"Earth Path: Grounding Your Spirit in the Rhythms of Nature (HarperSanFrancisco. October, 2004) addresses the profound spiritual and conceptual disconnect at the root of our environmental destructiveness, and shows how we can reroot our spirits, out politics, and out day-to-day life in deep relationship with the Earth."

The Earth herself is our greatest teacher and healer, whether we want to heal the huge wounds our society inflicts on the Earth and other human beings, or to heal and transform our own personal hurts. The ancient Goddess traditions had no sacred texts or dogmas: instead, their mystics learned to read the book of nature.  Understanding how the Earth's cycles work, how change occurs in nature, and how Mother Earth designs co-evolving, interdependent systems can help us better design the changes we want to see in our own lives and the world. 

No matter what the outcome of current political elections, the work of healing will continue throughout our lifetimes, and our connection to Earth is our deepest source of hope, renewal, and strength.  This workshop, drawing on Starhawk's brand new book Earth Path: Grounding Your Spirit in the Rhythms of Nature, weaves together ritual, guided journeys, games, and stories to help us connect more deeply with the great transformative powers of nature, and to bring those creative energies fully alive in our lives, homes, and communities so that we can also bring healing, justice, and balance into the World / onto the Earth.

Advanced registration necessary.

$30 - 130   ( suggested minimum $60 )
Bring a favourite food to share for a pot-luck lunch; beverages provided; full kitchen available.
Nature walk into the Ravine encouraged during lunch break.
All ages welcome.
Children must be accompanied by an adult, and are the responsibility of that adult.

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Excerpt from

The Earth Path:  Grounding Your Spirit in the Rhythms of Nature

Chapter One


Toward the Isle of Birds


On a hilltop in the coastal mountains of northern California, I meet with my

neighbors just before sunset on a hot day in July to go to a fire protection ritual.

All summer long, our land and homes are at risk for wildfire. In the winter, we

get eighty to a hundred inches of rain in a good year, and trees and grasses and

shrubs grow tall. But no rain falls from June through September, and in summer

the land gets dry as tinder. A small spark from a mower, a carelessly tossed cigarette,

a glass bottle full of water that acts as a magnifying lens can all be the

beginning of an inferno that could claim our homes and lives.


We live with the constant risk of fire, and also with the knowledge that our

land needs fire, craves fire. This land is a fire ecology. All the trees on it evolved

in association with forest fires. The redwoods, with their thick, spongy bark,

withstand fire. The madrones and bay laurels and tanoaks resprout from root

crowns to survive fire. Fire once kept the meadows open, providing habitat for

deer and their predators, coyote and cougar. Fire kept the underbrush down,

favoring the big trees and reducing disease. The Pomo, the first people of this

land, burned it regularly to keep it healthy. As a result, the forest floor was kept

open, the fuel load was reduced, and fires were low and relatively cool. But now

the woods are dense with shrubby regrowth, the grasses tall and dry. A fire

today would not be cool and restorative, but a major inferno.


Below us is the small firehouse that belongs to our Volunteer Fire

Department. We can look around to the far horizons and see our at-risk landscape.

Deep canyons are filled with redwoods and Douglas firs, with bay laurel

and madrone and vast stands of tanoak filling in the open spaces left where

stands of giant conifers were logged a hundred years ago and, again, fifty years

ago. The tanoaks are bushy, with multiple small stems that create a huge fire

hazard. Big-leaf maples line the stream banks, and black oaks stud the open

hillsides where fifty years ago sheep grazed. Tall stands of grasses in the open

meadows are already dry and ready to burn. Once the meadows would have

stayed green all summer with deep-rooted native bunchgrasses, but a century of

grazing favored invasive European grasses that wither quickly in the summer

heat. Small homes fill the wrinkles in the landscape, most built twenty years

ago by back-to-the-landers out of local wood and scrounged materials. On the

high ridges, we can see evidence of the latest change in land use, a proliferation

of vineyards. Behind us is a huge fallen tree -- a remnant of the 1978 wildfire

that started just over the ridge and burned thousands of acres.


We begin by sharing some food, talking and laughing together, waiting for

everyone to arrive. Then we ground, breathing deeply and with great gratitude

the clean air that blows fresh from the ocean just a few ridges over. We imagine

our roots going into the earth, feeling the jumble of rock formations and

the volatile, shifting ground here just two ridges over from the San Andreas

fault. We feel the fire of the liquid lava below our feet, and the sun’s fire burning

hot above our heads.


We cast our circle by describing the boundaries of the land we wish to protect

-- from the small town of Cazadero in the east to the rancheria of the

Kashaya Pomo in the north; from the ocean in the west to the ridges and

gulches to the south of us. We invoke the air -- the actual breeze we can feel on

our skin; the fire, so integral to this landscape yet so dangerous to us now; the

water, the vast ocean now covered in a blanket of fog, the sweet springs that

feed the land; the earth herself, these jumbled ridges and tall forests.


In the center of the circle is a small bowl. One by one, we bring water from

our springs and pour it into the vessel. My neighbors know exactly where their

water comes from. Each of us has spent many hours digging out springs, laying

water pipes, fixing leaks.


"This is from a spring beyond that hill that flows into Camper Creek that

flows into Carson Creek that flows into MacKenzie Creek that flows into

Sproul Creek that flows into the South Fork of the Gualala River ..."


We offer the combined waters to the earth with a prayer of gratitude -- great

gratitude that we live in one of the few places left on earth where we can drink

springwater straight from the ground.


The Earth Path. Copyright © by Starhawk. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold

Hardcover; 0060000929; 27.9500(CDN); Available: In Print    

 

Starhawk's Bio & Bibliography