humans.

While we have offered a weeklong program for the last three summers for young adults, we realized the need for a longer program, where young adults can truly be immersed in an experiment in healthy, soul centric culture.

Thus Earth Craft Gap Semester was born.