The Trail Teller

What do we do with the heaviness and helplessness, often unspoken, that comes to us in the wake of events far away?  The Shadow’s energy on the planet is widespread – homeless refugees on the move, Syria demolished, age-old treasures destroyed -

A centuries-old tool from the Andes puts heavy energy to use, as darkness afoot becomes compost for Mother Earth.  We can shift our own capacity inflatable water slide to deal with the Shadow.

Be supported by the impetus of time’s movement through the dark of the year, and of the monthly turning of the tide. Hone your capacity to use the shadow within, moving into the light.

Wednesday, November 25, at 11:00 AM, as the full moon brings high tide to Bayfront Park in Menlo Park, explore the practice and its place in our own life experiences.  Then walk along the crest of the hills overlooking San Francisco Bay, as we “Eat Hucha”. Taking in the shadow in multiple forms, through intention and the guidance of this spiritual practice, we’ll offer this energy to Mother Earth and fill ourselves with Light.

Email Ginny Anderson for more explicit directions.  Share this invitation with others you know, and find a way to lighten the shadow’s burden on your mind and heart.

11:00 AM on Wednesday, November 25

Bayfront Park in Menlo Park

Cost: $25

As the long winter nights envelop us, spreading their mantle of cozying down after holiday bustle, come listen to and take part in the Grandmother’s tales of laughter, of how to do life journeys, of adventures waiting and the reason and bouncy castle courage to do them.  There was rhyme and reason embedded in their choices of tales,  There were the antics of Coyote, trickster god and teacher. There were clever travelers on quests; there were encounters with the shadow, native teachings of Wisdom in Place.  Teachings happened in contexts of story, rather than through rules and regulations, comfort extended in ways that nourished the soul, salved fears.

Traditional storytellers observed the passing events in the community,  developed awareness of blessings, of fears, of forces at work in the community; they told stories that helped to open doors to dreaming solutions, tapping the kernel of a problem without necessarily naming it, leaving the listener to connect with the clever character in the story.

Let’s see whose energy shows up – naming the things on our minds, we can comb memory for relevant tales.  Inanna’s the one who’s calling to me at the moment, and there’s a sweet way to play with the story, making it ours.  She – or someone who inspires your own wandering thoughts -  could be your companion in the particular kind of journey she inspires. Maybe it comes in the hüpfburg kaufen form of a Soundworm – a song that’s come into your head that doesn’t want to go away until it has had its due.

Popcorn, hot chocolate, chocolate chip cookies, cider, tea.

Bring a comfy blanket, find a space on a long and  cozy couch, sit in front of the fire (provided it’s not a Spare the Air Day).  Listen to what comes along, and if you’d like to share a story of your own, please feel free.

Donation: $25   7:30-10 PM

Call Ginny Anderson at 650-323-4494.  Or email silkythree18@gmail.com

Address near Menlo Park/Atherton provided when you call.

As winter’s darkness prepares to give way to light, join us creating a tule spirit boat with offerings of gratitude for the many blessings that nurture our lives. Those very gifts of Nature and community empower our intentions for the coming year.  In that partnership, we become the voices, the hands and feet – expressing the Life Force.

For many centuries, tules lined most of the shores of San Francisco Bay; growing, their structure helped deal with toxics in the water.  Harvested, they offered housing and boat materials for the Ohlone people.  Early in December, at the edge of the Bay, we’ll inflatable water slide gather the tules in ceremony. When the reeds have rested and dried, ready for their next incarnation, we’ll shape the boat and fill it with offerings, talking story  – of the Bay’s past, of the Ohlone people, of our blessings this year. We’ll tell stories of the power of hibernation and of dreaming, of resting and visioning.

This is a really delightful sequence if you like poking in the mud, adventures in nature, celebrating community, sacred play, connecting with the ancestors – and feasting!

Joyous to do – and so helpful to orient ourselves in alignment with the universal powers that help us shape our own desires for living harmoniously with Nature.

Join us for either event, or both

Saturday Dec. 6  11 AM Ceremonially collecting tules near the shore of the Bay

Sun. 21  10 A.M. at Bayfront Park, at the bayshore end of Marsh Road in Menlo Park.

Building, blessing and launching the boat on the high tide, helping pave the path for the return of light, for the highest and best relationship to the evolving web of life next to the Bay. Carried by 365toy the boat, biodegradable offerings of flowers, prayers, foods, sweetness, and incense will make their way toward the open sea.

COST of  the 2 events – $75
separately,  Dec 6  $35, Dec. 21, $45

Location:
TBA among various west Bayshore locations for tule collection
Bayfront Park in Menlo Park for the ceremonial building and launching

For further information, or to reserve a space, contact Ginny Anderson, at 650-323-4494, or email Ginny at silkythree18@gmail.com

Radical Joy for Wounded Places is a worldwide community of people committed to finding and making beauty in wounded places. Reconnecting with these places, sharing our stories of loss and despair, and making acts of beauty there, we transform the land, reconnect people and the places that nourish inflatable water slide them, and empower ourselves to make a difference in the way we live on Earth.

On June 21 at San Bruno Mountain (Summer Solstice), Mountain Watch is sponsoring a cleanup of several critical habitat areas. Buckeye Canyon leads into a 5000 year old shell mound; next to it is Owl Canyon. Nearby is a critical mating area for Pacific tree frogs, but was once part of the quarry on the mountain.

Gathering at the edge of Quarry Road, we’ll help with the cleanup, have lunch, and make a despacho – an Andean offering to the land. We’ll create a symbolic bird with leaves, sticks, and other objects found on the site – contribute its photo to an international website collection. We’ll share mountain stories and meet the people who live and breathe the mountain.

Help put San Bruno on that worldwide map of wounded places being tended and honored. Contact www.mountainwatch.org for more details of the cleanup location.

I’ll be meeting people who are coming at 11:00 at Quarry Park in Brisbane. Email Ginny Anderson if you’re able to do a short walk, work some, then join in creating the bird and in doing the despacho. Quarry Park is at the corner of San Francisco Ave. and Inyo. (map)

In Norse mythology, the Norns are female figures who work with past, present and future, pouring waters on the Tree of Life so that life of the tree is sustained.

The Norns spin their tapestry at the roots of Yggdrasil.

These figures become our allies, as we explore the role of elder women in today’s culture.  Using the inspiration they provide, we’ll bouncy castle explore our own journeys – how we’ve come to be at this unique place on the planet just at this time. We’ll explore how we can continue to weave the threads of destiny out of the experiences of our contemporary lives and lineages. We’ll discover what it means to find ourselves in the amazing privilege to be in this unique and luscious part of the world. The Norns help us shape our quest for being elders when there is a “Great Turning”, to use Joanna Macy’s phrase.

Another important guide in our journey will be San Bruno Mountain, whose very existence maintains numerous endangered species, plants as well as butterflies.  Using movement, shamanic journeys, writing practices, and guided meditations on the mountain, we’ll be experimenting with learning how to listen to Nature’s voice, as She speaks through the environment.

The story line of our own destinies is entwined with the wisdom of these elder figures – the Norns, the mountain, and the endangered species who live on San Bruno.

A gift of being elders in this present time -  the latest discoveries of brain research can actually help us shape the ways our brains function and the way our lives unfold. Ancient stories describe the Norns coming to babies’ births to forecast how their lives will unfold – and now we are able to share the Norns’ opportunities by putting into 365toy practice the amazing new tool provided by recent brain research.

Come join us in this pilot project blending ancient story and newly acquired modern wisdom; take part in creating what shall be, in the culture and in your lives as elders.

Check out the offering on the calendar – see if this journey is for you!

Here are some of many good resources:

Macy, Joanna: “Active Hope”

Hanson, Rick, “Hardwiring Happiness”

Sturluson, Storri: “Prose Edda”

Clebsch, Carolyn – Valley Moon Qigong and Meditation Practices

I hope you can join me for one or more of these journeys – Ginny

Saturday Dec. 7  (Pearl Harbor Day)   At the foot of San Bruno Mountain, the restoration of a frog habitat site is a perfect setting for an Andean shamanic practice –Mihui – the Art of Eating Heavy Energy.  As we learn this ancient practice, we’ll orient the practice toward the restoration being undertaken at Fukushima, the nuclear site in Japan devastated by a tsunami in 2011.  Co-led with Paul Bouscal, of San Bruno Mountain Watch. Click here for more.


Saturday Dec. 21  (at Bayfront Park at the edge of the Bay, in Menlo Park)  Build and launch a ceremonial tule boat designed after the model of boat offerings at Lake Titicaca in Peru, Tule reeds once occupied some 75% of the Bay’s shoreline., and were used for housing, for clothing, and ceremony by the native people who lived along the Bay’s shore. Click here for more.

Saturday Jan. 11th  On San Bruno Mountain: In the dark of the year, we inflatable water slide turn to the wisdom of the bears (who once roamed the Bay Area territory). We envision also the tiny violas, Johnny-jump-ups. Now underground and completely unseen on San Bruno Mountain at this time of year, this endangered plant will return in the spring to sustain the equally endangered Callipe butterfly.

Through shamanic journeying, we’ll invite the wisdom of these very different life forms for whom a time of sleeping in the dark is key to survival. This respite from activity can help us explore life rhythms that will prepare us for active involvement in sustaining conditions for life on Earth.  Click here for details.

9:00am to 2:00pm

The Mission Blue Nursery is located in Brisbane  - Google map and directions

The Mission Blue Nursery grows only San Bruno Mountain native plants. Please join us in cultivating and celebrating these plants!

The Mission Blue Nursery is one of the hands-on arms of the San Bruno Mountain Watch Stewardship Program. Nursery volunteers donate their time to grow California natives from San Bruno Mountain for restoration projects on the mountain and for public and private gardens, parks and planting areas around the mountain.

For a list of all plants under cultivation at the nursery go to our What’s Growing Now page. Not everything on that list is available to the public.

Dear Friends,

I’m writing to you, who’ve circled San Francisco Bay with me some time in the past.  On Saturday, Sept. 7, one week from today, I’ll begin my last circle. I’d love to be present with you to renew your relationships with the sacred places that continue to sustain us. We’ll share the ways that we’ve evolved, and the ways that the sites remain available for even more potent connections from our new vantage points.

The culture has shifted; our needs and potentials have different shapes, and we bring to them the experiences that continue to shape our destinies.

The journeys will involve less walking, more story, some spiritual practices, more personal sharing. We’ll be visiting inflatable water slide five sites rather than 7 – but later, may visit either or both of them individually, as conditions at Ring Mountain and at Umunhum shift.  My daughter Marci, who’s now a senior mediator, a collaboration specialist connected with Cal State at Sacramento, has heard so much about our journeys, and will be with us as a participant.

A relevant poem by Raymond Carver recently came my way from Larry Robinson’s list for poetry lovers:

And did you get what
You wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
Beloved on the earth.

Visiting recently with Barbara Hiken, and talking about Circling San Francisco Bay, she said, “It changed my life!”   I feel that also – and from this gratitude, I’d like to celebrate these sites and the blessings they offer. We can renew our capacity to assure that as those blessings move through our human lives, we support the web of all life.  Our lives are on the cusp of change (Aren’t they always?  But physical and environmental clocks are ticking!)

Dates and times:  approximate 10 AM to 2:30 PM

Kirby Cove   Saturday Sept. 7

Mt. Tamalpais  Saturday September 21

Mt. Diabo Saturday October 5

Mt. Hamilton   Sunday October 20

San Bruno    Saturday November 2

Please email or call me to register (650-323-4494), or if you have gonfiabili per bambini any questions. If you know someone who hasn’t had a chance to do this, please pass the information along. I’ll attach a copy for your convenience.

This is late notice – but I’d like to do all of these visits while the weather is good.

Suggested donation: $60 a session

Best regards,

Ginny Anderson

Many Bay Area residents have come from elsewhere, looking forward to a transformation in their lives. We’ve come seeking California’s gold, in whatever form that takes – a new career, a new kind of community, a move away from old imprints. .

The community itself is rapidly changing under our very feet, but the unchanging constant underlying jeux gonflables our lives is the Earth, the land we live on and which supports the way of life of every person here.

We live in a force field that’s fed by the land itself – by the very stones of the earth and the water flowing through the land. It’s a force field shaped by the climate and the beautiful patterns of weather, by the plants and animals who share the space. Impacted by migrations –by human, animal, plant successions, by the traffic of the streets and freeways – we are carried by all these influences. Not only are we affected by the people who live here now, but also others who lived here in the past, and marked it with their choices.

How, then, do we take the reins in our hands, receiving the opportunities and openings, and participate in shaping our destinies?

Moving mindfully becomes an important way to participate in shaping the future, externally and internally.

This year’s circle is a journey for people in the midst of change. You’re invited to circle San Francisco Bay, becoming mindful of the constants as well as the flow that permeates this desirable and desired place on the planet.

Come into relationship with the deep Spirit of Place, expanding your experience of self in relation to the elements that make the Bay Area unique.

This is a journey of spirit, a journey of the spirit of place, a journey of your spirit’s individual existence. Discover some ways of connecting profoundly with this moment, this place, with the body that is your home. Mindfulness becomes the starting point.

We’ll discover ourselves already present in a inflatable water slide sacred circle, visiting places of power that surround San Francisco Bay. Opening all our senses, our capacity to reach outward into the space around us, into the visionary space that each of us carries, we will become more fully present.

These five sacred sites will be our points of entry as we travel via shamanic journeying, through poetry, and song, Age-old story-telling, tales of place, will feed our awareness of our mindful presence here. With shamanic practices, gentle walking, journaling, and personal sharing, become more fully present in this lovely place we think of as our home.

Saturday, Sept. 7 – Kirby Cove
Saturday, Sept 21 – Mt. Tamalpais
Saturday, Oct. 5 – Mt. Diablo
Sunday, Oct 20 – Mt. Hamilton
Saturday, Nov. 2 – San Bruno

Click HERE to read what others have said about Ginny’s excursions.

Cost: $50 per session; a sliding scale is available. With a commitment and pre-registration for the series, there is a 10% reduction.

To apply for participation, please email something about your current quest, and whether meditation or shamanic journeying play a part in it. What attracts you to this journey? contact Ginny by clicking HERE or phone 650-323-4494

Whether or not you’ve had a chance to participate in Circling San Francisco Bay, or in Daniel Foor’s work at these sacred sites, please read my award-winning book, “Circling San Francisco Bay: A Pilgrimage to Wild and Sacred Places“. Amazon.com provides book availability and reviews. Finalist in ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year competition, the book also received Editor’s Choice and Publisher’s Choice awards. Reading it will provide a foundation for working with these sites. If you have not had an experience of shamanic journeying, please let me know when you inquire about participation in this circle. An opportunity to do this preparation will be arranged.

Bathed in the light of summer, get ready to reach beyond the sunlight that surrounds us on the longest day of the year!

Cosmic triggers can come about through inflatable tent a wide variety of life experiences–

• A deep need for change
• A profoundly challenging situation
• A dream
• Spontaneous AHA experiences
• Meditation
• Medicine journeys
• Shamanic journeys
• Trauma

We find ourselves connected to the universe, filled with joy, hope, and comfort. The moment passes – but it instantly becomes part of our reserve of peace, power, and strength.

Spend a day in a sunny mid-Peninsula garden, swimming, feasting, playing. We’ll share personal stories and transform them into power objects or mandalas.  Materials and symbols will be available to help bring those profound experiences into daily life. Celebrate them; make them tactile and visible, bringing their power and wisdom into daily life.

Visualizations will be shared to expand your capacity to reach toward inflatable water park the light in the universe, the light within the earth, the light within our own bodies. the light that’s constantly within reach.

Our exploration this day will accelerate our journey to become more effectively and fully present as we take our places in sustaining the web of life.

Enjoy this video while we wait for the solstice to arrive.

Please confirm with me directly if you plan to attend, and I’ll give you directions to the mid-Peninsula meeting site. $50 includes art materials and lunch.

Mid-Peninsula location given when you reserve a space by emailing ginny@eco-psychology.com

Click HERE to read what others have said about Ginny’s events.