Langston Hughes wrote to “hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird, that cannot fly”

I like to believe that dreams are hope of the imagination, the creative space where they can move and grow. But once they grow and are ready to be born, to exist beyond the world of dreaming, hope and imagination, that’s something else entirely. Sometimes and all too often if they are not brought into being when they are ready, they threaten to destroy the one who dared to dream of them.

So, I did something, am doing something…but feel like maybe I should go back just a little bit further first to explain how I got to this particular dream.

In my early 20s I had a very vivid dream of cascading falls, ferns, moss, the woods. It was a place I’d never been or seen outside of my own mindscape. I woke up thinking where did that come from? Was that from within me or something larger? It felt greater than me and from outside of me. Almost obsessively, I had to get it down on paper, so I drew the vision, and then I wrote a poem about it! Something stirred within me that felt very familiar and parallel to a dream I had as young teen. I pulled out a journal I’d started in 2002. It contained all the drawings of experiences that stuck, or poems or phrases that either came to mind, or other artists’ words that had a profound impact on my teenage mind. I flipped through pages of my traveling anecdotes, memories of the people I’d met, drawings of symbols, mental snap shots of blissful moments and then I stopped…

There on the page, years before, I’d drawn a vision of a place, but the sense of the place was greater than the vision of just the cascading falls. It was somewhere people go to heal—to reconnect with something lost. Not fully understanding what I’d seen as a teen, I started to draw and design the building spaces, the flow of the rooms, the levels, the landscape and even going as far as to labeling the different spaces people could interact with their surroundings in various ways. The dream became sharper and clearer the more I drew. It visited me often throughout my time in high school. I never saw it as a fantasy place for in my core I felt that it was or could be or needed to be. That was about as much sense I could pull out of it at the time.

Then came life. Get a job, go to university, choose a career path, build a family, fight your way for success. I chose a rather unorthodox version of this path wanting to outright reject the model and blaze my own trail, but life came regardless along with opportunities to grow and become...become what exactly? There was no career path that really sang to my soul, at least not one that I’d discovered yet. And there was so much external as well as internal pressure to choose, choose, choose, choose. Key motifs started popping up in my life like everlasting fingerprints, and they were choosing me. I started tying systems I’d learned about around the world or components that impacted each other together. The seemingly random curiosities I had found connection and wove into an interlocking tapestry. Writing, microbiology, photography, permaculture, ecosystems, anthropology, computer graphics, animals, food, community, spirituality, chemistry, the body, painting, gardening, mental health, hiking in the wilderness, philosophy, fly fishing, the hungry and those experiencing homelessness, yoga, watersheds, meditation, food as medicine, homesteading, politics, cooking for flavor, rock climbing, the power of story, soil, the power of sound, rewilding, poetry, water, poverty, food security, mycelium, forgiveness, woodworking, relationships. These things were almost too absurd to list out, but all together they started making more and more sense. They were all forms of connection and awareness pointing to a direction down a very specific path.

The dream came again only pushing more, almost painful. It would be done, or I would be undone. I’d been living with a very real, urgent pain that was quite physical—heartbreak made it worse—and my health declined greatly. I continued to put one foot in front of the other, show up to work and give hope to others. Keeping to a routine helped, but felt staunched of creativity and feeling a heavy lack of hope…hope for what? I did not know, only that what I was doing was not it.

A wayfaring man, one that wandered much more than I, stopped me while I meandered alone the streets of New Orleans—Me You & the Bayou Moon. Bleary eyed, he first asked to trade money for a poem. I was ready to walk on, but something pulled me back. I offered a different trade and, in that moment, his eyes opened fully and he really saw me then. He saw this broken winged bird for what she was, a wild thing that somehow had learned to feel sorry for itself—a paradox, I know!

So, he traded me a poem:

Believe

That I cannot mend a heart

Must be rekindled

a whispering blow from open lips

to part the stars above

fragile dangerous strong

Dare to believe again, faith

broken pieces of wild things

Sunk deep into the very blood

Cease the scorn of wallow

stir rise hope

Can’t be done alone

-Claude

All he really needed to write was ‘believe’ and ‘can’t be done alone’, but he was right to chastise my isolated pity party. Once I got back from my trip, I finished licking my wounds and went on a powerful journey. I continued to learn about gardening, permaculture, healthy soil, microbiology, mycelium networks and started connecting it to creating food as affective medicine, chemistry in cooking, flavor, DNA and authentic relationships. I got rid of the microwave. I kept at it with yoga, meditating on walks in the woods, and taking time to enjoy the small moments outside of the insanity of the workday. I found space to open my home a few times a month and host cooking fun meals with everyone contributing in their way and folks started connecting with each other in ways they normally wouldn’t. And what do you know ALL OF IT led to a deeper sense of community sharing food and quality time, healthier relationships, a better sense of self connection to my own body as it moved through the spaces in this world, which ultimately led to better overall health and a mended heart—it was time to fly again. I enjoyed the challenges of my job, the community I’d plugged into and the place that I lived. But then…

December 2024, I was walking through the woods with my pup like I do every day and asked a dangerous question out loud:

What do I do with all of this?

There is no stillness in the woods. Everything is alive and moving all the time—if you’re feeling brave, place an ear close to a patch of dark soil and just listen to the crackling of life. In the moment I asked that question everything seemed to stop even the leaves rustling in the wind. Within me the images of the cascading falls, a space for healing and connection surged to the surface—an awe haw, she is finally ready to not only listen but wake up and do! The embers were fanned and I re-awoke. It was as though I’d been sleepwalking, still absorbing what was going on around me—I did not have the sense that I had wasted my time, and there was no regret about my path thus far. I fully recognized that I’d been gaining skills and experiences as well as meeting people, all of which would impact the dream becoming reality. No, the dream was reality, the rest I’d been sleepwalking through.

It takes a lot of courage to open your eyes, get out of bed, and start walking a path less traveled, something Jamie Winship refers to as ‘living fearlessly’ in your true identity. My path so far in life led me to experiences I will carry with me and people I will always love and cherish. They’ve taken root in my heart, their smile, their laughter, their radiance and embrace. When I re-awoke, I realized I would be saying a lot of farewells for now and putting physical distance to people in my pack. I shared the dream with friends and family, started searching for properties in several different states. Not knowing where it would lead, or what it would look like, I knew that when I saw the place it would speak to me of healing and connection, of hope and a touch of wild.

After months of searching, very little rest, mindlessly shuffling through airports for red eye flights on weekends to tour places that all turned out to be duds and lost battles, I rode up a windy river, nose pressed to the window glass. I thought to myself this place is surreal with moss draped trees, sheer cliffs, and the clear blue river winding along below. As soon as I got out of the rental car, my curiosity spiked. I wanted, no needed to explore. The owner asked what I wanted to see first. I told him the property; he raised his eyebrows. “Not the lodge? or the cabins first?”

I shook my head and he smiled. He brought me down to the river beaches where I knelt in the sand and picked up a rock from the rushing waters. I squeezed it tight. Something stirred. Something felt different here. He took me across the bridge and behind the wheelhouse into the backwoods. I could hear the rush of water. My heart stopped.

There in front of me were the cascading falls, the ferns, the moss-covered trees…the dream, the drawing, the poem.

Well, here it is, here is what I’ve done, am doing. I’m creating a wilderness retreat center where folks can come to reignite adventure, health & wellness. Offering reconnection to an excitement for life in the wild. My goal is to foster balance, stir hope and offer skills for folks to take home with them that they can creatively apply to their own lives. Re-wilding our hearts and minds to get back to the roots of our creative selves. There’s backwoods hiking, kayaking, fly fishing, meditation and yoga by the river or in the lodge, plenty to discover, skill courses, wildlife & birding, a friendly wolf, connection, excellent food and more. One day I’d love for 90-100% of the food served from the kitchen to come from the property year around—food should not only be good for you, but it should taste good too! The journey is far from over, the path still winds its way crooked and challenging with work to be done, things to build, to create, to tease the dream out more and more. There is so much to explore in this space!