Wild Nature Heart

10/23/2022

October update hotboff the tree

07/20/2020

Just a wild nature heart. A helluva lot is being asked of our hearts right now. There’s a lot of pain. A lot of bewilderment. Deep uncertainty and radical possibility. Things are hurting. Tears are flowing. There are bruises. Yes, a helluva lot is being asked of our hearts right now. I feel it can be done. Things are healing. Things are falling and things are being born. The old forms just will not do. The dismantling is here. The marvelous unraveling is here. This is not reform, this is revolution. This is not remedy, this is transformation. This is not compromise, this is composting the empire. The wholing is here. Together we hold it. Court it. Feel it. Vision it. Allow it.

07/12/2020

On Berry People and Good Manners.

Because we don't photosynthesize.

Robin Kimmerer is a botanist, a writer and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She teaches in the Department of Environment and Forest Biology at SUNY-E...

07/11/2020

THE RIVER LETHE AND WAKING UP

It takes many iterations of waking up, falling asleep, and waking up again to come home to our deepest Self in a powerful and comapssionate way.

If one is paying attention, it seems as if the culture at large also has collectively drunk deeply from the fathomless River Lethe, that great underground river of oblivion, and as a consequence has forgotten a great number of important things about what it means to be a human being.

The Greeks had a great word, ALETHEIA, Truth-as-Unconcealment. The truth is always there, it seems, and we hit upon it when the veil is lifted, when we stop participating in the great concealing.

Where do you go to hide from yourself? To hide from what is? What puts you to sleep?

And just as importantly, what helps wake you back up again? How do you step out of River Lethe and into your widest Self, into the deepest conversations with the world?

06/30/2020

STAY IN THE WILD LOOP OF THINGS

Did you know that Wild Nature Heart has a newsletter? It’s informative, inspirational, and dare I say, beautiful. It arrives each month around the full moon and includes upcoming offerings, practical tips on reconnecting to inner and outer wild nature, poetry, perspectives on The Great Unraveling/Great Turning we are in and the on-going work of decolonizing, dismantling white supremacy and sexism, and wholing the new earth into being, useful resources, opportunities, and more!

So if you you want can stay in the wild loop of things, follow the link in the bio to sign up (under Receive Wild Nature’s Newsletter).

By doing so you’ll also immediately get a FREE downloadable 3 Practices to Re-Connect with Your Inner and Outer Wild Nature (With Accompanying Earth Poems)!

06/29/2020

KEEP WALKING, VISIBLE ONE

We say that the purpose of going out
is to come back. We cross the threshold & go on the sacred mountain or desert, not to escape, but to claim who we really are, to embody our wholeness, & to bring back the medicine that the world needs.
————————————————————
Walk Away, Invisible One,
take your place upon the land

Let your heart swell
as big and wide as the sky

Let the mystery of your soul
dance with the mystery of the desert

When you are ready,
pick up a prayer

What does a prayer look like?

It may look like a naked dance
courting the soul of the world

collecting bones to sing over
blowing embers in the palm of your hands
as gifts to a wounded world

stewarding the storm within
towards the blossoming of a desert lotus
at moonrise

It might sound like
a conversation with rocks and lizards
and other citizens of the desert

It may sound like a song of gratitude,
rising unexpectedly from your belly
reclaiming joy

or the beat of a drum
forgetting who is drumming whom

or, it may sound like Silence
heard only by the Heart-Ear
of Deep Listening

It may look like abandoning the old temples
to build the new ones

shedding skin and tears
that no longer serve
giving it back to the land as offerings

It may look like a question mark
in the form of a juniper tree, asking:
Are your ready to commit?

Maybe you become a mouse
getting into the smallest spaces
to gnaw through bonds
that would have you bound

Or a funeral conductor, burying old stories

Or a warrior taking a stand
with blood pulsing,
announcing to the mountains:
I’m here!

When the prayer has fully prayed you,
Walk in, Visible One.

Take your place in the Circle—
it is time to be seen.

It is sometimes hard
to come down the mountain

But do not linger in the threshold.

We need your story.

Walk In, Visible One,
take your place in the World,
because the purpose of going out
is to come back.

Keep walking,
Keep making the beauty
giving it away as medicine

the beauty that is uniquely you
creafted in love like the smallest bead
that people may not even notice

but that the earth & the people
so desperately need.

Keep walking, Initiated One,
Keep walking

06/29/2020

🌿RATTLESNAKE SHAKE

Celebrating with some grass caresses.

Nature is inherently sensual. How lucky are we to be sensing creatures among a juicy, colorful, delicious, scented, symphonic, and tactile world!!
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Scheduling now for summer and fall:
🌞1:1 EARTH-ROOTED MENTORING INTO WHOLENESS
🦋CUSTOM WILDERNESS CEREMONIES/RITES-OF-PASSAGE (for individuals or small groups up to 4)

Mentoring sessions can culminate in a wilderness ceremony.

Links in Bio. 🐸

06/24/2020

🐾HOLDING THE HOLY WHOLENESS

Thank you for showing up with me in this sacred space! Lots of new followers, so WELCOME!

I'm Ryan Van Lenning and I am an Inner & Outer Wilderness Guide and Poet during this Great Unraveling/Great Turning.

I am a Certified Ecotherapist through The EarthBody Institute, a Wilderness First Responder, & participated in my first wilderness rite-of-passage through School of Lost Borders. But I like to say the bulk of my training has been through life, wild nature, & the dedication to soul work. I’m based in Northern California & do 1:1 Earth-Rooted Mentoring, facilitate wilderness ceremonies, and teach local & online courses.

I started Wild Nature Heart because I discovered on my own journey that re-connecting with my true belonging in/with/as nature was also a coming home to my most authentic self & wild purpose, & that I wanted to assist others on their own journeys.

What really lights me up is going deep with people. I love mirroring back the phenomenal being & gifts I see before me. I thrive on walking with people who are in transition deepening trust in their inner guide & reconnecting to their wild purpose & wholeness. It is such an honor to hold sacred space for people doing this deep work.

My WILD PURPOSE is to help HOLD THE HOLY WHOLING. Yes, ‘Wholing’ as a verb, not just as a noun, because I believe this work asks of us to be active participators. Wholing means embracing & embodying all facets of ourselves; it includes the full spectrum of love & emotions; it includes our sensuality; it means honoring the season, both inner & outer; it means dismantling old, oppressive systems; it means really getting to know our sacred wounds & shadows; it includes the sacred grief so potent right now; & it means sharing our medicine in the biggest way possible.
I practice aiming my arrows of love at this wild purpose.

Fun facts:
🐝In 2013, I walked 500 miles thru the Sierra Mountains.
🐝I play guitar, ukulele, & drums.
🐝My favorite ice cream flavor is cinnamon—hard to find!

I’d love to hear about you too! How can I can help? GRATITUDE—I hope to journey deeper with some of you in this beautiful & mysterious world, both inner & outer!🌿🐾🙌

06/07/2020

🌝 🐢💚THE MOON IS A TURTLE IS A HUMAN HEART

The moon is a turtle—
how have you not known before?

How she carries her home across
the parched land one step at a time

a reservoir of soothing elixirs
in her silver belly

for the people on the edge
for the people burning at both ends
for the people fearful of their own wholeness

For you—you who are on the cusp of tremendous things.

For she has drunk deeply
from the world
and knows how to survive the season—
how have you not understood this before?

How with her Moon-eye-point-of-view
and her pace with peace poured into it
she is not rattled by the noise
that reigns below—
how have you not noticed before?

How she buries her song egg
in the sand of the sky

always hatching new songs
and intoning the old prayers
of love and change
of light and dark

how have you not heard them
like this before?

How she carves a bright life
in you
always coming and going—
you can’t make of her a bride
to keep in your house
as an ornament

But you must be the bridemoon yourself

When the moment of cracking arrives
and the sound is a marvel
heard by all the lovers out there
who have their faces turned
towards the big sky.

You are one of them.

You are one of the great lunatic lovers
with one ear pitched
on the horizon

the other turned within
the deep well.

And you discover the cracking never stops

That it is the cracking that draws
the beautiful patterns all over your shell
that you buried in the sand of the sky

You discover that the moon
is a turtle
and you are the moon—
how have you not known this before?


—————————————————————-
From a new collection of lunatic moon and mythopoetic sun-heart poems ‘The Moon Has a Long Memory,’ forthcoming 2020.

Scheduling now for summer and fall:
🌞1:1 EARTH-ROOTED MENTORING INTO WHOLENESS
🦋CUSTOM WILDERNESS CEREMONIES/RITES-OF-PASSAGE (for individuals or small groups up to 4)

Mentoring sessions can culminate in a wilderness ceremony.

DM me with inquiries. Links in Bio. 🐸

06/06/2020

DEAR SACRED FOOL OF ME

Drumming in the full moon and dawn. Day 3: EAST day of Wilderness Guides Council global gathering, calling in spirit, new beginnings, mystery, trickster, unknowingn, unity, surrender, play.
————————————————————————— Pitter patter purple hammer
Pitter patter up the ladder

Downside up and upside down
Drumming like a trickster clown

With mystery and bit of luck
Spiral down and spiral up

So many many from the One,
Express the Source, just for fun

Oh my mind and oh my my!
I think therefore I have to die

This lovely language it be cruel
Caging all our sacred fools

So rabid rambled trip and tremble
Strike in awe at all the symbols

Inside out and outside in
Is the eastern way to win

Full moon comes and shakes it loose
Hunt your shadow, kill your Zeus

So sin and spin and sin again
Past the gates that lock you in

No muddy mud can stick on you
You fly too fast and dance quick too

So pitter patter purple hammer
Let your sacred fool a’yammer


Ancestral Wiyot territory
——————————————————————————
Excited to be Scheduling now for summer and fall:
🌞1:1 EARTH-ROOTED MENTORING INTO WHOLENESS
🦋CUSTOM WILDERNESS CEREMONIES/RITES-OF-PASSAGE (for individuals or small groups up to 4)

Mentoring sessions can culminate in a wilderness ceremony.

Links in Bio. 🐸