Episode 116 is a live panel recording from last months We Are Avon gathering themed around the Power of Pilgrimage.

 If you're a regular listener, you'll know about place-based initiative and bioregional project, We Are Avon, based in the Avon Valley in the West of England, where I live.

We Are Avon is a place-based movement working to regenerate the landscapes, rivers, and communities of the Avon catchment.

Across Spaceship Earth, people in growing numbers are recognising that the crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, water pollution, and food insecurity are deeply interconnected.

The health of our rivers reflect the health of our landscapes and the wellbeing of our communities.

The Avon river connects more than five hundred and fifty thousand acres of land, two cities, and nineteen towns across a single watershed. If the Avon flourishes, the entire region flourishes.

So We Are Avon exists to catalyse this transformation, and we're bringing together farmers, growers, citizens, landowners, conservationists, artists, activists, organizations, and local communities to restore the river, regenerate land and food systems, and to co-create a thriving bioregion that's rooted in care for place.

I am currently one of the co-directors and have released several episodes from panels and live events that we've been doing in the last 18 months, and this episode is another of those.

This was recorded live as a panel at our May community gathering at the Finisterre store in Bath.

This conversation is an exploration around the power of pilgrimage, the ancient practice of walking land and rivers as a way to connect us back to self, each other, and the landscapes we're part of.

We hosted special guest, Zofia Page, Executive director and Co-founder of Friends of the River Medway, an innovative non-profit restoring the river while reconnecting people to it as a living presence. Her work weaves together ecological action; the Rights of Nature movement; and a renewed, enchanted relationship with the more-than-human world.

Over six years, she has brought the Medway from background to foreground through conservation, citizen science, advocacy, art, storytelling, and ceremony. Her vision found its fullest expression in the River Medway Pilgrimage, a pioneering source-to-sea journey that led to two councils acknowledging the Rights of the River Medway.

Alongside Zofia was Hamish Evans, regenerative farmer of Middle Ground Growers here in Bath, River Pilgrim, prefigurative activist, and fellow co-director in We Are Avon.

This was a conversation about the practice of pilgrimage.

What is it?

What have these two learned from their experiences, and how might more of us step up and get involved?

This was a beautiful conversation with two extraordinary young change-makers who carry incredible vision, wisdom, humility and dedication to our home planet.

In a time where mainstream reality is falling apart rapidly, perhaps these ancient practices of walking the land, moving through landscapes together in community might offer us different perspectives, deeper connections, and other ways of seeing this moment and the future that we’re being invited into co-creating.

The We Are Avon pilgrimage is this solstice weekend.

The Medway is 18th to the 27th of July.

Everyone is welcome to walk as much or as little as you like, links below, there are river movements rising like springs all over the UK. Find one near you and find out what's yours to do.

LINKS

We Are Avon pilgrimage

River Medway Pilgrimage

Over the years we’ve been creating experiences out on-land for folks to slowdown, fall apart, process, let go, connect, imagine, dream, play and laugh and to do that in community as well as take precious time alone.

And through this tune into other intelligence and ways of knowing - in the body, in the land, from each other, that are not available on-line and in our always on hectic lives.

I believe that these other ways of knowing might be the most urgent for us to learn to tune into as we continue to navigate a world that makes little sense with the same stuck, divisive, heady logics of modernity that we’ve been conditioned with.

As guides and practitioners of regenerative change who continue to train with rites of passage elders and wilderness mentors these overnight experiences have become foundational to our own individual practice, something I personally do at least 4 times a year.

These experiences provide rituals, felt experience, insights, stories and connection that cultivates the capacity to stay with the trouble, to not leave the dancefloor even as things get harder. They also often open up possibilities, stoke imagination, grow humility and widen our sense of what could be.

And they are now a core offering with our action learning work as becoming crew on the magical land at Ghostwood Down.

I think they are the most vital offerings that I work with. And guiding people through these is such a beautiful honour and we all receive so much medicine from each other during these weekends.

The business model however is absolutely shocking, as guides we probably earn below the minimum wage in terms of what we generate - because it’s a quality experience working with small groups in deep ways and takes a lot of time, preparation and organising to make happen ahead of the experience itself.

And we are trying to keep these as financially accessible as we can as everyone is struggling.

This work doesn’t scale - it’s human scale.

So we have a couple of spots available for our next weekend 26-28th June and for the September 18th- 20th at Ghostwood Down, near Bath, price points for whatever your means and we’d love to host you.

It’s difficult to describe these experiences - they offer spaciousness, time in community and alone on-land with our more-than human family.

We see them increasingly as a vital space of sanctuary - to come off the highway of modernity, the noise and distraction and to tune into what is really arising inside us and to give that some proper attention - with support from the land, guides, other beings, and a crew of fellow travellers.

Here’s some words from the crew in May:

“There is so many positive things I could say about my experience on the land. Guides Mark and Dan hold a special gift of making you feel at ease both with the group and the land which was very comforting. The level of organisation from special kit needs, dietary requirements to any other emotional enquiry is spot on. I would recommend anyone of any age/background/place to grasp at this opportunity if presented to them!”

“You held the space so well and I can’t fault the process and the land. You are beautiful men creating beautiful containers.”

We’re not digital beings - Let’s get On-land.

Are you feeling the need for spaciousness, slowing down, time with the more-than-human world and a chance to breath and tune into what is arising for you?

We’d love to host you, if you’re curious do reach out, and don’t let money be a barrier - we have payment plans and rates for all

Blessings to you

Info and register

Greetings Earthling,

It’s been a while since the last crew news…

Spring has been springing here in the UK, and now it’s June and turned very wet…

I was utterly seduced by the Hawthorns this Spring, and taught a lesson or two from their fierce protection, their flowers were frothing madly in the hedgerows at Ghostwood Down before they vanished almost overnight it seemed.

Magic. Just like that.

The dawn chorus is orchestrating louder every morning right now, if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere I highly recommend getting up and out at 4.30 one morning to tune in before it drifts away for another year.

An ancient sonic intelligence.

And on sonics the sound of lawn mowers cutting all the wonderful growth intensifies and continues to agitate me.

The urge to control, manipulate and clean up ‘nature’ is still a strong force.

Hey ho.

Modernity continues to unravel at pace…

War, bombing, domination, lies, oppression, division, violence and hubris in many forms spreads throughout our Spaceship.

And yet here we are.

Bewildered and getting on.

Trying to hold it all.

As the speed of modern life continues seemingly to accelerate and automate at dizzying pace….

What are we not hearing?

What are we not seeing ?

What are we not sensing ?

And of course what possibilities are we not imagining ?

I’m wondering increasingly about ‘world view’, objective reality, perception and ways of seeing.

How we choose to see ‘life’ and ‘reality’ and our place within it.

What are the beliefs that keep us locked into these stuck destructive ways of seeing and being ?

The dominant logic in our culture is incredibly strong, it whips us along, convincing us to see life as human-centered, separate, inert, mechanistic, for control, capture and commodification.

Extraction, transaction and distraction as we say - the passenger story.

It tricks us that nothing more-than-human could be intelligent and sentient and that only some bodies matter.

It tells us our sensory feelings, felt experiences and intuitions are not really true because they can’t be measured.

And yet when you strip it back it is all just perception, a learned world view, one version of reality, one way of seeing and knowing the world and our place within it.

Gregory Bateson articulated this much more precisely…

“We create the world that we perceive, not because there is no reality outside our heads, but because we select and edit the reality we see to conform to our beliefs about what sort of world we live in. The man who believes that the resources of the world are infinite, for example, or that if something is good for you then the more of it the better, will not be able to see his errors, because he will not look for evidence of them. For a man to change the basic beliefs that determine his perception - his epistemological premises - he must first become aware that reality is not necessarily as he believes it to be. Sometimes the dissonance between reality and false beliefs reaches a point when it becomes impossible to avoid the awareness that the world no longer makes sense. Only then is it possible for the mind to consider radically different ideas and perceptions.”

Surely we are in a moment where the dissonance between reality and false beliefs is becoming impossible to avoid ?

My hope is that more folks who are experiencing this dissonance between reality and beliefs, are willing to step into the messy but vital composting of this separation story.

That work is essential to clear the space for something true to emerge.

Which means a commitment to cultivating other ways of seeing and being and co-creating a reality that honours connection, interdependence, entanglement, relationality and kinship between all life.

And the acceptance of learning to live with the limits and consequences that are a fundamental and unavoidable part of a reality of interconnection.

If there is a theme to this month’s news - it is about coming back into relationship with a vaster and wilder web of intelligent life - tuning into an aliveness in our own bodies, between us as humans in community, with the land and this more-than human Spaceship called Earth.

It’s an invitation to explore seeing things differently, relating differently, listening deeply, to experiment with feeling and sensing in the heart, body and gut.

And to question tenderly with humility, compassion and curiosity the belief systems that underpin this dominant version of reality that no longer makes sense to many of us it seems...

I hope you enjoy these offerings and invitations.

Thank you for your support.

With love and courage

Dan and Crew

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WATCH

The Language You’re Fluent in — but Forgot How to Hear- Louis VI

I had lunch with this amazing man this week - Louis VI.

Musical ecologist and rapper Louis VI says humans are hardwired to nature's sonic language, but modern life has drowned it out. He explores how we can tap back into the "overwhelming chorus of aliveness" we’ve stopped hearing. Check out his recent TED talk. And follow his work.

WATCH

READ

What If Humans and AI Share the Same Hallucination?

The systems of modernity train us to view reality in a certain way on the basic assumption that things are separate. The separation narrative you might have heard it called. (I have written about this)

The extraordinary ( EP 96) who has been studying this for three decades writes:

“What if this assumption of separation is itself a hallucination? And I am not using the term as a metaphor. I am asking you to consider a hallucination in the precise sense: a stable perception that does not correspond to how reality actually operates.”

Read the whole post

READ

LISTEN

What if civilisation were designed not for profit, but for life?

The brilliant Jeremy Lent - Author of the Web of Meaning and the Patterning Instinct has published his next book - ‘Ecocivilisation - Making a world that works for all’ - here in conversation on the equally brilliant Passing Through Podcast.

LISTEN

PRACTICE

Sit with a Tree

Trees are without doubt my most important more-than-human teachers on the Spaceship. They arrived here way before humans and live for much longer than us, so it kind of makes sense, they are wise elders.

The most simple way I find to touch another reality is to unplug from the machine and go sit under a tree, on your own with no phone and to try and be present, just for a moment, to breathe into your body, and to listen, to notice.

Look up at the tree - you’ll likely experience that there’s a lot more going on.

You’ll feel it.

Just a glimpse, before the rational mind kicks back in.

If you are able to do it the dark one time or get up for the dawn chorus even better, step outside of the dominant logic, get off the highway, unplug from the machine.

If you can build a relationship with a specific tree, visit often, notice who else is in the room so to speak.

Try talking to the tree, share your questions and challenges, sing to it, you might be surprised by what you receive.

PARTICIPATE

What does it feel like to really get to know a river ?

If you’re based in the South West UK come and join the We Are Avon pilgrimage, on the Solstice weekend where we step through a portal into a deeply intentional walk with the land and river of the Avon valley, walking in community with others.

You can join for as much or as little as you like, (I’m doing the Sunday) the important thing is to register that you’re joining, and get all the updates and info.

Register

CONNECT

A weekend of sanctuary on-land

We have two spots left for our June 26th - 28th Community Solo at Ghostwood Down near Bath and availability for our September 18th-20th weekend.

It’s hard to describe these experiences - they offer spaciousness, time in community and alone on-land with our more-than human family.

We see them increasingly as a powerful space of sanctuary - to come off the highway of modernity and to tune into what is really arising for you, and to give that some attention which the land, the other beings, guides and the crew of fellow human travellers will all be in support of.

We have price points for everyone.

Here’s some words from the crew in May:

“There is so many positive things I could say about my experience on the land. Guides Mark and Dan hold a special gift of making you feel at ease both with the group and the land which was very comforting. The level of organisation from special kit needs, dietary requirements to any other emotional enquiry is spot on. I would recommend anyone of any age/background/place to grasp at this opportunity if presented to them!”

“You held the space so well and I can’t fault the process and the land. You are beautiful men creating beautiful containers.”

info and register

SUPPORT

Famous for Five Miles is a new action learning offering from Becoming Crew for young men starting in the Bath, Bristol and Avon Bioregion.

We are inviting young men (18-25) into honest conversation, time on the land, creative practice and deeper relationship with community.

It arrives after nearly three years of research and inquiry into youth focussed, Earth-centered learning.

Which has led to our focus on intergenerational regeneration experiences.

We are currently working on outreach, conversation and gatherings starting this process with several months of co-design with young men and those supporting them.

We are hoping to build a village around this project and all of our intergenerational regeneration work, so we have an immediate ask for support.

If you know of projects that are working with young men/young people that might be interested in getting involved, please share and follow this link to connect from the web page

If you know a young man in our bioregion who might want to join a conversation, attend a gathering, or be part of the longer journey, please follow this link to connect

We are also seeking partners, funders and supporters to help resource this work with young people in the years going forward.

Supporting place-based youth work, intergenerational learning spaces, land and place regeneration and growing more hopeful futures. To help us host gatherings, offer bursaries, pay guides, support transport and build a wider village around the work.

Please do share with anyone who might be able to help with the above and do message if you’d like to explore more.

READ MORE

DANCE

Less dancing this month and more a soundtrack for horizontal listening.

I’ve been getting deep into Donato Dozzy’s work this last year, from his more minimal textured techno to his ambient soundscapes and amazing Voices from the Lake project - and stumbled on this beauty set - in his words :

“This was recorded in the National Park of Circeo on the 24.8.22 a few meters away from the Tyrrhenian Sea. There were 60 people audience lying on the sand, a few candles and a 4+1 Turbosound system. I played my own productions including a few unreleased tunes”

LISTEN

Share

#thespaceshipearthpodcast #becomingcrew #crewnews #inservicetolife #practicedrivenchange #regeneration

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Share Becoming Crew

Famous for Five Miles is a new action learning offering from Becoming Crew for young men (18-25 yrs) starting in the Bath, Bristol and Avon Bioregion.

A place-based learning journey for young men, exploring belonging, purpose, identity, community, creativity and relationship with the living world.

We are inviting young men into honest conversation, time on the land, creative practice and deeper relationship with community.

It arrives after nearly three years of inquiry into youth focussed, Earth-centered learning.

Which has led to our focus on intergenerational regeneration experiences.

We are starting here because we are hearing a need for spaces where young men can speak honestly, build trust, explore identity and purpose, spend time in nature, and be supported by peers, elders and community.

At the same time, this work is not limited in spirit to one gender. The deeper invitation is for people of all identities: to reconnect with place, community, creativity and response-ability. As the project grows, we intend to develop future journeys that are open to wider groups.

You can read the full story here

We are currently working on outreach, conversation and gatherings starting this process with several months of co-design with young men and those supporting them.

This is about meeting organisations, projects, mentors and community spaces working with young men across the bioregion.

We are hoping to build a village around this project and all of our intergenerational regeneration work, so we have an immediate ask for you.

If you know of projects that are working with young men that might be interested in getting involved, please share and follow this link to connect from the web page

If you know a young man in our bioregion who might want to join a conversation, attend a gathering, or be part of the longer journey, please follow this link to connect

We are also seeking partners, funders and supporters to help resource this work with young people going forward.

Supporting place-based youth work, intergenerational learning spaces, land and place regeneration and growing more hopeful futures. To help us host gatherings, offer bursaries, pay guides, support transport and build a wider village around the work.

Please share with anyone who might be able to help with the above and do message if you’d like to explore more.

If you’d like to stay up to date with the Famous for Five Miles journey, we plan to share our learnings openly as we go - which we’ll post here in this Famous for Five Miles section, if you don’t want to receive them then please unsubscribe from this in your substack settings

Blessings to you

Dan and Crew

Famous for Five Miles

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In this solo offering nested with the Hazels on Ghostwood Down - I’m rambling on:

• Relationality, mystery, place and local participation.

• Spaces for sanctuary and falling apart.

• Regeneration through transformation and the deeper shifts required in times of unraveling and overwhelm.

This is not reflections about fixing the world through better ideas, but about changing the way we relate - to ourselves, to one another and to the living, more-than-human world around us.

What if regeneration is not just about solutions but also about consciousness, presence, attention and participation?

What if the future asks us not just to think differently, but to be differently?

Becoming-with-life.

This offering was created among ancient Hazel trees on Ghostwood Down.

There’s Hazel wisdom in ere.

Guest conversations returning soon.

But until then I hope you enjoy my ramblings.

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Links

Famous for Five Miles

Community Solo June 26th/28th

We Are Avon

Join the Avon Pilgrimage 20/21 June

"You guys are talking to us because we're in a spaceship really far from Earth, but you're on a spaceship called Earth that was created to give us a place to live in the universe, Maybe the distance we are from you makes you think what we're doing is special, but we're the same distance from you. And I'm trying to tell you — just trust me — you are special. You are special, in all this emptiness.
This is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe.
You have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together.”

Victor Glover

It feels beautiful and timely that these astronauts are reminding us of Spaceship Earth.

We desperately need ideas and stories that can help us to see this moment differently, to connect and bring us together in these times of falling apart and remind us of the great and precious mystery of being alive on this Earth.

I first came across ‘Spaceship Earth’ in 2009 - when I read ‘Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth’ by Buckminster Fuller - there was much in that book that didn’t land, but the metaphor of the Earth as a Spaceship did.

And not because it made me think we humans are controlling the spaceship, that would be utter hubris.

But a life-giving rock hurtling through space and nothingness - like a spaceship, with its own regenerative operating system, creating and sustaining the conditions for all life on board…

That really did capture my imagination.

It gave me a strong visualisation, a sense of connection and unification with something much vaster, beyond religion and nation states which never ever landed for me.

That there is a bigger, entangled whole entity connected to the small part that I experience in my life world.

It helped me to connect the awe, the sacredness, intelligence and mystery of life that I’d intuitively known in my heart and gut since a child but that the modern culture didn’t recognise, celebrate or seem to have any awareness of.

Earth as a spaceship invited me into an apprenticeship with curiosity into the vast, complex, unknowable intelligence of the regenerative operating system of this living planet.

A forever exploration of entanglement, interdependence, relationality, cycles and limits - what appear to be the fundamental principles of the operating system.

And over time I began see myself as part of the Spaceship.

A tiny part-icipant in a complex evolving mystery.

In the following decade working as a strategist, co-designer and creative activist, I would often introduce the Spaceship Earth metaphor when bringing together campaigners, activists and change-makers cross the climate, nature and social justice spaces, to help us consider that all of our work was entangled and unified with something much bigger.

In 2018 I started the Spaceship Earth podcast experiment as an inquiry and exploration with humans working with this deeper consciousness of interdependence, regeneration and human and planetary entanglement.

‘We are all crew’

Bucky Fuller used to say ‘we are all astronauts.’

But it was Marhsall McLuhan who said ‘we are all crew’

Crew fascinates me.

‘Crew’ invites participation, adventure, community and being in service to something bigger and more mysterious.

Crew are active participants.

Crew are tending to the operating system.

Crew are stewarding the Spaceship, together.

Crew are in service.

In service to life

In multiple micro ways.

Just look closely to the more-than-human crew and you will see it.

Every other species is playing a unique crew role, in a unique place while contributing to the health of the whole spaceship in a hyper local way.

That’s what crew work is I think.

Uniquely personal, participatory, local, in service to the health of the whole.

For us humans onboard right now, we are situated in a collapsing story, the dominant story that has been shaping our civilisation for hundreds of years.

It’s a passenger story not a crew story.

A passive story - of extraction, transaction and distraction.

A story that tells us we are separate from our bodies, from land, each other and all other species.

Apart from nature - not a part of nature.

A story of separation from the spaceship.

Superior, entitled, with different laws to the rest of the spaceship.

A spell, an illusion, where we are taught to perceive, think and behave in ways which destroys the operating system on the spaceship in order to uphold ways of living on the spaceship which cannot be sustained.

It’s a madness.

And we can now see clearly where this story is taking us, to the brink.

We have to un/learn these ways, to break the spell.

I believe we have to learn fast to honour what we understand about the operating system on the spaceship.

To imagine, think, design, organise and live by its principles and limits, if it is to continue to function, support and sustain the crew onboard, human and more-than human.

Because the Spaceship is more-than-human

The most critical thing I think we are being called to grasp right now, as a species, is not just that we are onboard a living spaceship - but that the spaceship is more-than-human.

We are just one species of millions living on this life giving rock hurtling through space.

It’s a more-than-human spaceship.

And we are a species that has for many reasons only come to dominate the spaceship of late.

Because if the Spaceship’s 4.3 billion-year history is compressed into a 24-hour clock, the 300,000 years that the human species have existed is roughly 0.24 seconds.

And within that .24 seconds, the separation story of 500 years or so that has led us to this age of consequence is literally a nano second.

A cosmic wing flap.

In that time our human species has lost its humility (the clue is in the word) - a core quality that is critical in being part of a more-than-human world, a world that cannot be known through rational logic, measurement, markets and reductionism alone.

This is a world that requires ecological, biological and mythological knowing.

Today we exist in a constructed, human-centric, objective reality that is falling apart, expiring, unravelling at speed.

Most of us can feel that we’re in uncharted territory, that something is terribly wrong.

A reality dangerously out of sync with the intelligence, systems and logics that truly govern Spaceship Earth, this more-than-human spaceship.

It takes astronauts in space to see our Spaceship Earth clearly and remind us of this vaster, complex, mysterious and unknowable reality

But for the rest of us who cannot travel into space, how to find the Spaceship in this time of profound change ?

Finding the Spaceship

Onboard a more-than-human spaceship, it stands to reason that we need to spend much more time with the more-than-human.

We are being challenged way beyond our dominant human-centered rational logics.

To find Spaceship Earth and our true place within it we have to learn to see the world around us differently, to un/learn the separation perception, to drop the idea of ‘nature’ as other, to open up our sensory capacities, and feel our way into the entangled wider intelligence of the operating system.

Becoming with the more-than human.

Perhaps only then can we begin to truly discover our unique roles and invitations to participate as crew in these transformative times.

To begin our ongoing evolutionary journey.

Becoming crew on Spaceship Earth as we say around here.

Weaving the regenerative universe

Bucky Fuller said that the regenerative universe is created through local participation.

I have come to believe this means weaving and stitching through the micro actions, relationships and entanglements of every living being.

Tending and stewarding life locally in the places we call home, re-pairing relationships in the moment, creating regenerative futures in the now through present-centered actions.

Navigating change through centering Earth’s intelligence, tuning into the rhythms and patterns of the Spaceship and the ongoing practice of response-ability to life around us.

Focussing on what is around us and trusting that everyone steps into service where-ever they are.

Collectively weaving the regenerative universe, the healthy operating system on Spaceship Earth.

Evolving ourselves together as crew

Time with the more-than-human

Finding our way into Spaceship Earth means spending quality time with the more-than-human operating system.

This also means exploring the whole spectrum, not just the beautiful looking parts, it requires exploration of the darker parts, the mysterious parts, the complex, messy and weird parts.

And through that, discovering and re-membering our deep entanglement with the Spaceship, the inner and outer dance between body, soul and land.

It requires experimentation, practice, commitment and repetition.

It requires humility and not-knowing.

A beautiful way of exploring that is in community, supporting each other - in crews.

This is the foundational practice of our Becoming Crew Action Learning practice and why we created the Community Solo experience - a weekend living on the land in community, exploring our deepest, most alive questions and taking them out on an overnight solo, to connect intimately with the more-than-human crew.

This is an experience that can help us connect again with the quality of humility, to listen deeply, and to see the world around us differently.

A rite of passage for these times.

We are hosting weekends in May, June and September.

Come and join us and let’s find our way back and forwards into Spaceship Earth.

Peace and Out

Dan

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A new Earth Sessions mix from me: Springing

For dancing through the collapsing world order

And the springing of spring

To mark the light returning, the sun rising, warmth, blossoms popping, life coming back, possibility… love.

A mix of vinyl and digital spanning 30 years - deep, housey, organic, trippy, vibey, and lively.

I hope it makes you move wherever you are.

With gratitude to the wonderful artists, producers and labels for these creations

Tracklist via the Spaceship Earth

Listen on Soundcloud, Apple Podcast and Substack

Let’s stay together

Let’s dance.

Peace and Out

Dan

Hello all,

Fin here, your new Spaceship Earth Podcast editor!

We are kicking the podcast off this year with a warm spring offering from Dan and a few Willow trees up at Ghostwood Down.

‘Ghostwood Down?’ You may be wondering - where is tha… what is that?

Well, we welcome you friend

Up into the hills surrounding Bath.

There rests a magical Ghostwood - A Land which was once the place of a great forest

A land riddled with scars, gold dust, earnest joy and deep sorrow.

On this land we are slowly nurturing a return to woodland, while honouring the place as it is now.

The ghost of a wood. Hence Ghostwood.

And as it is downland , well… you guessed it... Ghostwood Down.

Anyway enough of my attempts to ramble lets get into the real ramble.

Today’s episode is a little unusual.

Unusual you may ask? Thank god I hear you say - ‘that’s why I am bloody subscribed to this podcast.

Because the world… Well, the world is a little more than unusual, it’s quite frankly insane.

Insanity is kind of why Dan has chosen to make this episode.

The rigidness and immediacy that feels expected of us to make sense of the world around us and in us is so ludicrous that often we feel like we don’t have the words to express them.

And that’s where Rambling comes in. Rambling almost has a negative connection…

To ramble is to be indecisive.

To ramble is to not know what you’re talking about.

To ramble is not know.

But, what if that’s what we need in these times?

To not know?

So, if you’ve read this far, go give Dan a listen - you may be surprised by how infectious the ramble can be.

Rambling on:

Rambling as social technology

Ghostwood Down - place of intergenerational regeneration

Exhaustion of life within collapsing modernity

Psychopathic war mongering leaders

Tuning into Hedge Media

‘Unhoming’ - hat tip @Ece Temelkuran

A politics of care and community

Belonging

Liminal spaces for creativity and connection

Willow trees

Enjoy

Once you’ve had a listen, these episode references may… or may not make sense.

People

• Bayo Akomolafe
  

• Ece Temelkuran

• Hannah Spencer MP
  

• Chris Hines
  

Books

• Nation of Strangers: Rebuilding Home in the 21st Century – Ece Temelkuran
  

• Ashes to the Breeze – Mark De’Lisser

Projects / Organisations

• Ghostwood Down
  

• Through the Cracks
  

• Surfers Against Sewage

With care,

Fin, Dan and all the crew at The Spaceship Earth Podcast

I originally recorded this episode with Chris Hines, EP 17, seven years ago.

I’ve decided to repost it now.

Which I will get into more in a lengthier post to follow.

This week in the UK we had the launch of the Channel 4 real life drama series - Dirty Business

A three part doc-drama based on a decade-long investigation into England’s water companies, it follows the story of two unlikely citizen detectives who notice that the fish in their local river are dying and are determined to find out why.

Telling the real stories of whistleblowers and victims who believe their lives have been destroyed after encountering sewage polluted water, Dirty Business is a factual drama investigating one of the biggest corporate scandals in British history.

And it is well worth a watch.

It also features Chris Hines (through an actor) - surfer, environmentalist, sustainability innovator who over 35 years ago co-founded environmental surf charity Surfers Against Sewage in Cornwall UK.

Their work has been pivotal over the years in connecting the human shit in the seas and rivers to the gross negligence of the privatised water companies, extractive economics and short term politics.

This conversation I hosted with Chris in Dublin back in 2019 explores that journey, what was happening at that time in the early 90’s and what drove Chris and fellow founders to build out this movement despite having no real idea what they were up against and with absolutely no resources.

But this is a story to inspire all of us, that if you care enough about something then go and make stuff happen.

It’s worth a listen in my view because it’s more relevant today for those who are feeling outrage and fury about all manner of things around them and want to do something about it.

How with no resources and getting creative and working with your community extraordinary things can and do happen.

And how once you begin, you will find many others who are experiencing the same thing, and then a movement starts to grow.

This was also pre-internet and there’s a lot about organising in that time which I think might be useful to revisit right now.

Chris is wise, humble, a true elder - I really feel we could do with more intergenerational connectivity between activists and grassroots movements and organisers right now.

Let me know what you receive if you listen and do share with others that might appreciate it

Enjoy!

Dan

LINKS

A Grain of Sand

Surfers Against Sewage

Not something you are paid to do for someone else.

Not a thing that you judge yourself on - ‘am I good enough’?

Not that.

But an experimental practice that is yours alone.

A practice that allows you to express yourself in an emergent way.

A playful way.

To play with your feelings.

Exploring the feeling Intelligence

We started Into the Dark last week, beginning the journey with endings - contemplating grief, tending to loss and letting go.

It’s a mysterious emerging adventure, a crew of curious humans, coming together intentionally to explore this darker time of the year, the darker parts of ourselves and this darker moment of being alive on Spaceship Earth.

One of the invitations we like to encourage over the 5 weeks and beyond is to practice some weirder moves.

Re-entangling with the great mystery of being a human-being on a more-than-human planet, paying attention to the parts capitalist modernity hides from us, exploring our relationships with a vaster web of life - felt, seen and unseen, human and more-than-human.

This often begins by simply sitting outside in a spot, in a park, garden or beside a tree with a blackbird on a busy road in London (as one of our crew is currently doing) and just noticing, sensing and feeling with our full animal intelligence.

Taking our most alive questions out into these liminal places, offering something back to these stranger spaces, noticing what we see, hear, smell and feel.

And then returning home to some form of creative practice as a way to begin to move into a deeper relationship with the living Earth.

To begin to capture some of that feeling data in whatever way feels interesting to you.

That might be through writing, sketching, painting, crafting, movement, music, cooking - any form of making.

It doesn’t matter what it is - I think, it’s all in the reflection and participation.

In the messy process.

I often like making food with my hands - bread, jams, pickles especially - I’ve come to see these as a relational dance between me and gifts from the Earth - fruits, flour, foraged gifts - there’s seasonality, connection, a pattern which feels grounding.

And there’s the alchemy of co-creation. Of making something with.

I can time-stretch seasons

Spreading summer fruit on winter toast, spring pickles on Autumn plates, hedgerow tincture on a tired end of year tongue, fermenting earthy flour into nutrient dense baked joy.

I also love messing with music.

As a kid I used to create compilation cassettes, recording 7 “ singles, songs from albums, tracks from the radio onto a cassette tape - I’d decorate the cover and give them away to friends.

I started drumming in my teens and then discovered raves and got into DJ-ing and electronic music, that interest has ebbed and flowed through life but never gone away.

I’ve never really stopped listening, dancing, collecting. For over 30 years now.

Earth Sessions

In the last few years I’ve been recording DJ mixes at particular moments in the Earth cycle and putting them out on the podcast - Earth Sessions (you can find them all here or on Apple Podcasts)

They are a way for me to mark the season, the moment in the cycle and how it makes me feel and how it makes me want to move. Through a channel of electronic and dance music.

This is a new one. A live mix to honour this darker time of the year, and the darker times unfolding.

Recorded in my kitchen on a Friday night, after a long walk in the woods.

I wanted to start slow and ambient, to acknowledge the slower liminal space of winter and gradually pick up the pace.

This was a mix of vinyl and digital - spanning 30 years of releases.

From ambient electronica, early rave inspired house, breakbeat, melodic techno, tech house and some progressive bits.

Respect to all the artists and producers for these sonic offerings.

I hope the mix moves you in some way.

Movement, dancing and connection is a way through these unravelling darker times

We must stay together.

Thoughts start with feelings

Brian Eno, artist, musician and activist says that all thinking starts with feeling.

We feel before we have thoughts.

The feeling informs the thinking.

If you agree that as a modern species we are stuck in dominant ways of thinking that are exhausted, divisive , limiting and keeping us locked in the same destructive patterns, logics and ways of being, then perhaps we need to learn to feel in new ways.

If we need ways of thinking that have qualities of care, interdependence, imagination and regeneration then we need to feel those things first.

What does the Earth want from you?

I’m fascinated with feelings that emerge when we practice connecting with the living intelligence of the Earth, this entangled mysterious complex weirder wisdom - intelligence that you can’t access scrolling online or from Netflix, LinkedIn, or in the news or at work or in the shops.

You can’t think it, you can only feel it.

And to feel it you have to pay attention, you have to listen deeply, you have to move into relationship again, you have to not know.

With your heart, body, with land, with community.

You have to spend time outside, (inside maybe?) In the non-human scape.

So when you spend time re-connecting with this intelligence, creating a regular practice, you start to feel differently, and then if you do something with those feelings, express them creatively in some way, capture them, soon you might find you begin to think in other ways.

Weirder ways.

More beautiful ways, I’d suggest.

So I wonder what it might be like to go back to those creative practices of our younger selves ?

Those parts of ourselves that we’ve suppressed in order to get on, on the highway of progress.

To begin again.

What might emerge from these times, if instead of numbing ourselves with the algorithmic distractions, stuck in the exhausted, expiring and limited thinking of these unravelling times, we began to re-entangle more with this true, deeper mysterious feeling intelligence, and to experiment more from there.

At the very least we could create waves of beautiful human expressions, pulses of joy, curiosity, grief, weirdness, mystery and imaginative possibilities.

Words from rivers, wind infused artworks, songs of wintering, dances of trees, baking with Ancestral Intelligence.

And these creative experiments might at the very least provide our future ancestors with clues as to how we were actually feeling during the great unravelling.

And who knows what could happen if we began to really feel this life differently, to feel this world with love, and then to begin to think with care, interdependence and connection in great and growing numbers.

Becoming-with.

Cultivating a feeling revolution.

What might be possible ?

I leave you with owls and wind.

Dan

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As we move through these stranger, slower darker times of winter (and a collapsing world order)

What would it be like to experiment more and try out some weirder moves in these next weeks ?

God knows we need them.

Loosening the rational mind for a while.

Noticing what you’re paying attention to.

(And what you’re running from.)

Minding the distractions.

Avoiding the algorithms.

Staying closer to the discomfort.

Tending to your shadows and the darker parts.

Dwelling in the not knowing.

Exploring the data of your feelings.

Learning to listen differently, with your body and heart.

With your sensory, animal intelligence.

Looking out for the unseen.

Opening up to other voices in the room, so to speak.

Asking questions to the land around you.

Calling on your ancestors.

Giving gratitude and love back to the land, to the Earth, whenever you can.

Becoming curious about strange encounters.

Paying attention to weird coincidences.

Trusting your hunches.

Who knows what might emerge as the light returns in Spring.

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And so it is again.

I’m crawling deeper into the compost heap of 2025, into the darkness, and then suddenly it’s a new year and the chatter is of goals and resolutions and how to be productive and relevant and successful.

I’ve always struggled with that.

And now in this moment and in these times.

As puts it:

“It’s January 2026 and the global order is collapsing in real-time.”

I’m unsure how one can truly know any of that anymore with the current unraveling state of everything that once seemed certain in our world.

The Long Dark

You may have noticed that we’re heading into darker times - what grief worker, Francis Weller calls ‘the long dark’ as well as winter being upon us.

I wonder if you’ve ever stepped more intentionally into this time with curiosity to consider and explore this slower, more liminal, mysterious time of darkness with greater attention and intention.

What might we find in the dark ?

In the last 4 years we’ve been convening a crew towards the end of January on a 5 week journey - an intentional exploration of this darker, slower time.

In some ways as an act of resistance to the urge of modernity to accelerate into productivity and growth as the year begins.

The exhausted delusion of eternal progress, guided by lists of goals plucked from our frazzled minds and the algorithmic feeds that whip us along.

Instead, rooting deeper into our bodies, into the places we call home in winter’s slower, stranger liminal vibes.

Sitting longer with the uncertainty, fermenting the not knowing, intentionally letting go of what’s not serving us anymore.

Practising listening to a wider web of life, opening to the wisdom of the more than human crew aboard spaceship earth, the ones who still trust in ancient rhythms.

What might we find in the dark?

For me this practice and ritual has become the only trusted way I can orient myself for the year ahead - I’ve ditched the lists.

There’s definately always some edge at first in resisting the productivity urge and allowing this emergent process to unfold, trusting in what will be as we come out blinking into the light in mid-February.

But I’m still working with rich insights from the last few years, of strange cloaked ancestors on acorn covered ground, of the focus and attention of a barn owl, of scattered oak bones and a slow flowing river at dawn.

I was in Italy in early December and I met up with who participated in Into the Dark in 2025.

She told me about her threshold walk through thick freezing fog, where she discovered a surreal 4D clarity of what was right in front of her. She told me that the experience and insights had remained alive for her throughout the whole year, in a truly regenerative way.

That made me very happy to hear.

Because it’s also how I experience this stuff.

There is no need to know anything or to have any specific skills to participate in this journey.

Just a feeling that many of the ways we’ve been doing things in these times of modernity are no longer serving ourselves, each other or the living world around us.

And a willingness to show up with humility, an open heart, open mind and a curiosity of what could be.

And what we do know is the more one commits to the practices, experiments and invitations and trusting in the not knowing, the more one seems to receive.

Into the dark is to enter a container for five weeks, which invites us to gently co-create our intentionality, our orientation for the year ahead, if you like.

And to do so in community, human and more-than-human.

It’s a deep, gentle, experiential journey.

Creating space for connection, contemplation, and creative practice, exploring darker parts of ourselves and this Earth, and ways of knowing that modernity doesn’t allow us to attend to.

It unfolds over three consecutive weeks and peaks with a threshold walk, a self-paced, powerful ancient practice and ritual on land near to our homes.

With a follow-up incorporation session a week later, a time where we might plant vital seeds for our journey ahead as the light begins to return.

Into the dark, is guided by myself, Ally Kingston, and Mark Sears.

We’ve had participants from all over Spaceship Earth in previous crews.

Everyone is welcome.

There are price points that should speak to everyone, young and old, comfortable and skint.

Info and register here

We’d love to see you in this crew.

I’ll leave you with some words from some who’ve journeyed with us.

Peace and out

Dan

Register for Into the Dark

“When was the last time you visited the darkness? The Into the Dark Crew cracked me open and led me to unexpected places. I emerged feeling more connected and braver than I felt for a long time “

Siobhan

“It’s the space I’ve been looking forward to feel, reflect, connect, and hibernate. This experience for me has revealed strength in community nature and being, it’s amplified my innate craving to become a human being, not a human doing, and has led me to a collective heartbeat.”

Amelia

“Through a whole in the world that led me to places I never visited before and gifted me insights. I am still working with.About words and worlds and writing way finding and web weaving. Being a crew member last winter has had a lasting impact on me. “

Anne

Right then, this is our final episode of this year.

But first up to say a big hearty thank you to all who have listened, shared and supported the podcast this year.

To all the guests who’ve joined the rambling - respect for your time, wisdom and open-ness.

And to my podcast crew who help make this a reality - Charlie Shread, Seemah Nahome-Burgess and Fin Burgess.

And a massive shout out to those who subscribe with a monthly payment to this project.

The current listener income just about covers the audio production cost.

I hope 2025 may bring more subscribers to the project as we enter our 8th year.

So to Episode 113…

My guest, Sam Crosby, is an oral storyteller and myth-informed guide whose work braids together story, psyche, ancestry, eldership and the living Earth.

This episode was recorded around the fire at Ghost Wood Down - two men sitting in the half-light, speaking honestly about what it is to search for meaning in a world that feels increasingly senseless.

Across two hours we wandered, wondered, and returned again and again to the mythic ground beneath our feet - the place modernity keeps trying to concrete over.

But there were core themes and patterns we were carrying throughout:

1. Myth as orientation, not entertainment

Myth isn’t a story about long ago - it’s a technology for staying human in ambiguous, unraveling times.
We kept returning to myth as a compass when the rational mind fails.

2. Eldership vs.“Oldership”

A core wound: we’ve lost the adults who know how to hold the whole.
Modernity extends lifespans but not wisdom.
Sam goes deep into the distinction between age and elderhood - and the hunger for guidance that can hold complexity without collapsing into certainty.

3. The mythic roots of the AI moment

What if the crisis with AI is not technological — it is mythic.
Humanity is generating intelligence way faster than it is generating wisdom.
Our conversation suggests AI as a kind of mirror, revealing our disconnection from story, meaning and long arcs of time.

4. The crisis beneath the crisis: meaninglessness

What makes these times unbearable is not the data - it’s the absence of orientation.
Sam repeatedly speaks to the human need for story, ritual and shared containers of meaning.

5. Rites of passage & thresholds

One of our deepest shared passions:
Cultures that lack thresholds create perpetual adolescence.
This is why the absence of elders is so severe — there is no one to midwife beginnings or endings.

6. Stories as living beings

Sam treats stories as alive, with their own agency.
This shifts storytelling from performance to participation — a relational act where story chooses the teller and carrier.

7. The danger of speed & the loss of the underworld

Modernity has flattened the vertical dimensions of being -
no descent, no soul work, no underworld, no mysteries.
We point toward slowness, ambiguity, and unknowing as necessary conditions for true wisdom to spread.

This conversation was a proper meandering riff. The stuff I love to host here, it was a co-searching, if you like, not for answers, but pathways. A remembering of sorts.

In some ways it felt like doing mythic work, enacting eldership, metabolising meaninglessness into orientation.

And we were holding the AI question not as a technical fear, but as a cultural threshold.

Sam is a wonderful human being who speaks beautifully with great humility, courage, and imagination, and is doing really extraordinary work, especially the project on rekindling cultures of eldership, which we speak to at length here and I link to in the show notes below.

I loved this conversation, I hope you receive something if you listen and if you do please do share with someone else who might appreciate it

Thank you for listening and supporting this project.

Solstice Blessings to you

Dan

LINK

Sam’s work
Eldership Manifesto

Into the Dark from Becoming Crew- Register by 9th January

Now, I don’t know about you, but if you ever get to this time of year as the year end looms and you are sort of crawling towards the end of it.

If there even is an end.

I’m crawling somewhere right now towards the compost heap into the darkness.

And then suddenly before you know it - it’s a new year and the talk is of goals and resolutions and what you’re going to do and how to be productive and relevant and successful.

I’ve always struggled with that.

And now in this moment and in these times.

I’m unsure how we can possibly know any of this with the current unraveling state of everything that once seemed certain in our world.

You also may have noticed that we’re heading into darker times.

What grief worker, Francis Weller calls ‘the long dark’, as well as winter being upon us.

I wonder if you’ve ever stepped more intentionally into this darker time with curiosity ?

To consider what might emerge by exploring this slower, more liminal, mysterious time of darkness with greater attention and intention.

What might we find in the dark?

In the last few years we’ve been convening a crew through our action learning collective towards the end of January in an intentional exploration of this darker, slower time.

It’s an offering we call into the dark.

A slow, gentle, emergent, winter learning journey.

It begins on the evening of the 20th of January 2026 for five weeks, and this will be the fourth year we have hosted this experience.

It’s an invitation to actively reject the urge of modernity to accelerate into productivity and growth as the year begins, the exhausted delusion of eternal progress, guided by lists of goals plucked from our frazzled minds and the algorithmic feeds that whip us along.

Instead, rooting deeper into our bodies, into the places we call home in winter’s slower liminal space.

Sitting with the uncertainty, letting go of what is no longer serving us, fermenting the not knowing.

Learning to listen to a wider web of life, connecting with the wisdom of the more than human crew aboard Spaceship Earth, the ones who still trust in ancient rhythms.

“To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.

To know the dark, go dark.

Go without sight,

and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,

and is travelled by dark feet and dark wings.”

Wendell Berry

Into the dark is to enter a container for five weeks, which invites us to co-create our intentionality, our orientation for the year ahead, if you like.

It’s a deeper, gentle, experiential journey.

Creating space for connection, contemplation, and creative practice, exploring parts of ourselves and this Earth, and ways of knowing that modernity doesn’t allow us to attend to.

It unfolds over three consecutive weeks and peaks with a threshold walk, a self-paced, powerful ancient practice and ritual on land near you.

With a follow-up incorporation session a week later, a time where we might plant vital seeds for our journey ahead as the light begins to return.

Into the dark, is guided by myself, Ally Kingston, and Mark Sears.

Register for Into the Dark

Full details and how to register via this link

“When was the last time you visited the darkness?

The Into the Dark wintering crew cracked me open and led me to unexpected places. I emerged feeling more connected and braver than I’ve felt for a long time.”

Siobhann, Into the Dark 2025

Everyone is welcome.

We’ve had participants from all over Spaceship Earth in previous crews.

There are price points that should speak to everyone, young and old, comfortable and skint.

I hope you might join us.

Wishing you peace wherever you are

Dan

Register Into the Dark

Subscribe now

And I wanted to express them, share them, honour them in some way I guess.

So there’s three things actually.

And having kind of contemplated them this morning I realised that they’re really about love, care, magic, and mystery.

Thing 1

So the first thing is, five years ago, on this day, on the 12th of December I was in Bristol Royal Children’s Hospital with my daughter Olive who had been in hospital for about six weeks.

This was after suffering a stroke and having emergency brain surgery and then being in rehabilitation. And I remember this day, because I’ve got photos and, videos and stuff from the hospital, which I’ve been looking through which she would be mortified if I posted them.

But I remember this day because on this day she was really learning to walk again with some confidence. And she was sort of doing these crazy dance moves in the hospital corridors with me in the evening.

And then yesterday five years later she just posted some artwork and print work that she’s doing.

She’s now at art college on an art foundation and this work is taking inspiration from one of her brain scans.

I’m clearly being a really proud dad, I’m bursting with emotions to be honest, but I just thought that’s amazing. To see the journey she’s been on and how she is now kind of expressing some of that experience through art.

She is a warrior and has been on an incredibly challenging path which continues but love, care, magic and mystery are really at work here I believe.

Thing 2

So on this day, the 12th of December, three years ago my father passed away. And I was with him all the way, which is something I’ll never forget.

And I’m extremely grateful that I was able to be with him and witness that passing.

But 24 hours after he passed I was visited by a huge charm of goldfinches.

Thoroughly visited.

A charm is the word for a collective, a crew of gold finches. And, there must have been somewhere between 12 to 15 of these little extraordinary birds.

It was a surreal thing to witness. And I felt his presence so strongly.

And, I continued to be visited by those birds for nearly two years, probably more since his passing. And I know that I feel his presence every time those birds are close to me.

So much so I had a goldfinch tattooed on my arm.

I miss him but I sense him often and so I’m reminded again of the possibilities of carrying love, care, magic and mystery.

Thing 3

On this day today there is a song which has been released called Lullaby by the Together for Palestine movement.

And it’s a Christmas single, it’s a beautiful song and it’s been created by a wonderful collaboration of artists and musicians and organisations and if they can sell about a hundred thousand copies, it will go to number one in the sales charts for Christmas.

And I just think that would be a really beautiful thing.

It costs one UK pound. You can’t stream it, you have to buy it.

Buy via Bandcamp

Buy via all other platforms

I’m wondering in these times what could something like that do, that showing of love and care and the magic and mystery behind that.

So, I think what’s come up for me today when I’ve been thinking about these things is I know I’m reaching the end of this year exhausted, crawling into the slower time with gratitude and also fear about the state of these times, and I’m sure you might be too.

And I’ve been thinking about how much energy I often spend and how maybe many of us in the culture are spending trying to make sense of these times - to understand the violent, oppressive, hateful, selfish, ignorant, racist energies that are growing across our societies.

And I’m coming to believe that perhaps we’re wasting too much of our energy on trying to understand these ways, trying to understand their logics, and I’m not sure we ever will.

And so I’m wondering what would happen if (and I’m going to try and do this) we were able to focus a bit more of that energy (currently trying to understand the madness) on practicing with intention to carry and centre love, care, magic and mystery into our lives, communities and into the world around us.

What might happen ?

So I’m just sharing this as a kind of December the 12th offering.

Love, care, magic and mystery.

Blessings to you

Dan

🙏🏼💙✨

If you’re a regular listener to the Spaceship Earth Podcast you may know about a bio-regional regeneration project called We Are Avon - in the Avon River Valley in the West of England where I live.

EP 98 and EP 102 have both featured the project.

In the last few years I’ve been putting more intention, time and energy into projects rooted into the lands around me where I live.

Some of that has been a response to the mysterious unfurling of life, which meant a letting go of parts of my work that I could no longer continue to serve.

And a big part of that is also a deep knowing that the future is local.

It’s how the operating system of life works on Spaceship Earth.

I’ve come to learn that nature doesn’t commute.

Nor does it scale exponentially.

As our global civilisation with its extractive foundations rooted in a living Earth is rapidly find out.

Life is inherently local.

Local participation is fundamental to weaving a regenerative universe as Bucky Fuller once observed.

One of these local projects is We Are Avon, a grassroots movement for bio-regional regeneration rooted in the River Avon catchment.

Our intention is to regenerate the valley ‘from the river out’, weaving a culture of care that empowers communities, farmers, creatives and wider stakeholders in becoming active stewards of land and water and participating in River Guardianship at a bio-regional scale.

I’m currently one of the co-directors of this project.

Birthed over a year ago, we have been convening community gatherings every three months to connect, share and hold space for co-creation - with our current focus on recruiting and establishing River Guardian groups along the river.

For our last gathering in November I invited a panel of guests to help us zoom out and explore a wider theme of ‘listening to the river’, intentionally making space to consider how we might collectively practice de-centering the human, tempering the urge to rush in and ‘fix’ and make time for listening, observing and sensing the more than human as an integral part of regenerative and bio-regional practice.

I hosted three amazing women:

Scientist, author and Explorer Dr Rosa Vásquez Espinoza, Ph.D.

Writer, campaigner and river wife Meg Avon - yes Meg married the river.

Sound Artist and Anthropologist Louise Romain

All three with very different stories and approaches to listening, noticing and sensing the more than human.

This is a recording of that panel, where we gathered upstairs at our friends Finisterre Bath store.

I hope you enjoy this one, and receive something, and if you do please let us know and share with someone else who might appreciate it.

If you’d like to get involved with We Are Avon follow the links below

Peace and out

Dan

Subscribe now

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LINKS

We Are Avon

We Are Avon Instagram

We Are Avon WhatsApp Community

Mrs Meg Avon

Dr Rosa Vasquez Espinoza

Louise Romain

Into the Dark - Becoming Crew Winter Learning Adventure

Meander Magazine

Tjin Tjoelkler

🎧 Listening Invitation

What if music isn’t just entertainment, but a remembering?

A returning.

A way back into the felt sense of being part of nature, not apart from nature.

In this open, intuitive, playful and wide-ranging conversation, I sit down with Sophia Shnapp - an impact producer working with organisations like EarthPercent - the Music Industry’s Climate and Nature Foundation alongside the Wisdom Keepers Delegation and Futr Earth.

Sophia works at the intersection of culture, music and systemic change but that doesn’t quite capture the essence of how she moves.

She’s a pollinator.

A bridge-being.

A shape-shifter between worlds:

From the dancefloor and the woodland,
Through policy rooms and prayer circles,
Within the music industry and the more-than-human world.

Sophia is a proper Earthling, culture lover and movement maker. She’s guided by deep purpose, and the power of music to awaken hearts, spark change, and remind us we all belong to this great big living Spaceship we call Earth.

This was an insightful, honest, creative conversation that often led to us to riffing imaginatively on what could be and I really respect Sophia’s willingness to dance with complexity, nuance and contradiction.

We spoke about music as something that wakes us up again, not just emotionally but somatically, in the body:

How a bassline can regulate a room.

How a melody can remind us we still have a heart.

How a festival, a choir, or a dancefloor becomes a temporary village - teaching us something about belonging we didn’t know we were missing.

Together, we explore:

🌬️ Music as a gateway into feeling, intuition and interconnection.

🌿 Nature as origin story - how childhoods shaped by land root the work we do today.

🎧 Culture as systems change - what happens when artists, activists and elders collaborate.

🔥 Fear, endings and uncertainty - and how feeling is not weakness but medicine.

🌀 Rites of passage & the 4 Ds - dance, drums, deprivation, and the “drug” of altered states

✨ Imagination as infrastructure - how new worlds begin inside conversations like this

Sophia asked:

What if music is one of the ways the Earth is trying to get our attention back?

That question has stayed with me.

Sometimes conversations I have on this podcast are like doorways and this one felt like that - a shared stepping-through into a wider field of possibility.

It opened up space for imagining what could be and that in my opinion is vital exploration for these times.

It’s an episode that wanders beautifully - honest, mischievous, open-hearted.

I really enjoyed this conversation, I hope you do too if you give it a listen.

And if you do please let us know what it brings up for you.

And please give it a share to someone else who might appreciate it.

This is how we grow together, through reciprocity and entanglement.

Becoming Crew on Spaceship Earth

Peace and Out

Dan

LINKS

Sophia Shnapp Instagram

Earth Percent

Wisdom Keepers Delegation

Into the Dark - 5 Week Winter Learning Journey

What does it mean to be a man - alive, tender and creative - in these unravelling times?

In this meandering, vulnerable, and playful conversation, I sit down with Mark De’Lisser - poet, artist, youth mentor, and nature-based guide.

Mark is a friend and collaborator, part of the Becoming Crew action learning collective, guiding people through deep connection experiences and rites of passage on the land.

Together we explore:

🌳 Masculinity reimagined - strength and vulnerability as inseparable forces.

🌦️ Fear, loss, and love - how grief becomes medicine when we stay with it.

🪶 Creativity as survival - poetry, play, and performance as acts of healing.

🔥 Guiding young men - the courage, chaos, and beauty of holding space for the next generation.

🌍 Reconnection and Renewal - finding belonging again in community and with the living Earth.

The episode also celebrates the launch of Mark’s debut poetry collection, Ashes to the Breeze - a tender, elemental offering that speaks of renewal, grief and the power of blooming again after loss.

And Marks shares some of those poems here.

This is a conversation about men learning to feel - in fearful times, about friendship as ceremony and about listening - really listening - to the living Earth that still holds us.

I really hope you receive something through this and if you do, please consider sharing with someone else, posting on your socials, or leaving a reflection here.

It is through reciprocity that we grow together.

Peace and Out

Dan

LINKS

Buy Ashes to the Breeze via Waterstones

Buy Ashes to the Breeze via Bookshop

Mark De’Lisser site

Into the Dark - 5 week winter adventure -Becoming Crew registration

Becoming Fridays - Becoming Crew one day on the land

I’m just all feelings.

Intense feelings.

Grief, joy, beauty, uncertainty, possibility.

And in these last years - feelings of absolute horror.

I’m not sure how one is supposed to process what we are witnessing.

Those paying attention and bearing witness.

Looking beyond the mainstream and institutional narratives.

Seeing the absurdity, the oppression, the violence, the immense contradictions.

It strikes me that most folks I can see are broadly in the following camps:

1. Bearing witness to the horrors, using their privilege (while it lasts) to speak up, act and weave care into the culture

2. In total denial and not looking at the uncomfortable (the too depressing logic)

3. Head down and obedient, believing things won’t effect them (the separation logic)

4. Going along with the racist, authoritarian, extreme capitalist logic, in the belief that they are entitled, will benefit/ be ‘safe’.

Last month the Planetary Boundaries Science Lab at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) revealed that 7 of the 9 critical Earth System boundaries have now been breached, one more than last year.

That’s like the planetary equivalent of being told by the best doctors in Harley Street that about 80% of your vital organs are completely maxed out.

I don’t think I saw this reported anywhere in mainstream media.

It’s mind-blowing to me, the arrogance of our modern species, that this unprecedented systemic damage to the Earth isn’t deemed important enough to communicate.

Everything in our lives is Earth.

Everything.

In this age of consequence, perhaps we’re witnessing the initiation of the human species.

A species wide rite of passage.

That’s never going to be a comfortable journey.

So how to sit with the discomfort?

That’s the invitation and practice of these times, I’m coming to believe.

To learn how to ‘stay with the trouble’

To be with the discomfort.

The mess of it all.

And not to turn away.

To resist the desire to numb and distract.

To resist blame, anger and conflict.

To resist othering some for the fears we all carry.

To learn to dance with complexity, contradiction, grief, beauty, uncertainty, horror and surprise without abandoning the dance-floor

Dancing feels like an interesting invitation to me.

It invites us into the body and out of our stuck heads.

It invites us into presence and relationship with life in the moment,

To be present with our bodies, with each other, with other life forms

It’s movement, spontaneity, flow, expression, vibe, response,

Response-ability.

Dancing is aliveness.

And we need alive-ness.

To break the numbness.

So on that, I offer a new Earth Sessions mix: Autumnism

For this season of letting go.

A collection of tunes, that have been moving me of late and that capture for me the feels of this season and these times - the endings, the abundance, the darkness, the joy, the mystery.

I hope they move you in some way.

Full tracklisting here

And if you struggle with dancing, it could well be our deep patriarchal programming - you know the voice - ‘you can’t dance’

I offer some words a wise man once said about letting yourself go on the dancefloor…

‘No one’s looking at you and no one gives a fuck’

So stay awake to what is happening, what is ending, what needs to end and tend to what needs to begin.

Look around you, find the thing that speaks to you, find the others and get stuck in.

Love and care at the centre.

And try to stay curious with the trouble, the discomfort.

Do not abandon the dance-floor

REPEAT: Do not leave the dance-floor of life.

As Nena and WestBam said…

‘We are the future, that’s the past
We are the moment built to last
We are the up, that’s the down
We wear the newschool engine crown’

Peace and out

Dan

🎧 Listening Invitation

What does it mean to practice democracy not just with people, but with rivers, forests, mountains, and the more-than-human world?

In this episode, I’m in conversation with Shrishtee Bajpai—researcher, activist, and writer working on Earthy Governance, interspecies justice, and radical alternatives to dominant systems.

Shrishtee’s work emerges from her deep relationship with the river she grew up alongside in North India—one of the most polluted rivers in the world. That grief and love have shaped her life’s path: exploring how communities can co-create governance with rivers, mountains, and forests, and what it means to truly listen to the more-than-human world.

We speak about:

• 🌊 Collapse and continuity: why collapse is not just arriving but has long been lived in the Global South.
  

• 🐝 Earthy governance: how communities take decisions in dialogue with forests, deities, bees, and rivers.
  

• 🌳 Radical democracy: power rooted in place, not just parliaments.
  

• 💔 Absurdities of modernity: the schizophrenia of cultures that worship rivers as goddesses while polluting them.

• 👂 The invitation: how we might awaken our collective capacity to listen to the more-than-human world.

  Subscribe now

  
  

Shrishtee reminds us: democracy is not only about human voices—it’s about rivers, mountains, winds, and creatures who have always spoken, if only we slow down to hear.

Do let us know how this lands for you

Available on all podcast platforms.

We had a few audio glitches on this recording, some internet troubles but have done what we can to clean up.

Share

LINKS

🌐 Learn more about her work:

Shrishtee Bajpai Instagram

Kalpavriksh

Global Tapestry of Alternatives