I consider myself trained by spirit. 
My validity is in my dreams, my authenticity is in my bloodline, and my authority is in the recognition given to my work by human and other-than-human beings. Sometimes I mistake my experience for lofty wisdom. Then I meet someone who truly is a mountain and I recognize the modest scale of the foothills I inhabit.
In 1972 I asked all of nature to come and teach me. I stood on the edge of a great chalk cliff that fell away into endless space, and embarrassed my companion by flinging my arms wide and calling, “Please! Please! Let me be your student. Come and teach me!” Spirit was not embarrassed. I felt invited to sit still, pay attention, and listen. This is still our teacher-student relationship through my many years of practicum and now graduate courses in nature school.
My training with spirit shifted to another level when I left my career in Art Education to become a frame drum maker on a remote island off the north coast of British Columbia, Canada. From the drums I learned to trust the wisdom of direct experience; the subtlety of tension, the discipline of perseverance, and the knowing in the hands more than in the mind.
One evening I sat with a newly dried drum, its naturally patterned surface illuminated with candlelight. I gazed into the surface as one might do with clouds on a summer’s afternoon. Gradually shapes took on form and startlingly began to move. A story unfolded—one image transforming into or leading to the next: bears emerging from caves, skinny men falling down holes, bodies disassembling to reconfigure as something other. This has ever since been my relationship with visions from spirit. I watch a surface, and images emerge like the contour of a landscape does when the sun melts through fog. Creatures move, lights appear, stones speak.
These lessons of attention, valuing, discipline and the training of vision without judgment became the tests whose mastery led to the creation of the Journey Oracle cards.
