For The Wild - April 13, 2020


DeeplyRooted： Declaring Interdependence with MILLA PRINCE ⧸170

Homebound： Decentralizing the Power of Healing with Dr. RUPA MARYA ⧸169 LINDA BLACK ELK on What Endures After Pandemic ⧸171

Episode Stats


Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

148.55

Word count

1,695

Sentence count

93

Harmful content

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
00:00:00.000 For the Wild podcast is brought to you in part by the Calliopeia Foundation and listeners like you.
00:00:05.920 Calliopeia supports projects interweaving spirituality, culture, and ecology.
00:00:11.120 We are grateful for their support and the support of grassroots contributions from listeners.
00:00:15.980 To learn more about the Calliopeia Foundation, visit calliopeia.org.
00:00:20.680 To make a donation to For the Wild, visit forthewild.world slash donate, or support us through Patreon.
00:00:27.160 Welcome to For the Wild. I'm Ayanna Young.
00:00:45.040 You're listening to Deeply Rooted, grounding practices to weather the winds of uncertainty,
00:00:50.540 A series devoted to inviting stillness, balance, and abundance into our lives during these troubled times.
00:00:58.840 We invite you to slow down, breathe, and connect deeply with your inner self, with community, and with Earth.
00:01:06.940 We've asked friends who are wise stewards of Earth, spirit, community, and bodily wisdom
00:01:12.140 to share grounding practices and coping tools to empower you and to nourish your inner sanctuary.
00:01:18.840 Every Monday morning, you will experience guided meditations, poetry and prose readings,
00:01:25.220 questions for a deep inquiry, story time, music performances, and more.
00:01:30.980 Today, my dear comrade, Mila Prince, will transport us back into the wild web of life,
00:01:37.840 bursting forth all around us in this time of spring awakening.
00:01:41.940 Mila is a writer, folk herbalist, and noita from the boreal forests of eastern Finland.
00:01:48.200 near the Arctic Circle and Russian border.
00:01:51.460 She is currently living in Coast Salish Territory,
00:01:54.560 where she co-runs the North Sea Apothecary.
00:01:57.180 Your body is part of the body of nature.
00:02:20.020 Your body is adaptable, but also forever tied to the primordial rhythms of shifting tides,
00:02:24.980 moonlight, pollen taking wing from a catkin, a green shoot knowing when to begin unfurling
00:02:30.780 in the dark of the soil. Your body is at least one part a wave returning to the shore, a
00:02:36.560 crawdad diving down to the river bottom, a hollow bone, and the iridescent gleam on an
00:02:41.920 earthworm's skin, at least one part from a thousand. It is high time to remember that.
00:02:48.420 It is past time to remember that. No matter where you live, there are thousands of small
00:02:53.400 signpost directing your way back to the soil of your body, the water of your body, the fire of
00:02:59.720 your body, the air of your body. If you follow the deltas of city streets and highways, they
00:03:05.580 inevitably lead to deer trails and underground rivers. Everywhere you look, there is hidden life
00:03:11.080 within and without. Look for, each day, the furred backs of pussy willows in city parks next to the
00:03:18.040 obscene ripeness of magnolias, the weeds inside what cracks greening, birds finding the strange
00:03:24.400 geography of canyons of buildings passable places to begin raising their young, your houseplants
00:03:30.140 straining to get out of their pots, demanding water and nutrients in the most neglected corners
00:03:35.260 of apartments, the garlic and potatoes in the cupboard growing new eyes and shoots, eating
00:03:40.680 themselves inside out, instead of letting you eat them, in a final act of holy cannibalism.
00:03:47.460 They are destroying their present form in order to be born anew.
00:03:51.400 You too are a seed of something new.
00:03:54.080 We humans think of creating new life only as the act of linear ancestry.
00:03:58.900 My life's bringing into the life of my children.
00:04:01.880 But in the great chain of being, new life is born from our bodies every day.
00:04:06.860 We scatter the seeds of plants.
00:04:08.760 We breathe out tree food.
00:04:11.160 We breathe in the atmosphere made by them for us, but not only us.
00:04:15.720 We build shelters for the babies of small opportunistic mammals.
00:04:20.020 We harbor birds under our eaves and spiders raise their young on strings in our rafters.
00:04:26.240 You too are the seed of something old.
00:04:28.840 Once upon a time you were many other beings.
00:04:31.760 You didn't just get here.
00:04:33.140 You have been here a long time.
00:04:34.840 You have been lightning.
00:04:36.140 You have been a trilobite.
00:04:37.340 You have been a tooth. 0.90
00:04:38.840 No, really.
00:04:39.920 You can feel it in your bones.
00:04:42.280 Is it an ache?
00:04:43.480 Is it a tingle?
00:04:44.300 is it a memory of something half forgotten is it a dream you tell me i will tell you this
00:04:51.320 when we die our bodies return to the biomass of the world if we choose our rights wisely we can
00:04:57.860 become a tree an ant a potato bug and then in a trick of non-linear ancestry again a bird a rat
00:05:03.900 a deer another human brush your hair and release the lost parts of yourself into the wind they
00:05:10.780 will become nests for birds outside the office window on the fifth floor. Feed the crumbs of
00:05:17.120 your meals to the soil, to the hungry microorganisms. Feed a part of your food, your paycheck, your
00:05:22.900 sweaters, your secret stash of the unnecessary to sustain the life of someone else besides yourself.
00:05:29.320 Offer up what you can when you can and do not be stingy. Offer up your time. Some of us suddenly
00:05:35.700 find ourselves possessing more of it. It is a miracle to not have enough time, or too much of
00:05:41.520 it. How could we quantify such a thing? Time is not money, time is not precious, it is what we
00:05:46.840 make of it. It is time, yes, and high time to do all these things, but also time is not linear,
00:05:52.980 time is not real. It is not anything but seasons and tides, rites of spring, summer, fall and
00:05:58.380 winter, and hundreds of others we have chosen to forget, ignore, or carry on in secret. Time is
00:06:05.580 moons. Re-learn their names. Look up and find each of their faces. They are the faces of your
00:06:13.080 grandmothers, mothers, mothers, mothers. Each of your ancestors is bathed by their cool waters.
00:06:19.840 Has asked them significant questions about blood and strawberries and first frosts.
00:06:24.900 Has, by their pale light, tried to discern the tracks of a moose on the spring snows.
00:06:29.720 the flicker of a fish returning from the summer lands
00:06:34.380 and watched the shadow of a covey of geese's travel over that light
00:06:38.760 in the beginning there were only three lights at night
00:06:43.140 moonlight, starlight, firelight
00:06:46.420 they are still here, are you, are we?
00:06:51.340 if you catch your breath now
00:06:53.500 and draw it in deep and hold it and let it all the way out again
00:06:57.760 you will maybe hear in your ears the rush of your own blood
00:07:01.460 it will sound like the ocean
00:07:03.220 it will sound like the wind in the pine trees of a primeval forest
00:07:06.540 you have never visited
00:07:07.500 it is made of the minerals of this earth
00:07:10.580 out of the iron oxide of the first artists
00:07:12.920 whose handprints are your handprints
00:07:15.040 flickering on the cave wall
00:07:17.020 remember that when your breath catches in your throat
00:07:20.200 if you press your ear against the seashell of your own self
00:07:24.440 you may hear the voice of every being you are made of
00:07:27.660 breathing with you what do they whisper to you once you were an amphibian once you were an egg
00:07:36.100 inside your parents body inside your grandparents body once you were weightless like a bird
00:07:42.140 do you still dream of flying don't stop there are many things to do each day just to feed and house
00:07:49.800 this body you may not have a choice in them you may not be able to gather or hunt or grow or
00:07:56.380 harvest, your warmth, your food and your home. You may not have freedom. You may not feel a
00:08:02.440 belonging or a purpose. You may feel alone at times. You may feel disconnected. Remember that
00:08:09.520 you are not. You are part of not the internet of things but the mycelium of the world, the web of
00:08:16.380 life. Whether life is incredibly rare in the universe or as common as a passing meteor trickling
00:08:23.560 dust over your head as shooting stars, you are part of it. You are part of them, part of us.
00:08:31.800 Your body is the body of nature, a piece of basalt, a root, a flicker, a salmon with a magnetic compass
00:08:39.120 in your bones, the north star of your own being, a lodestone of a map yours to navigate together
00:08:46.520 with all of your relatives.
00:08:49.480 Declare interdependence.
00:08:52.020 Declare a state of emergence.
00:08:54.440 Declare your love.
00:09:10.120 My name is Mila Prince,
00:09:12.260 or Mila-Veera Tuulia Kotimaa.
00:09:14.000 My mother's name is Ulla Kotima and my father's name is Mohamed Salaiman.
00:09:19.000 I was born and raised in the sub-Arctic taiga and by the sub-Arctic taiga in Finland.
00:09:24.000 I'm Finnish and Palestinian.
00:09:26.000 I'm an immigrant to these United States.
00:09:29.000 I live on unceded Coast Salish territory off the coast of Washington
00:09:33.000 on a small island where I grow food and tend land and run a small herbal apothecary.
00:09:39.000 apothecary. I'm a folk herbalist, a storyteller, a practitioner of old ways. English is not my
00:09:45.420 first language and in English I use she her pronouns but in Finnish we don't have gendered
00:09:51.060 pronouns. I'm a big fan of for the wild and when Ayanna asked me to do a root meditation for them
00:09:56.380 I was honored but I thought to myself I am not really a meditation kind of person I'm more a
00:10:01.260 manifesto kind of person. So what I read to you earlier is called declare interdependence.
00:10:07.940 I hope that you are well and take good care
00:10:10.900 You've been listening to Deeply Rooted
00:10:15.200 grounding practices to weather the winds of uncertainty
00:10:18.360 I hope Mila's manifesto reignites a fire in your bones
00:10:22.920 and may you feel inspired to shed old parts of yourself
00:10:26.540 and remember that no matter what crisis rattles your world
00:10:30.160 you're home when you're with Earth
00:10:32.500 You can follow Mila Prince on Instagram
00:10:35.620 at thewomanwhomarriedabear
00:10:37.600 and sign up for her newsletter by visiting thewomanwhomarriedabear.com.
00:10:43.420 Stay connected with our community on social media
00:10:46.440 and sign up for our newsletter by visiting forthewild.world slash subscribe.
00:10:52.660 If you've enjoyed today's offering, please rate us on iTunes
00:10:56.000 and consider supporting us on Patreon.
00:10:59.100 Our theme music is the song Home by Pura Faye
00:11:02.720 and you also heard music from the Baltic Moonshine Band.
00:11:06.520 Declare Interdependence was written by Mila Prince
00:11:10.100 I'd like to thank our wonderful podcast production team
00:11:14.420 Aidan McRae, Andrew Storrs, Carter Lou McElroy
00:11:18.460 Erica Ekrem, Aaron Wise, Francesca Glassbell
00:11:22.300 Hannah Wilton and Melanie Younger