Council circle is an ancient and modern practice with ancestral roots in many, diverse cultures. Each voice is honored as equal, each brings a unique gift and so together we find wholeness. We listen with care so we can truly hear one another and all our relations; gathering outside when weather permits connects us to our larger community...the birds and trees, rocks and wind. Deepening Into the Circle Way is an opportunity to learn: how to create the unique container of council circle; the multi-layered nature of the intentions; the varied forms of council and how you might want to take this profound practice of connection into your life. Commitment to a four-time series with the same group of people offers a rich and satisfying experience into the profound nature and Mystery of the circle way. Each series will be unique based on the interests of the group so you are invited to join one or all!

Explore the power and practice of story using Christina Baldwin's Storycatcher as a framework to experience meaningful conversation about your own stories and those of others. Each month inquiries will be provided to participants for individual journaling and reflective conversation. These inquiries may evoke memories, stories and moments which hold meaning and a message. The group will meet monthly over the course of the Four Seasons and inquire into life stories from the earth based perspective of the Four Shields of Human Nature. The foundation of group storytelling will be the practice of Relational Presence.

Come join a special circle of women who have all been on an EarthWays' program. This is an invitation to sit in council and spend time alone in nature for each season of Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall. Together we will use this time to incorporate what we have been digesting from an EarthWays' program.

Each of the seasonal councils will draw upon earth based practices such as: Setting Intention, Day Walks, Storytelling and Relational Presence. The year will culminate with a six-day program with a full 24-hour fast, to be held in the Northern California Wilderness.

Come join us, and bring curious friends along, for our second annual Gathering!
We'll have a Reunion Council Circle for anyone who has ever done any EarthWays program: A great way to (re-) connect with the EarthWays community! We circle from 1-2 pm so please be on time so we won't miss your presence. Your friends are welcome to come to this circle.
Then, from 2-5 pm everyone is welcome to join us for lots of fun things...

• A Great Sale of Gently Used, Nature Oriented Books and DVDs
• A Slideshow: What is EarthWays All About?
• Delicious Refreshments and Tea
• A Very Fun Raffle
• Surprises!

All eight of the EarthWays collective will be there, and we would love to see old friends and meet new ones as well. We'll have our 2012 calendars, some delicious snacks, and be available to answer your questions and hear your thoughts. This will be an afternoon of connection, fun and inspiration, and we look forward to seeing you there!

All proceeds from the book and dvd sale will go into our EarthWays scholarship fund. Please call us (by February 15th) if you would like to participate by donating items. This is a great opportunity to clean out the old, find great bargains and help someone who would otherwise not be able to participate in the healing, nature based programs we offer.

Join us to walk the beautiful wooded trails of Willow Creek. Together we will be sharing four wilderness walks, one each season. As we immerse ourselves into the changing seasons of our wild local landscape we will reflect on our own wild internal landscape. We will begin by walking with time to discuss a version of the medicine wheel. This offers a metaphor to gain insight on our own life cycles as well as a tool for nature inspired introspection and inspiration. We will co-create our intentions with a breathtaking view of the ocean, under an old growth tree. From there you will embark on a solo journey in the wild to explore, wander and follow your own guidance and inner knowing. After your solo time, we will come back together to share our stories and reflect on our experiences. As the day comes to a close, we will begin our decent, looping back to the trail where our journey began. As we walk we will discuss how we can incorporate and integrate nature-based wisdom into our daily lives.

The intention for the 4 days is to create a community and circle of women. These four days are designed to be experiential: integrating meditation, tai chi, nature walks, with sitting in circle, sharing stories and practicing relational presence. Other than the morning and evening councils, all activity choices will be completely optional; there will be, in effect, a "menu" of options to choose from daily. There will be plenty of time to relax and do nothing, or wander and BE on the land! Rest, Contemplate, Play, Wander, spend time with yourself and this special place.

For thousands of years, earth-based initiation practices have been cultivated as vital elements in the nourishment and survival of the human community. Initiated men and women, who have aligned their hearts and souls with the Great Mother, bring to their people gifts of wisdom, love, perseverance, and a profound honoring of nature and spirit. Today, we see the devastating effects—personally and collectively—from the forgetting of our wild, deep, roots. In this day-long exploration, we will gather together upon the earth for the remembering and the making of soul.

In our small group format, we will discuss initiation, rites of passage, and the medicine wheel teachings of the Four Shields of Human Nature. You will have significant solo time upon the land to experientially explore these themes with a focused, personal intent. We will gather again in council to hear your stories and to practice 'mirroring', as a way to deepen and empower your unique relationships with the wild medicine gifts from nature. We will allow time to discuss how you might creatively apply these practices to your own life and work.

This DayQuest will be an occasion to view grief through the lens of the natural landscape. Walking, or sitting quietly amidst the beautiful Sonoma coastal hills, we invite you to open to what nature has to teach about loss and the response to loss. Together we will also look at the essential stages of any rite of passage--severance, threshold experience, and incorporation--as a path toward understanding the process of grief. Since loss in its many forms is a common human experience, this is a program for anyone. Time will be spent sitting in council circle as well as solo time upon the land.

Join us for a full day in wild nature to mark your transition into adulthood. As you immerse yourself into the wild landscape you will reflect upon your own inner truths. Take time to acknowledge and honor your own growth, your gifts, dreams, challenges and concerns as you prepare to graduate into the next stage of your life. We will begin by walking with time to discuss your intention as a tool for nature inspired introspection. After confirming your intention for the day under an old growth tree, you will embark on a solo journey in the wild to explore, wander and follow your own guidance and inner knowing. We will come back together to share stories and reflect experiences. As the day comes to a close, we will begin our descent, looping back to the trail where our journey began. As we walk we will discuss how you can incorporate and integrate the wisdom you have received into your daily life and celebrate your rite of passage into adulthood.

Since time immemorial, men and women have walked out into the wilderness to pray for vision and guidance. This time alone in the wild awakens the spark of inner knowing, providing sustenance for self and community. Spring, with its mysterious fire, brings the gift of life and regeneration. It is an ideal time to listen deeply for what needs to die and for what is aching to be born. The invitation of the Vision Fast is to carry an open heart, an empty belly and only the most essential gear. Find a dwelling place among the rocks, sun, stars, and wind for four solitary days and nights. It is an opportunity to peer into your deepest nature, cultivate intent, and consider your relationships with loved ones and wider community. The wild landscape will mirror to you truths about your passions, grief, longing, and gifts. Come join us, step into a life of great heart and meaning —it is yours—it awaits you.

This is an eleven-day mixed gender ceremony and will include four days of preparation with day walks, meditation, four shields teachings, and time in a wisdom circle of friends to crystallize your intent. The four days and nights of solo time in a wilderness place will be followed by three days of incorporation, including storytelling in an elder's council. Your story will be shared, and the claiming of your intent will be deeply witnessed and confirmed by your guides. You will be thoroughly prepared by your guides to live in the wilderness: physically, psychologically, mentally, and spiritually. While some camping/backpacking experience is helpful, no prior experience in wilderness rites of passage is necessary.

With two experienced EarthWays Wilderness Quest Guides join a small circle of heart-felt community in a day for spring inspiration and renewal in nature. We will gather at dawn to learn about the ancient practice of questing and to confirm our intentions for the day. With simple ceremony you will then have several hours alone to experience your unique connection with a beautiful Sonoma County natural area. There will be plenty of time to wander, create, or sit quietly in contemplation. At the end of the day we will meet again as a group, tell our stories and your guides will reflect on your experience with the land. Expect to be surprised at the depth of guidance you will receive from this day on the earth!

It is not often that fathers receive acknowledgment of the importance they hold in a child's life. Any man can become a father, but what does it take to be a "Dad"? This daylong on the land is an opportunity for fathers or soon-to-be-fathers to come together to discuss, explore and deepen the meaning of fatherhood. Through the use of council, reflective solo time and the co-creation of a mandala, this daylong event is an opportunity to honor and deepen your role as a Dad as well as to connect with other Dads, yourself and the beautiful land around us.

This will be a day of immersion in the Mystery-Wisdom of council circle where each unique voice weaves together with the others to create our collective wholeness. Extended circle-time invites the deeper expressions of our souls. Come share from the heart and spend time in meaningful connection...with yourself, your circle-mates and the natural world. This experience will include solo time on the exquisite land of Fairfield Osborn Preserve in Sonoma County.

“Let us risk the wildest places lest we go down in comfort and despair.”
-Mary Oliver

Located mostly within the North Coast Ranges, the rugged topography of the Yolla Bolly-Middle Eel Wilderness protects headwaters of the Eel, the Mad and the Trinity Rivers. The name, from the Wintun Native American language, means ‘snow covered high peak’.  Our basecamp at Soldier Ridge rests at 5,500 ft.  Each woman will be walking this spine of wilderness as she descends into the expanse of forested firs, pines, pygmied oaks, high meadows and rocky outcroppings.  Solitude is the main attraction of this wilderness.

What better place for a woman to come alive?
What better place to awaken her passions?
What better placer to face fear?

This Vision Fast is a call to each woman to claim the truth of her passion. For a woman to separate from her ordinary life, she must sever the patterns that bind. She now steps into the sacred, secluded 12 day ceremony held by the wild land, the lineage of the feminine, and the cries of what is longing to be heard.
Each woman’s experience is all she needs. When her time comes to go alone into her four day solo, she will be ready. The bare bones of the ceremony includes the practices of council, setting intention, physical plane safety, as well as earth based teachings.
Fasting is at the edge of sorting; the threshing out of what drains aliveness from what awakens the essential juices. Something has to empty in order to fill. What dies comes alive again in a new form. Last year’s language gives way and bears the consequences of new life.
This ceremony truly evokes the passionate heart that is each woman’s birthright.

“The journey itself reveals the full curvature of the heart.”
- Cynthia Bourgeault

Cazeaux Nordstrum (guest guide) is an MFT, consultant and educator.  Her Walnut Creek private practice focuses on adults in mid-life and older life, and the meaning of life in its second half.  During the last 25 years she has taught cross-cultural and multi-generational programs on topics of aging, grief/loss, caregiving, forgiveness and mental health issues at the university level throughout the Bay Area and in Japan. Cazeaux is a woman who says “Yes to Life” and lives fully from her wild, passionate and unconditional heart.  She listens to that still small voice within that connects her to feeling, memory and landscape.  She knows how the wanting of immortality opens her to the longing for deeper relationship and intimacy to all things. Cazeaux holds certification as a Wilderness First Responder, CPR and Wilderness First Aid. She has been trained by the School of Lost Borders.

This is a day of being on the land in deep presence; an experiential pilgrimage, exploring the heart of connection with the wild earth. While pilgrimage is often from one place to another, we will end at the very place we begin, celebrating the sacred aspect of the journey itself. We will begin with an introduction to the basic principles of rites of passage and have fun with some somatic practices so that we enter this experience in ceremony, well grounded in our bodies. A large portion of the day will be spent in mindful, solo time on the magical land of Fairfield Osborn Preserve in Sonoma County.

Come! Join together in council circle with other seasoned women. We'll be compassionate witnesses to one another and as we share our individual stories we'll reap the depth of our collective wisdom. The earth-based wheel of life will inform us about the ways we belong to the world and what is most important to us at this time in our lives. Support and empowerment will be our way as we spin gold out of our life experiences and weave together our unique and shared ways of being the older, vital women we truly wish to be! This day will include some precious time alone on the exquisite land at Fairfield Osborn Preserve.

Margo Frank, LCSW (guest guide), is passionately engaged in her own aging process, drawing from a deep well of creativity, authentic movement work and nature's wisdom for inspiration. Through Crossing into Elderhood programs, she offers elder council circles and life coaching to those anticipating or entering their later years. She can be reached at 707-462-1877 or margo@margofrank.com. Visit her website at www.CrossingIntoElderhood.com.

When we mourn what we have lost, we may also poignantly feel how precious this life is. The cycles of the seasons show us that the cold winter is always followed by the rebirth in spring; so can the pain of grief open us to the tender places of love and thankfulness in our hearts. In this circle we'll pass the talking piece, have the opportunity to speak authentically about our experience and listen "devoutly" to one another as we share the stories of our loss. In this healing, community environment we'll light candles to honor our grief as well as our gratitude. If you wish, bring photos or other items that represent your loss and gratitude for the altar we'll create together.

This will be a guided time where you will be supported to create a ceremony to honor and mark a transition that has occurred in your life. Perhaps there were times in your life that deserved to be celebrated and acknowledged but were not? We will use mindfulness meditation to support you to contemplate what you wish to ritualize and offer you questions to assist you in creating your own self-generated ceremony.

Join us for three seasonal wilderness walks, one in Autumn, Winter and Spring, culminating in a rich Summer overnight. As we immerse ourselves in the changing seasons of our wild local landscape, we will reflect on the changing seasons of our own inner landscape during this time of transition from youth to adulthood. This is an opportunity for High School Juniors and Seniors to have fun and connect in a unique way that honors each participant's experience as he or she steps towards a new phase of life. A contemporary version of the medicine wheel will inspire and guide our introspection and help us gain insight into the cycles of our lives. We will co-create our intentions, explore and wander by the light of our own inner knowing. From solo journeys to sharing our stories, this offering will be a meaningful opportunity to connect with ourselves, each other and the beautiful land on which we live.

Come! Join together in council circle with other seasoned women. We'll be compassionate witnesses to one another and as we share our individual stories we'll reap the depth of our collective wisdom. The earth-based wheel of life will inform us about the ways we belong to the world and what is most important to us at this time in our lives. Support and empowerment will be our way as we spin gold out of our life experiences and weave together our unique and shared ways of being the older, vital women we truly wish to be! This day will include some precious time alone on the exquisite land at Fairfield Osborn Preserve.

Margo Frank, LCSW (guest guide), is passionately engaged in her own aging process, drawing from a deep well of creativity, authentic movement work and nature's wisdom for inspiration. Through Crossing into Elderhood programs, she offers elder council circles and life coaching to those anticipating or entering their later years. She can be reached at 707-462-1877 or margo@margofrank.com. Visit her website at www.CrossingIntoElderhood.com.