Winter’s Wild Soul Retreat
The Essentials:
What: a unique retreat blending contemplative practice and meditation with soul-centric nature-based immersions aligned with the season of Winter to support our own internal Wintering.
When: November 17th - 19th, 2023. Arrive at 6pm on Friday, plan to be done at around 2pm Sunday afternoon.
Where: a beautiful home with Juniper Forest outside Cortez. Both camping and indoor lodging options available. Indoor lodging may be shared or limited.
Who: Guided by Deer Ryder and Joe Peloquin
More . . . much more:
Winter's potent arrival beckons us closer. What is this time? Who is this Spirit? Are we in relationship with this One and the Land? The business of our lives does not often prepare our psyches and souls for harmonizing with Nature's cyclical rhythms, and often combats what They are asking of us. Our ancestors gathered for warmth of company and spirit, entering a fruitful and often hard human-like hibernation that helped them rejuvenate their bodies, mind, and souls.
Thus we invite you to take pause and inspiration from our animal kin, and join us in a guided 2-day overnight retreat in our warm home and the local wilderness to prepare our inner worlds for the power of winter in hopes to find healing harmony with Her and ourselves.
Deer and Joe both have extensive guiding experience and have spent years studying Buddhist meditation (primarily the Insight tradition) as well as nature-based practices, particularly through the work of Bill Plotkin and Animas Valley Institute. Please see their bios below.
Practices that may be offered on this retreat include:
-Meditation (sitting/walking and nature-based)
-Yoga and/or Qi-Gong
-Wilderness Wanders
-Dreamwork
-Council
-Guided Imagery Journeys
-Wild Somatic Embodiment
-Trance Dance
-Poetry and Storytelling
-Soul-tracking
-Journaling and Reflective Writing
-And more…
The Rough Schedule:
Friday - Arrive Friday early evening for communal dinner, community connection, and practicals.
Saturday - Opening ceremony. We will begin to gather ourselves into our winter caves and turn inwards with a silent meditation day of walking, sitting, and nature-based meditation that naturally opens into more animist practices and experiences.
Sunday - Continue to stoke our hearth fires with soul-centric land-based practices that open us to the hidden depths of our being and ancient wisdom of the wild. Closing Ceremony
Food:
Two healthy and delicious home-cooked dinners and two breakfasts will be provided with deposit costs. Please bring two pack lunches and snacks for two days that you can take with you when on the land. Please bring your own cup/bowl/utensils. We will have coolers to store some perishable items for you and abundant tea and water.
Sleeping:
Camping available and encouraged (please bring your own camping gear) and limited indoor lodging is available, priority given to those with less wilderness experience.
Seva (Service):
This gathering is for the community and community support is essential for it to happen. In the spirit of ashram-style living we will be asking folks to offer simple service at set times during the retreat, such as cleaning, doing dishes, or chopping vegetables to prepare our meals.
Cost:
$40 minimum registration deposit, $80+ suggested donation. The registration deposit covers basic costs of retreat (mostly food), but does not reimburse any of the facilitators or organizing team’s extensive time spent preparing and facilitating this event, which is offered in the spirit of service to our community. Please see the note on Dana (donation) at the bottom of this page for more info and do contact us if this amount is still beyond your means. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.
Do reach out to either of us with any questions you may have. Please note that at times either or both of us are out of contact guiding in the backcountry. If one of us does not respond please contact the other and we ask for patience if we are both in the field.
Anticipated Questions:
I attended Winter’s Wild Soul last year, is there any point to coming again or have "I been there, done that?”
Short Answer is "yes," and for two reasons: First, we are continually evolving our craft as guides and constantly refining our retreats. There will be new practices and experiences in this iteration of Winter’s Wild Soul, and changes to the structure that we believe will support a deepening of experience. Second, and more importantly, these retreats are designed to meet you wherever you are in the river of your life. None of us are the same person who showed up to this retreat last year, and these practices will support us, wherever we are, to come closer to our deepest, most true self. Spiritual and Soulful ‘retreats’ are not one-off experiences we consume but rather sanctuaries that we return to time and time again to rest, rejuvenate and re-orient the compass of our lives. We trust that coming to our retreats more than once has the same potential for growth and healing as the first.
I went to your last retreat (Nectar of Soul), how is this one going to be similar or different?
Yup, this is our original offering in our “Seasons and the Soul” Retreat Series and, as the title suggests, it is intended to be more aligned with Winter versus Spring’s energy. What this means is more gathering ourselves inward and coming back to the communal hearth following the heightened pace and dispersed wandering of summer; meditative stillness, quiet and reflection, with opportunities for us to intentionally sow the seeds we wish to see sprout in spring to come. What’s similar is the general structure where we first settle ourselves in a long period of silence before stepping into soulcraft practices. The main two guides/facilitators (Joe and Deer) are also the same (with guest facilitators to be announced).
I want to attend but I have a scheduling conflict that won’t let me do the whole thing, can I still come?
Most likely not because it would disrupt the flow and communal container. It’s possible you could miss the first night on Friday if you arrived before our early start time on Saturday, but please talk to us if that is the case, otherwise it’s unlikely you can attend.
I want to come but I have a dog or dogs, can they come?
This has been a tough one for us, as we love animals. The short answer is: probably not and best to find a sitter well in advance. If we know the dog already and know their temperament, it may be a possibility but please talk to us.
You aren’t asking much, but I don’t even have that and really want to come?
No one will be turned away for lack of financial offerings. Talk to us. There are myriad ways of energetic exchange that we welcome.
More about Joe and Deer:
Joe and Deer met in 2018 in the Indian Himalayas at the Dharmalaya Institute for Compassionate Living, where they spent weeks together on silent retreat, earth-building and land-tending before journeying out on Yatra (pilgrimage) into the high Himalayas with their ecologically-minded meditation teachers. This pivotal time in both of their years of spiritual/soulful wandering sparked a soul friendship that has continued and grows deeper as they begin to offer their experience to others.
Joe has around 10 years of experience essentially living as an unordained monk in Europe, India, the Middle East and the US–living, working, serving and practicing in Buddhist and ecological communities, with weeks and months of the year spent on silent retreat. He endeavors to embody compassionate service for the human and more-than-human world in simple as well as more 'radical' ways–including within the Israel/Palestine conflict, refugee camps, forest rehabilitation, prison systems, leprosy colonies and coal mining protests. His primary Buddhist teachers are Christopher Titmuss, Nathan Glyde and Zohar Lavie. He has organized yatras in India and Europe and been steeped in the Animas Valley Institute’s work since 2020, working directly with Bill Plotkin and other guides.
Deer is a writer, poet, dream-worker, and senior wilderness therapy guide with about 8 years of dedicated meditation practice, particularly in the Vipassana tradition, and has spent many days and weeks in mostly silent retreats around the world with both traditional Buddhist monks and contemporary dharma teachers–with other mystic traditions worked in. He trained in nature-based practices and eco-psychology at EcoDharma in Spain with Rupert Marques (School of Lost Borders guide/trainer and meditation teacher) and has been participating in programs,trainings, and leaning into his own offerings as a Soul Initiation and Vision Quest apprentice guide with the Animas Valley Institute for over 4 years, working alongside Bill Plotkin and his soul guide mentors. He also pays homage to that which he learned from the Kogui people and Mamos of the Sierra Nevada de Colombia, whom he worked and occasionally lived with during his time with the Amazon Conservation Team.
A note from Joe about Dana (Donation):
Both Deer and I have benefited enormously from the Buddhist (and more generally Eastern) practice of offering spiritual/soulful teachings and opportunities to practice them on Dana (Donation). That is, the teachings are freely offered, without a price, and those who receive the benefit of the teachings freely offer support in return to the 'teachers', practitioners and institutions that keep these wisdom ways alive and available for all. How this translates to my life personally is that in my pivotal wandering years from when I was 23 to 30 I was able to attend numerous meditation retreats led by deeply experienced teachers with no financial barrier to access. Retreats were offered on donation (or at times with a minimum cost to cover expenses) with the trust that participants would support the teachers and practical needs of these sacred gatherings with the monetary resources and personal labor they were able to offer. Those who could give more did, and those who could give less were not turned away.
Deer has benefited similarly from this generosity-funded world and we both feel deeply committed to a vision where transformational teachings, practices and opportunities to gather in the service of soul and spirit are available to everyone in our community. The minimum $40 registration fee ($80+ suggested donation) reflects this commitment. It will cover the basic costs of the retreat, including food. It does not fully reflect the potency of this offering, the experience, time and care we are bringing to it's crafting or the ongoing resources required to continue our own soul/spirit journeys and develop our capacities to facilitate these spaces for others. We ask those with the financial means to offer more to do so, to support us and the ongoing offering of these community gatherings.
We care deeply about this work and we hope to see you there.