For The Wild - TREBBE JOHNSON on Bearing Witness to Wounded Places ⧸27

00:00:00.000 It's high on a mountain, the warm winds are blowing, and where the winds are blowing to,

00:00:26.400 There ain't no way of knowing

00:00:29.400 The mountain grass is short

00:00:32.680 It's dry and close to burning

00:00:35.440 Crying out for water

00:00:38.680 As the season's turning

00:00:41.680 Sweet smell the pine

00:00:45.240 Tall western cedar

00:00:48.360 Drifting on the wind

00:00:51.840 Through the mountains like a river

00:00:54.420 Hello, this is Ayanna Young, and I welcome you to Unlearn and Rewild,

00:01:15.020 where we explore radical ideas relating to earth renewal.

00:01:19.240 There are virtually no places left that have not been logged, mined, tilled, paved, overfished,

00:01:28.600 overhunted, irradiated, drilled, bombed, or built to the sky. As public discourse swirls around how

00:01:37.200 to meet our material needs as we approach the limits of growth, there's another conversation

00:01:42.160 going on about how to give back and make offerings of beauty amid the plunder. As Albert Einstein

00:01:48.900 said, we can't solve our problems with the same thinking that created them. Hyper-rational

00:01:54.860 linear thinking alone cannot impassion us to defend the sacred places that are buried

00:02:00.440 beneath the sprawl of infrastructure. Our guest today, Trebi Johnson, helps people break

00:02:07.440 through the walls that isolate them from the pain and healing of the earth. She has been

00:02:12.880 leading vision quests, workshops, and ceremonies worldwide since 1994. She is the founder of

00:02:20.060 Radical Joy for Hard Times, a non-profit organization devoted to finding and making

00:02:25.660 beauty in wounded places, and the author of The World is Awaiting Lover. A passionate explorer

00:02:32.940 of outer as well as inner frontiers, Treby has camped alone in the Arctic, traveled in the Sahara

00:02:39.440 Desert, and is an award-winning multimedia producer. Hello, Trevi. Great to have you with us.

00:02:46.340 Thank you so much.

00:02:52.680 Cultures throughout history have built pyramids and temples calibrated to celestial bodies,

00:02:59.480 or earthworks like the Nazca Lines in Peru. And it seems these constructions are kinds of

00:03:07.940 offerings for the spirit world, or a way to connect with spirit. And so much art and beauty

00:03:15.320 has been, we could say, created for the divine, or created for some spiritual purpose. But in the

00:03:23.600 animist worldview, everything is sacred, including what is destroyed, or transformed in the process

00:03:31.540 of creation. You know, the stone that becomes the pipe retains the stone spirit, and the sacred

00:03:38.640 land that is cleared for the temple becomes a sacred building. And along with the land are all

00:03:46.640 the creatures on that land and their homes, which are natural temples, which are also being

00:03:52.820 sacrificed. But at some point, cities grew up around the temples, and lands around the cities

00:04:01.700 are cleared for agriculture. And eventually, human constructions are everywhere, fragmenting the

00:04:08.200 globe with roads and settlements, and no one remembers the original attitude of honoring the

00:04:15.140 earth. The civilization that has arisen has become numb to the sacredness. And because we no longer

00:04:24.900 feel a part of the mosaic of life, we guide our society based only on satisfying human needs.

00:04:33.720 So I'm wondering if you could speak about the schism, this disconnection between humanity

00:04:40.300 in the rest of nature, and how your work seeks to address it.

00:04:45.260 Well, while you were speaking that marvelous and thoughtful reflection, I was thinking

00:04:54.720 about the city of Melbourne, Australia, where I spent a little over a week in 2009 when

00:05:01.900 I was part of the Parliament of the World's Religions.

00:05:05.180 The hosts of that gathering were Wurundjeri people, the aboriginal people from that land.

00:05:12.000 And to them, the city of Melbourne and all of the streets and the buildings and the traffic lights and the cars

00:05:19.160 are just sort of this thick, heavy, dense blanket that's covering up their original sacred lands.

00:05:27.120 I was very struck by that image.

00:05:29.580 And I think for me, the life of the earth is always visible.

00:05:35.600 The life and the vitality and the sacredness of the earth is always perceivable.

00:05:42.120 Maybe I won't say visible.

00:05:43.660 It's always perceivable no matter what else is going on.

00:05:47.380 So what I try and do and what Radical Joy for Hard Times, my organization tries to do,

00:05:53.140 It is to find that life and beauty and spirit and vitality that is still struggling to be known beneath all of that stuff that covers it up.

00:06:06.620 I was thinking when this country was colonized in the 1700s, 1800s, during the westward expansion, that clearing forest was the first thing that people did.

00:06:18.100 The forest represented the unknown danger, the ugly darkness, the realm of predators and witches, whereas open space was bright and sunny and provided pasture for animals.

00:06:28.300 and more closely resembled the savannas humanity evolved in with long views since vision and not

00:06:35.360 smell is our most primary sense to think of a pristine forest as ugly is difficult to imagine

00:06:42.440 so what do you think has changed for us to now look at a clear cut and see a terrible crime

00:06:48.360 and an emptiness where there was once a perfect ensemble of life is there a gradual consciousness

00:06:54.600 shift going on where we can see things differently than a few hundred years ago?

00:06:59.400 Well, first of all, I don't think that everybody necessarily perceives the clear cut as being

00:07:05.940 ugly these days. I think a few people do, probably not enough people. And I also think that in a

00:07:14.120 sense, I can understand what the colonists were going through. They came from a place that was

00:07:19.980 where they didn't feel at home.

00:07:22.560 They came to a completely new land.

00:07:24.460 They had no idea what to expect.

00:07:26.200 It was extremely different.

00:07:27.580 It was extremely difficult.

00:07:29.300 And they wanted to try and make a living there

00:07:31.500 in the best way they knew possible.

00:07:33.140 And to them, the forest was scary

00:07:34.740 because it was so, you know, it was so unusual.

00:07:37.420 So in a way, I even get that,

00:07:39.820 which is not to say that I think

00:07:43.280 that all of the destruction of forests

00:07:46.180 was a good thing because I certainly don't.

00:07:48.840 but perhaps we value what we're losing and certainly now as people become increasingly

00:07:58.500 thank goodness aware of climate change and not only climate change but which is very hard to see

00:08:05.340 and perceive and get a handle on for all of us even those who are firmly convinced that it's

00:08:11.600 arriving already, but other forms of assault to the natural world. We become aware that we're

00:08:19.660 losing what's precious to us, so that probably makes us more appreciative of it because we

00:08:28.240 recognize that it's disappearing, and we don't want it to disappear because we have a deep

00:08:32.940 emotional and spiritual connection with it. Maybe you could walk us through what happens

00:08:38.460 when you visit a damaged landscape,

00:08:40.600 like the clear-cut in BC I read about you visiting.

00:08:43.820 What do you do physically?

00:08:45.980 What goes through your mind?

00:08:47.880 And how do you assist others in their experience?

00:08:52.140 Well, when I went to the clear-cut,

00:08:54.440 which I wrote about in Orion magazine a couple of years ago,

00:08:57.540 it was called Gaze Even Here.

00:08:59.280 That was when I was still experimenting

00:09:01.080 with how to go and be on what I call wounded lands.

00:09:05.120 So now I have this organization, Radical Joy for Hard Times, and we have a simple practice

00:09:10.480 called the Earth Exchange, which is four very simple suggested steps.

00:09:17.240 They're not even regulations about how people can be in relationship to wounded places.

00:09:22.200 But what both of those experiences have in common is that the first thing to do is just

00:09:28.540 be there.

00:09:29.640 That's difficult for a lot of reasons.

00:09:31.560 First of all, the tendency of most of us when we think about going to a place that's damaged is, no, I don't want to do that.

00:09:40.080 It's going to be depressing.

00:09:41.480 It's going to be ugly.

00:09:42.960 I don't know how to behave.

00:09:45.040 Perhaps I'm supposed to join an organization and fix it or clean it up, and I don't necessarily know how to do that or want to do it or I don't have time.

00:09:52.420 And then the other thing is, what do I do once I get there?

00:09:56.240 How can I respond to this place?

00:09:58.220 I don't want to feel those bad feelings.

00:10:00.800 So our suggestion is, and what we did when we went to the clear cut, is first of all, we just got out of the car and sat there and took it in and said, what is here?

00:10:11.320 When we do go to these places, especially people who are very conscientious environmentalists or restorationists or conservationists, the tendency is, okay, I have to do something.

00:10:21.520 I have to fix it.

00:10:22.220 I have to plant trees.

00:10:23.540 I have to contact somebody.

00:10:25.400 I have to write my legislator.

00:10:26.960 but the very first thing to do is go and say what's here how am i affected by this

00:10:33.260 what do i notice and so when we were in the clear cut that there were just four of us that went up

00:10:40.900 together and i guess it was about 10 years ago and every day we would go out alone and we would

00:10:47.400 spend the day from like nine in the morning to four three or four in the afternoon sitting or

00:10:52.580 walking alone in the clear cut and just being there and watching it and reflecting on it and

00:10:57.660 seeing what came up for us and seeing what we noticed. So being present and taking it in and

00:11:03.980 acknowledging both what's around us and our own responses to it without having to feel that we

00:11:10.900 have to do anything. That's the key point. When I set out with this idea that we were going to go

00:11:16.540 spend a week in a clear cut I thought that I would just feel grief and despair the entire time

00:11:23.100 and that it turned out would sort of come in and out but I also got enthralled with a lot of things

00:11:30.960 like I remember when I was first there on the first day and I was sitting on this enormous

00:11:36.560 tree stump the trees there because where you camp you camp in an old growth forest it's very

00:11:42.740 primitive, but it's gorgeous. The trees are 800 or 900 years old. So this clear cut, which was

00:11:48.520 quarter mile up the hill and down the road, I was sitting on a huge stump and I realized it was so

00:11:55.480 big that I could lie down on it and almost my whole body could stretch out in this stump. And

00:12:01.580 there was something marvelous about that. And then I immediately thought, you know, this is 900 year

00:12:06.980 old tree that's been cut down. How can I possibly find anything to be excited about in this

00:12:11.360 experience. But I was, you know, there was something amazing about being able to lie down

00:12:17.240 on a stump. And then I would think about the people who had cut the forest, and I would wonder if they

00:12:24.260 felt any grief or any reluctance to take down these huge, magnificent, venerable trees. And

00:12:31.700 then there was a day when I was sitting there and maybe 15 feet in front of me came a mother bear

00:12:39.160 and two little cubs just sort of dancing over all this debris from the tree limbs.

00:12:44.020 And there was one member of our group who saw the clear-cut forest as like a metaphor,

00:12:51.420 a living symbol of what she began to call her devastated youth.

00:12:58.140 And so she was making altars on all the trees.

00:13:00.860 One man just practiced patience sitting on one stump.

00:13:04.900 And as he did that, he realized he was in a marriage back in the U.S. that was having a lot of difficulties.

00:13:12.040 He realized that his tendency was always to sort of run away from the confrontations with his wife and that he needed to be as willing to sit with what was uncomfortable in his marriage as he was becoming sitting with the discomfort of being in a clear-cut forest in British Columbia.

00:13:31.100 So it was really vast and complex what unfolded over those days.

00:13:36.200 It was a place where everything was legal.

00:13:40.100 Outside my window is a tree.

00:13:48.920 Outside my window is a tree.

00:13:55.740 They're only for me.

00:14:01.100 And it stands in the gray of the city, no time for pity, for the tree you'll need.

00:14:13.800 There is a world of pain, in the falling rain, without me, is there a reason?

00:14:31.100 For today

00:14:33.400 Is there a reason

00:14:39.600 For today

00:14:42.700 Do you remember

00:14:46.300 I can hear the cries of the city

00:14:53.100 No time for pity

00:14:55.300 For a growing tree

00:15:01.100 There is a world of pain

00:15:08.020 In the falling pain

00:15:12.720 Never leave me

00:15:31.100 you know i was imagining that when you go to these damaged landscapes and even when i visited

00:15:39.020 them myself a lot of other personal wounds come up and i'm interested in how they play into each

00:15:46.860 other you know they're a mirror for each other and i'm just wondering if you see the healing

00:15:52.140 of our wounds tied to the healing of earth wounds how you see that interface it's a great question

00:15:59.860 Well, before I started doing this work with Wounded Places, I guided vision quests for many years and still do occasionally.

00:16:07.760 And it was always interesting to me that every now and then people would find and be captivated by places that were somehow like not beautiful and wild,

00:16:19.460 like a grove of dying aspens or an old mine shaft in Colorado or dead trees that have been struck by lightning.

00:16:28.540 Very often we're just like beings calling to people to spend time with them.

00:16:35.260 And there's something about seeing that nature can be wounded and struggle to survive and still be long in its landscape.

00:16:48.800 You know, a dead tree is not kicked out of its landscape.

00:16:54.160 Birds will still sit in it.

00:16:55.580 And in fact, there's an amazing story. I did a program with three or four other people called Facing the Mystery, and it was for people with life-altering illnesses. And several of the people didn't live very long after that program. Some of them were in wheelchairs.

00:17:12.520 and there was one woman we did it in Colorado and then we didn't we weren't in the wilderness we

00:17:17.880 would just go to a park every day and those who could would go off on their own and those

00:17:22.400 who were in wheelchairs would be taken to a spot where they wanted to be and then we'd come back 0.86

00:17:27.220 and get them and this one woman was looking at two trees side by side and one of them they're

00:17:34.660 both ponderosa pines I think one of them was beautiful and green and lush and healthy and 0.99

00:17:40.940 the other one was dead no needles on it sort of knobby fungus things all over the tree and she

00:17:48.160 looked at the dead tree and she said that's me i'm i'm dead i don't belong anymore and then she

00:17:54.820 noticed a magpie flying around in the sky overhead and she imagined that it was looking for a place

00:18:02.060 to land and she just said to herself well it's going to land on the healthy tree because

00:18:06.440 who wouldn't who wouldn't choose that tree but instead the magpie landed in the dead tree

00:18:11.920 and it was like this transcendent moment for her she suddenly felt as if she had received

00:18:19.960 a blessing a message that no matter how wounded you feel that you are you can be sought out by

00:18:26.420 something that's beautiful and winged and so for her it was a like that dead tree in comparison

00:18:34.680 of the healthy tree was confirmation of her own lack but then when the bird landed in it it was

00:18:41.580 confirmation of how she is part of something higher and beautiful and winged so the the way

00:18:49.840 a person can respond to a wounded place is so varied i mean you could you might see it as a

00:18:56.120 reflection of yourself you might see like this woman did when we were in the clear cut that by

00:19:01.220 making altars for places on the stumps, making altars for people or groups of people, you give

00:19:08.640 a healing to yourself as you give a healing to the land. It's infinite messages. So what's important

00:19:15.080 about all of these is the willingness of the people involved to recognize that they are having

00:19:22.960 a response to this place. It's not just like sitting and looking. It's being constantly aware

00:19:29.200 that we have a relationship, a vibrant, flexible, malleable relationship with what calls to us

00:19:36.120 and being willing to learn from that. Two things came up for me. One was absolutely, yes, we have

00:19:43.880 to start with that emotional connection and attachment to wounded places, healthy places,

00:19:49.660 you know, just the land in general. And until we find that emotional belonging with the earth,

00:19:54.880 we can't really go any further but you know then the flip side of that is that in modern western

00:20:02.520 culture especially here in the u.s there's a major fixation on self my wounds my life my this my that

00:20:11.880 and i'm wondering do you think it can be a hindrance to allow personal wounds to take over

00:20:19.240 the experience. You know, if you're visiting a sick friend, you want to sit with their illness

00:20:25.400 and not dwell on your problems. So I'm wondering, do you think we have to let go of our own self

00:20:32.440 and just be there for the wounded places? I think you're really right on the right track,

00:20:37.760 and I really agree with you. And in fact, one of the things that I have sometimes thought about,

00:20:44.300 I'm not a psychologist, but I've been very interested in eco-psychology, which is the idea that people cannot be truly healthy when they're living in an unhealthy environment.

00:20:56.460 But, you know, and it's much more complex than that.

00:20:59.440 But it's and there's some wonderful work that's being done with it.

00:21:02.920 However, like you, I have wondered, is it going to be all about healing the human?

00:21:07.980 If we have a person going to therapy and saying, I'm upset because all of the beautiful orchards in California in the Napa Valley are being changed into vineyards, and then it becomes only about me and not about what I can do to give honor and respect to the land, then there's something wrong.

00:21:29.340 You know, then it's like I'm only going to use nature as a mirror and I'm not going to I'm not going to say, OK, I'm going to heal myself and then I'm going to go off and do something else again.

00:21:40.120 It's like we have to broaden our perspective and recognize that we have a reciprocal relationship.

00:21:47.420 And I think that's where eco-psychology needs to focus on, because I think if people are brought into awareness that seeing their wounds in nature and then healing their own wounds is one thing, and it's important, and it could be the first step, but I don't think you go through all those steps and then you're done.

00:22:07.040 but that there has to be some sort of reciprocity, some sort of going to the natural world and saying,

00:22:13.760 I'm weeping for you. I'm weeping because the Animus River is running orange. I'm weeping

00:22:19.120 because the skies of California are filled with smoke and the land is drying up. And it's not

00:22:25.500 about me. It's not only about me. And I know you know Joanna Macy and her work. And I remember

00:22:31.900 when I was first reading Joanna Macy like 20 years ago, I read that she had gone to her

00:22:38.300 therapist and said, I worry about the poverty and I worry about nuclear war and I worry about

00:22:45.180 the desecration of the land. And her therapist said, well, it's really about your family. And

00:22:50.320 once you get that resolved, you won't have these concerns anymore. And she insisted, no, that's not

00:22:55.380 right he's worried about larger things so i think there is a line and i also like i mean i want to

00:23:02.440 sort of reiterate what i touched on a few seconds ago that i don't think it's like okay i have to

00:23:07.980 fix myself first and then i'll turn to the land you know that i don't think that's right i think

00:23:12.800 they can be done in you know step by step like you don't only take a hundred left steps with

00:23:19.360 your left foot and then you catch up with your right foot so left right left right left right

00:23:23.700 We take care of ourselves, we take care of the land.

00:23:26.520 We take care of ourselves, we take care of the land.

00:23:29.240 Yeah, and speaking from my own personal experience,

00:23:33.900 I realized that the more I focused on the land rather than myself,

00:23:39.020 my own healing just followed without trying or even being aware of it in the moment.

00:23:44.380 You know, there is a power in that connection and relationship.

00:23:47.820 and i feel that all the psychological illness and dissatisfaction of life you know of this

00:23:55.180 blasé culture can be traced to having been uprooted from our land base our umbilical

00:24:02.120 core to the earth cut so to speak even if we've never been out to a wild place because we are a

00:24:08.960 part of this biosphere we feel the absence of that connection which is a deep existential pain that

00:24:16.140 we try to fill with consumption or artificial means so to go to these damaged lands and observe

00:24:24.240 our reaction is so important to not just go vacationing to the national park where nature

00:24:30.780 is intact but to bear witness to what we are actually doing to the earth and move away from

00:24:37.200 the culture of make-believe and artifice yeah and it's like giving back it's what i wrote about in

00:24:44.300 the article that's in the current Orion. It's a way of giving back because as you said in the

00:24:50.320 beginning when we first started talking that the earth is alive in all its forms and all its

00:24:57.180 manifestations and that includes the places that aren't doing so well anymore or that don't look

00:25:04.360 the way we wish they would or that we remember them. So when we can go and confront those places

00:25:12.280 and see their aliveness and you know is the does the earth suffer i i have no idea i mean sometimes

00:25:20.500 i feel like the earth is suffering but that also could be somebody could say that's projection so

00:25:25.440 i don't know there's no doubt that a river that's running orange like the animus river in colorado

00:25:33.340 currently is because of the mine spill that is not a healthy river that is not a river that is

00:25:38.400 able to live the way it's supposed to live and that it's meant to live and it's right for all

00:25:42.640 the creatures who depend upon it so when I can go to that river and grieve for what's happened to it

00:25:49.820 and give it some kind of a gift and maybe that gift is a song or maybe it's a ceremony or maybe

00:25:56.840 it's my tears or maybe I was talking to some people who live in Durango and we were talking

00:26:02.440 about maybe like putting flowers into the animus river as a way of saying i acknowledge you you're

00:26:08.580 important to me uh you are a living being you are damaged right now and i care about you anyway and

00:26:16.880 i thank you for bearing this burden and and i wish for your health the animus river spill is iconic

00:26:25.080 because it is so undeniable whereas a lot of pollution is invisible except to a lab technician

00:26:32.140 the animus is bright orange of course the fish kills and the algal bloom are evidence of sickness

00:26:39.280 but public attention is elsewhere and whereas most rivers are dying a quiet death by mercury

00:26:46.940 or heavy metals or any of the countless industrial affluence here we have a spectacular disaster

00:26:55.100 that will hopefully be a jarring wake-up call for river protection that image reminds me of

00:27:02.080 your visual art installations in damaged areas which similarly draw attention to the earth's

00:27:07.080 suffering, to the feeling of pain, which is an organism's signal to stop doing what it is that's

00:27:13.620 hurting it. You know, you could argue a river has no pain receptors, but I would say all sentient

00:27:20.940 life that lives in and on that river do feel in the literal sense, and the whole, the ensemble

00:27:28.760 feels as well. But we must first build a relationship with it to know its state of

00:27:35.000 well-being. It can't be quantified. Yeah, we build or rebuild. My personal feelings are in

00:27:42.140 alignment with what you're describing. I see everything as alive. I always have it since I

00:27:47.840 was a little kid. And yet, what we try to do with Radical Joy for Hard Times is to make our

00:27:55.620 practices, our suggested practices, and our way of talking about them so simple that even if people

00:28:02.140 don't believe that, they can go and get something out of these practices. So ideally, we say,

00:28:09.480 if you're doing an earth exchange, which is what we call our events, if you're doing an earth

00:28:15.620 exchange in the clear-cut forest, invite the people who cut down the trees. And they probably

00:28:20.320 won't come you know they hardly ever do but it should be for people who care about the place so

00:28:25.880 if you're doing a ceremony for for california for the water invite the farmers as well as the

00:28:33.780 as the people who rely on the water for their for their drinking water invite you know

00:28:38.580 everybody cares about this place could be included and you don't have to believe that

00:28:43.980 the earth is sacred but you just have to acknowledge and if you don't when you arrive

00:28:48.520 there, you might by the time it's finished, that the places that we live have a deep emotional and

00:28:56.800 spiritual meaning for us. And you don't have to be what some people would consider a tree hugger

00:29:03.460 or something like that, or airy fairy or some of these other names that are applied to some of us

00:29:08.620 in order to get that you care about where you live. And if you care about where you live,

00:29:14.640 then you feel grief when it is destroyed

00:29:19.120 and its beauty is robbed

00:29:21.860 and it's not the healthy place that you once loved.

00:29:27.800 Those lives were mine to love and cherish

00:29:32.940 To guard and guide along life's way

00:29:38.840 Oh, God, forbid that one should perish, that one at least should go astray.

00:29:51.820 Back in the years, with all together, around the place we'd romp and play.

00:30:03.340 So lonely now, I of times wonder, oh, will they come back home someday?

00:30:17.740 I'm lonesome for my precious children, they live so far away.

00:30:29.340 Oh, may they hear my calling, calling

00:30:41.740 And come back home someday

00:30:47.620 I gave my all for my dear children

00:30:54.960 Their problems tell with love I share

00:31:01.540 I braid like stone defy the tempest

00:31:08.260 To bring them home from anywhere

00:31:13.480 I live my life, my love I gave them

00:31:21.140 To guide them through this world of strife

00:31:27.680 I hope and pray we'll live together

00:31:33.500 In the great glad hereafter life

00:31:40.600 I'm lonesome for my precious children

00:31:47.100 They live so far away

00:31:54.420 Oh, may they hear

00:32:00.580 Back home, call

00:32:06.340 And come back home someday

00:32:17.100 I was wondering if you could explain what Radical Joy for Hard Times is,

00:32:23.360 how it came to you, and what are some projects you're working on?

00:32:27.240 Yeah, sure. Actually, I first got the idea way, way long ago, 1987 to be specific.

00:32:33.180 I used to live in New York, and I was a writer and producer of multimedia shows.

00:32:38.840 And I was writing a lot about Native American issues at the time.

00:32:42.760 And I got an opportunity to do a video, a short video about a man named David Paulus, who was an Oneida Indian and still is.

00:32:52.660 And I went to the reservation in Wisconsin and interviewed him.

00:32:57.340 And he told me a story about how he had received a National Science Foundation grant a few years earlier to recycle steel waste.

00:33:07.160 And he was full of himself.

00:33:09.020 You know, he was Native American.

00:33:10.340 He was really proud of himself for getting this prestigious grant.

00:33:13.260 So he drove out to the Kaiser Steel Plant in California and started climbing up to the

00:33:19.700 top of this huge mound of steel waste.

00:33:22.300 And when he got to the top, he raised his fist up in the air and he said to the steel

00:33:26.660 waste, I am going to conquer you.

00:33:29.240 And so then he had some buckets.

00:33:30.980 He filled up his buckets with samples that he was going to take back to his lab.

00:33:34.720 He went back down to his car.

00:33:36.260 and when he got to his car he just had a bad feeling he just he realized that he shouldn't

00:33:43.260 talk to anything the way he had just talked to that amount of steel waste so he he said well

00:33:48.560 in my tradition you you liked tobacco you burn tobacco if you want to talk to the creator he

00:33:53.980 didn't have any tobacco so he lit a match and he said creator tell me how i should be in with this

00:34:00.160 waste and then he said it came to me that the steel waste was not an enemy to be conquered

00:34:06.160 it was an orphan and it had gotten separated from the circle of life and my job was to bring it back

00:34:13.660 to the circle of life and I was very struck by that and it just started me thinking and looking

00:34:22.780 for how to think about waste in a new way it just touched me touched the core of my being this

00:34:32.800 seemed so important how to think about what was wounded and lost in the natural world as not bad

00:34:39.240 or an enemy or ugly or something to be shunned but as something to be embraced so I looked for

00:34:46.600 many years for some way to do this. And I did lots of other things as well. So it wasn't like

00:34:52.580 my primary focus. I did that trip to the clear cut. I led a ceremony in New York after the

00:34:59.200 September 11th attacks, which felt like it was all part of that. The name Radical Joy for Hard

00:35:04.680 Times just popped out of my mouth one day when I was describing it to a friend. It just like

00:35:09.680 flew out of my mouth. And then I actually was doing a vision quest of fast of my own

00:35:16.040 about seven years ago when it came to me that I could form a non-profit to do all this.

00:35:22.460 And that because of the marvels of technology, it didn't have to be just located where I live,

00:35:29.480 which happens to be where there's a lot of gas fracking, although there wasn't when I founded

00:35:33.020 the organization, but that it could be global. Well, Radical Joy for Hard Times symbol, motto,

00:35:38.580 whatever you call it, is that we find and make beauty in wounded places. And people all over

00:35:44.700 the world live in places that have been wounded, and they feel sad about it, and they can make

00:35:49.820 simple acts of beauty. So that was how it all got started. And we were smart enough, although it was

00:35:56.480 sort of inadvertent from the very beginning, to realize that we didn't want to have a lot of rules

00:36:01.480 and regulations and certifications and trainings about this is how it has to be done, but just to

00:36:07.880 make a few simple suggestions and to connect everybody through the internet so that they

00:36:13.760 could be in communication with another inspire one another we have a day in june of every year

00:36:19.720 we've had it i think six years in a row now called the global earth exchange where people go to

00:36:26.360 wounded places on the same day all over the world and they make a simple act of beauty there they

00:36:32.540 share stories and on that particular day we ask that the beauty they make be a bird that they make

00:36:38.900 out of materials that they find on site. So these birds have been made out of sticks and stones and

00:36:46.940 grass and rubbish and lines drawn in the sand and all kinds of things. That's available to see.

00:36:55.140 The slideshow from this year and all the previous years are on our radicaljoyforhardtimes.org

00:37:00.680 website. And it's really beautiful to see the kinds of places people go to. I mean, everything

00:37:07.020 from scientists going to melting glaciers to people going to Superfund sites to polluted rivers

00:37:13.980 to once we had a group in Afghanistan doing a global earth exchange because a bomb crater had

00:37:21.320 just gone off in Kabul and they did something there, all kinds of places. So it's growing and

00:37:27.420 evolving. And then to answer your final question, we're doing a program in September called The

00:37:34.040 ground beneath our hearts. And that is for 15 communities around the world that have been

00:37:41.740 very badly affected by mineral extraction activities. And it's a day where we're

00:37:48.480 recognizing both the hardships of living in those places, which are abundant, but also the strength

00:37:55.300 and the creativity of the human spirit. The communities are in South Africa, they're in the

00:37:59.960 Amazon, in the rainforest, they're in Australia, where there's massive coal mining, Northern

00:38:07.260 Ireland, several places in the U.S. So it's going to be a really wonderful event that will call

00:38:13.720 attention to what people are going through, and also how magnificently they cope as a species

00:38:20.840 and as a community. What are some of the most memorable places you've gone with this project,

00:38:27.680 or memorable acts of beauty?

00:38:30.340 Me personally?

00:38:31.880 Well, I pretty much stick around home

00:38:34.400 because I don't travel around and do these.

00:38:36.780 I think the really great part of that Radical Joy of Our Times

00:38:39.700 is we just, people do it themselves.

00:38:42.260 You know, they don't need experts

00:38:43.380 and they don't need us to do these events.

00:38:45.500 So for my own personal Earth Exchanges,

00:38:48.520 I have tended to just go around home

00:38:51.880 because as I said, I live in a place

00:38:54.480 where there's a lot of gas going.

00:38:55.840 But I also have gotten into the habit of just making, I'll make a bird and I'll stop wherever I'm struck by something that's going on, no matter what it is, whether it's a factory farm or a trashed beach, you know, it's just like giving a gift to the land for something that's going on with them.

00:39:15.980 And I think maybe instead of telling you about my own experiences, just to mention some of the ones that have been really touching that people have done with Radical Joy for Hard Times.

00:39:28.800 There was a woman, for example, in Jerusalem who wanted to do an earth exchange for people who were in a hospital waiting to get bone marrow transplants, and they don't allow any plants inside the hospital rooms because it has to be extremely sterile to get people ready for this surgery or these treatments.

00:39:50.340 And so this woman made little mobiles up on the roof, and then she dangled them off the side of the roof into the windows of the patients.

00:40:00.400 And so they could choose a mobile, and then she would tie those to the roof so they had this little beauty outside their window.

00:40:06.740 And, oh, gosh, there's so many people.

00:40:09.900 There's a group of young kids in Chicago, and every year they lead their own Earth Exchange with their friends.

00:40:16.580 They've done it at Lake Michigan.

00:40:18.800 they've done it at a place on the highway

00:40:21.340 they've done it in an overgrazed

00:40:23.200 patch of forest

00:40:24.340 and it's the idea that

00:40:27.100 you don't have to go

00:40:28.800 and do something that's long

00:40:31.260 term you don't need a lot of

00:40:32.860 training you don't need a lot of equipment

00:40:35.160 you don't have to haul a bunch of stuff

00:40:37.360 in you don't need to schedule

00:40:39.260 anything you can just make

00:40:41.320 these simple acts of beauty

00:40:42.920 when it seems right to do so

00:40:44.780 when you're there out of whatever's in front

00:40:47.240 of you. And I think that's the magic of it. I think it's a practice that will become increasingly

00:40:54.020 meaningful to people. Many predict we are headed for increasingly hard times. How do you see your

00:41:01.400 work evolving with the times? Yeah, I don't have a very optimistic attitude about the future

00:41:07.340 because global warming is here and its effects are going to be unknown and they're going to be

00:41:16.640 profound. And meanwhile, we are not taking care of what we already have that's beautiful and

00:41:23.000 valuable in the Arctic, as you say, in forests, in farmlands, all over the world, the natural world

00:41:31.740 is disappearing. And water is becoming scarce, and it's becoming polluted. So what are we going

00:41:38.720 to do? Frankly, I know a couple of people who are planning to move to the Canada wilderness and hide

00:41:45.360 out with their kids and try and escape all this stuff. But is that really what we want to do?

00:41:50.820 We can't all run away and escape. It's like all the rich people when Hurricane Katrina hit New

00:41:58.160 Orleans, they got to go away, but the people who didn't have the means to leave had to stay there

00:42:02.800 and face the calamity that was all around them. I think we have an ethical responsibility to stay

00:42:09.540 and take care of where we are not to put ourselves in danger but to but to take care of what we are

00:42:16.360 where we are and to join with other people in the community and say how are we going to take

00:42:23.140 care of this place how are we going to muster together through the hard times how are we going

00:42:28.960 to make this place beautiful even as it's damaged even as it's not what we remember it as how are

00:42:35.760 we going to keep loving it are we going to keep ignoring it or are we going to find ways of

00:42:40.580 continuing to love it and remember it and thank it and give it offerings so how radical joy will

00:42:46.120 unfold our vision is that we wrote this in our mission statement back in 2009 when we founded

00:42:54.160 the organization that our vision is that no place on earth is orphaned from the people who love it

00:43:00.600 So that every place would be loved and cared for. So that's our vision. And maybe that'll come to pass. And then radical joy for hard times wouldn't even be necessary anymore because the practices of making beauty for places that you love that are damaged is so much ingrained in people's lives and their outlooks that it's just a habit.

00:43:24.860 i agree we need to stand for the places we live and love as an ethical imperative but also

00:43:33.200 practically speaking there really aren't any places to run to human impact is practically

00:43:39.040 everywhere and our pollution and nuclear haze reaches into the most pristine places

00:43:44.460 of course there are places that will be lifeboats for people and other species

00:43:49.180 but the earth is a swirling ball of connectivity

00:43:53.180 so if we turn our backs to this environmental assault

00:43:56.620 it will catch up with us

00:43:58.500 and all our relations

00:43:59.840 the practices you teach spark the gratitude in people

00:44:03.600 that leads to commitment and protection

00:44:05.320 and also to recognize our own impacts

00:44:08.360 You need not to climb mountaintops

00:44:20.900 You need not to cross the sea

00:44:25.640 You need not to find a cure

00:44:32.180 For everything that makes you weak

00:44:37.860 You need not to reach for the stars

00:44:44.400 When life becomes so dark

00:44:50.020 And when the wind does blow against the crane

00:44:56.780 You must follow your heart

00:45:01.900 You must follow your heart

00:45:07.360 When all your friends have come and gone

00:45:16.580 And the sun no longer shines

00:45:22.400 And the happiness for which you long

00:45:28.720 Is washed away like an ocean's tide

00:45:34.420 When all the hard times outweigh the good

00:45:41.280 And all your words are misunderstood

00:45:46.280 Trebi, I understand you're an avid student of Carl Jung,

00:45:49.340 and I would like to hear how Jung has influenced your ideas

00:45:52.660 and your approach to this work.

00:45:55.140 Oh, well, in one huge way, and that is the idea of active imagination.

00:46:01.040 I'd say that's the most profound way.

00:46:02.800 Jung had the idea that you could communicate with different aspects of your psyche.

00:46:09.680 And he did that beautifully with his own self.

00:46:12.740 And to me, through work that I've done with guided imagery and training to lead the wilderness rites of passage or vision quests,

00:46:22.720 I just started applying that idea of active imagination to the natural world and encouraging people to go out.

00:46:32.260 And in fact, I do it on every single program I do, whether it's an indoor program, an outdoor program, a half hour program, you know, I don't do half hour programs, but two week program, a weekend program, go out onto the land and find a being, I call it a being, that's calling to you and spend some time with it and talk to it.

00:46:52.060 You know, and you can see people going off and going, well, this isn't going to work for me.

00:46:58.300 And then it does.

00:46:59.600 And, you know, and by calling to you, I mean something as simple as what are you noticing when you go out for a walk?

00:47:05.580 It's not like a tree is necessarily going to be saying, come to me, come to me.

00:47:10.740 I have a message for you, although it might.

00:47:13.520 But when anybody goes out on a simple walk where they don't have a goal or an intention, they notice certain things.

00:47:20.540 So when you notice something, stop, pay attention and then have a conversation with it. And people get really, people always, always, always, always come back with the most amazing stories about things that have happened when they spend time with whatever, a tree, a mountain, you know, a piece of coyote shit. 0.98

00:47:42.940 it opens them up to the possibility of dialogue with something other than a human being sitting

00:47:51.320 right in front of them you know or in in technology in some way and it's very very profound and i don't

00:47:59.300 know how it works i don't know i don't know what the reason for it is but i know that i know that

00:48:05.360 it does work and i know that it opens people up to a way of being in a relationship with

00:48:12.280 the world around them in a way that you just, once you've opened up in that simple way,

00:48:17.420 you just simply can't go back and think, you know, I'm me and I'm sentient and everything else that's

00:48:22.780 not human, is it? I see what you're doing as a kind of psychological prepping for a regenerative

00:48:28.600 society. And I also feel the urgency to intervene in the assault on nature and the extinction

00:48:34.680 crisis in a direct material way. I'd like to ask, is the psychological work in your view

00:48:41.120 a partner with direct on-the-ground activism, or a prerequisite, or an alternative, or what?

00:48:48.300 I think they can work really beautifully hand-in-hand. And I've had many conversations

00:48:53.740 with activists about this. And some activists who are really engaged in litigating, lobbying,

00:49:01.940 protesting, educating, doing really important work, their reaction sometimes is, well, I don't

00:49:08.380 have time to talk to the earth i don't have time to give it off you know that's not that's not

00:49:12.840 relevant but really it is you know it's very relevant and i think we need all different forms

00:49:19.180 of paying attention and so for example if a group of activists is working together say to to save a

00:49:26.880 canyon there would not be any reason why they couldn't get together in a circle once a week

00:49:31.940 and talk about their feelings about what they're doing there wouldn't be any reason why they

00:49:36.120 couldn't go to that canyon that they're trying to protect and spend a little quiet time in it

00:49:40.680 and come back and share with one another what they noticed and make some kind of a simple act

00:49:46.420 of beauty it's like because a lot of activists spend so much time being angry being in a fighting

00:49:53.440 mode being on technology and not being out in the places that they work so hard to save yes you know

00:50:00.440 it could work in harmony. And my hope also is that by doing simple things like these earth

00:50:08.780 exchanges, these simple practices, people will realize, and it's happened in many, many instances

00:50:14.580 I know of, that people realize that they do want to get more engaged in these places because

00:50:20.720 they've allowed themselves to open up to their deep feelings of love for places. And they want

00:50:28.340 to get involved. They want to take care of the places then in more ways. So they do become

00:50:32.920 activists. They start taking kids on walks. There's lots of different ways for people to

00:50:40.540 get involved. There's different ways that we need to be in consciousness, mindfulness about what's

00:50:48.400 going on around us. And one of them is changing consciousness. And one of them is taking steps

00:50:54.220 to stop the things that are further harming the earth.

00:50:59.220 You mentioned leading Vision Quest

00:51:00.600 and wilderness immersion programs.

00:51:02.940 And I was wondering if you could speak about that a little.

00:51:06.040 The wilderness rites of passage is,

00:51:09.500 you know, it's a tradition.

00:51:11.080 The Vision Quest is typically associated

00:51:12.760 with American Indians' plains cultures.

00:51:15.560 But really the idea,

00:51:17.460 it all comes down to the idea

00:51:19.160 that you can gain insight and guidance

00:51:21.860 by leaving your community behind for a while and going out into wild nature and asking 0.99

00:51:27.340 for guidance, you know, and Jesus did it and Muhammad did it and the Plains Indians did 0.80

00:51:33.260 it.

00:51:33.880 And, you know, so it transcends many cultures.

00:51:36.800 It's conveniently called the vision quest, which some Native people don't like.

00:51:41.100 But anyway, it's about gaining personal insight through being alone in nature and doing without

00:51:47.260 certain comforts.

00:51:48.380 Like, well, in ours, you drink water, but you don't eat.

00:51:51.340 You have a little tarp to sleep under, but not a tent.

00:51:55.280 You don't bring distractions like books and iPads and things like that.

00:52:00.600 And you focus on what needs to change in your life, where you're drawn to go, and you listen

00:52:09.020 for guidance from the natural world.

00:52:11.660 And so I used to do a lot of those.

00:52:14.660 I did them for more than 20 years.

00:52:16.260 I only now work with a quest for young people every other year in California with the School of Lost Borders.

00:52:24.720 But I think that my focus, and we talked about this a bit earlier, is that, okay, so after you've gained insight for yourself and your world, then what?

00:52:37.140 How do we give back, I guess you could say, although I haven't really articulated it this way.

00:52:41.900 How do you give back and thank all those beings that gave you all that insight?

00:52:46.260 on your fast how do you thank them what if you spent four days in a land that's suffering drought

00:52:53.560 how are you going to thank that place are you just going to go away and be grateful that you

00:52:58.880 got a lot of profound messages about the drought in your own life or are you going to get something

00:53:03.500 back to that land and thank it and give it offerings and maybe go and help educate people

00:53:09.920 about conserving water or something.

00:53:11.720 So I sort of see it as a way of taking the next step

00:53:15.200 and giving back to the earth

00:53:19.260 rather than simply saying,

00:53:21.760 the earth is giving to me and thanks so much.

00:53:27.480 And regarding your earlier work

00:53:28.760 with the Navajo and Hopi people,

00:53:30.860 what has stuck with you from that time in your life?

00:53:34.680 You know, how did indigenous views of life

00:53:36.540 and the earth affect yours?

00:53:37.760 Well, when I was writing about the Navajo and Hopi, I wrote a bunch of articles from 1986 to 91 about a land dispute where several thousand traditional Navajos were being moved off land that had been redrawn so that it would be Hopi land.

00:53:55.320 One of the things that I loved about being there was walking or driving around with Navajo people and the stories that they would tell about their land.

00:54:07.080 It was like all of history was living and alive when you would walk or drive around that land with one of those people.

00:54:15.600 They would tell a story about how a mountain got its name, or this is where somebody's son was followed by a bobcat when he was coming home from school, or this is where somebody used to play as a little girl, or this is where there's a sacred spring that was revealed to somebody's grandmother by a porcupine.

00:54:35.180 It would be like these stories would just emerge from the land.

00:54:39.400 So the land was totally alive.

00:54:41.160 And it made me think about how land was alive in my own life.

00:54:46.780 And I just loved the humor of the Navajo people, the accessibility that they had to their emotions and their grief about having to leave that land.

00:54:55.320 And in a way, that was influential to me, too, because I was aware that so many people came to that land, Native, I mean, white people.

00:55:03.080 And a lot of people from Europe, especially Germany, would come because they were drawn to working with the Navajo and helping them.

00:55:10.260 And I thought, is it only Native people that can cry for their land?

00:55:14.000 We seem to think that white people aren't allowed to cry for their land, but that can't be right.

00:55:18.800 Interestingly enough, right before I did my own first fast, I did an interview with Lakota. 0.88

00:55:24.740 No, he wasn't Lakota. He was a Yankton Sioux activist and writer, amazing writer named Fine Deloria.

00:55:29.540 And at the end of the conversation, he said to me, you white people need to go out there and find your own traditions. So I realized he was right, you know, that we needed to find our own ways of being with the land and working with the land. And shortly after that, I found out about white people being able to go on vision quests and then started working with Animus Valley Institute for several years.

00:55:53.420 so Trebi what's next for you and where can people go to stay in the loop and perhaps join in the

00:55:59.940 work well I want to thank you first for your amazing questions this has just been a fabulous

00:56:05.220 conversation thank you so much for the time you've taken to speak with us thank you my website is

00:56:12.540 radicaljoyforhardtimes.org and I just finished writing a new book I just finished it yesterday

00:56:19.940 in fact oh wow i know it's called aphrodite at the landfill and it's about making beauty for

00:56:27.980 for wounded places so i'm excited about that i'm not sure when it'll be coming out yet but

00:56:34.080 before too long i hope and i'm really focused on trying to understand the ways that people are

00:56:42.700 responding to calamity and disaster and threats to the world around them, and how to be resilient

00:56:52.240 and creative and generous in those times. Because I've learned in my own life that it's not just

00:56:59.860 radical joy for hard times on the earth, but if I can bring a spirit of openness, generosity, beauty,

00:57:08.060 creativity

00:57:09.480 compassion

00:57:11.240 to my own life in any kind of difficult

00:57:14.060 situation

00:57:14.760 it just seems to work out better

00:57:17.800 so I keep being amazed

00:57:19.940 at that

00:57:20.320 Thank you all for tuning in to Unlearn and Rewild

00:57:28.040 with Ayanna Young

00:57:29.400 speaking today with Treby Johnson

00:57:31.940 You heard World of Pain

00:57:34.260 by Cream

00:57:35.020 Calling My Children Home

00:57:37.260 performed by Emmylou Harris

00:57:39.240 Against the Grain by City in Color

00:57:42.260 Our theme song is by Kate Wolfe

00:57:44.860 Editing by Nicole West

00:57:46.720 And from a windy mountaintop

00:57:49.300 en route to Alaska

00:57:50.620 This is March Young

For The Wild - September 13, 2015

TREBBE JOHNSON on Bearing Witness to Wounded Places ⧸27

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