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Trebbe Johnson's Newsletter
September 2008
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 Dear Questers, Friends, and Seekers of the Beloved,
The end of summer circles round again. The blueberries are ripe, and the reddening tomatoes are racing against the cool nights. Last week, in the nature preserve a mile from my house, five vision questers spent one day in intimate relationship with one place. Across the nation, the big event we're all paying attention to is, of course, the presidential campaign. Change is in the air, no matter what your personal or political predilection, and it's beckoning like the eternal Beloved of myth, urging us to embrace a greater vision of ourselves, our community, our planet.
To those who are receiving this newsletter for the first time... welcome! Here you'll find news of upcoming Vision Arrow events, reflections, profiles of extraordinary people, and stories of transformation that occur when we accept, in small, bold, startling ways the invitations that the world is always sending us.
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MOONWALKING IN THE RAIN FOREST
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 Kimberly Bostwick, a biologist working in Costa Rica, has discovered a way to make extremely high-speed films of the colorful, formerly elusive manakin bird doing its courtship dance. The fleet-footed, swift-winged little bird performs a series of moves that Bostwick compares with Michael Jackson's moonwalk.
This short video has a documentary tone that is meant to draw attention to the bird's unique form of seduction, but just as charming, I think, is seeing the biologist dance with the bird. Thanks to Kerry Brady for this.
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LOVE STORIES
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 A love story unfolds whenever one person spends intimate time alone with one place. It's a love story told by every person who embarks on a vision quest, whether a three-week camel caravan in the Sahara Desert, a ten-day quest in the green moors of Ireland or the red rock canyons of Utah, or a four-day quest with a one-day solo in the gentle hills of northeastern Pennsylvania.
Such love stories begin when a man or woman willingly settles into the one wild place that has beckoned him or her. Along with a backpack, each quester bears an entire life story: fears, hopes, desires, attitudes, and fascinations. Into this weave of self the place laces its own particulars: weather, light, contours, animals and birds, trees and dew, shadows that scare and sunny glades that soothe. Each event that the quester witnesses evokes a personal response and, because she is open and curious and willing to receive insight in unexpected ways, she lets the response move her to new events in the place, deeper insights, long-buried truths. So the encounter unfolds, and the deeper it goes, the more magical and profound becomes the conversation on both sides.
Last week, on the twelfth annual Endless Mountains Vision Quest, this remarkable love affair occurred for five questers. For example:
A woman who gave up a successful business career and has been on the road for several months, searching for her soul's work and a home community, spent hours by a stream in dappled sunlight. Dragonflies alit on her hair and clothes, birds sang around her, and a chipmunk chattered at her from a hollow log. She knew stillness, peace, and companionship.
On the way to his solo spot, a man seeking insight into his life's purpose spent hours repairing a muddy, slippery patch of trail. While his heart was asking how he could serve, his hands were doing the work of serving all the hikers who would walk this trail in the future.
A woman who was used to "tiptoeing" through life and apologizing before she spoke was upset to discover that her solo spot in a bright meadow was very close to that of another quester. Nevertheless, she spent the day beating her drum and singing, feeling self-conscious but going ahead anyway--"because I had to." Raising the voice that needed to be freed, she broadened her inner space in a spacious place.
Like any love affair, what happens on a vision quest solo is often difficult, scary, challenging, and sometimes downright boring. It has moments of ecstasy and mystical connection. It is filled with psychological and spiritual adventure. And the outcome, which often takes days or weeks or even years to fully reveal itself, is that the quester comes more deeply to love his or her own soulful self.
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THE BELOVED WANTS YOUR VOTE
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 I avoid politics in this newsletter, because people from both parties attend my programs and are my friends. However, the underlying theme of the newsletter is accepting the invitations of the world, and it seems to me that America itself is calling many of us now through the language of politics.
I am very grateful to be an American, and it always distresses me when I'm overseas and I hear Americans putting their country down out of a misguided belief that they are being frank and, by acknowledging this country's flaws, somehow rising above them. I've never heard Europeans, Asians, or Africans do that.
In recent years I've been heartbroken to see my country fall into an abysmal state: ruining relations with allies, lying to and spying on its own citizens and, worst of all, sanctioning torture. Enormous hope is surging through America now as we prepare to choose a new president. By supporting radically different kinds of candidates than ever before, it is as if we as a nation have realized our mistake and are doing our collective best to correct our course. I myself feel irresistibly drawn to work very hard for the candidate of my choice. And I realize that the Beloved is not just a personal, beguiling vision for our personal future. It is also an alluring call to embrace our country, our community, and our planet in bolder ways.
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RADICAL JOY FOR HARD TIMES
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If you heard that a nuclear waste dump was slated for American Indian land, would you assume that the U.S. government was once again foisting its most toxic programs on the original peoples of the land? What if you learned that a medicine man believed such an act to be the tribe's sacred duty to the Earth?
How would you react if you saw someone doing a cartwheel in a clearcut forest? Would you be appalled? Would you wonder what possible reason anyone could have for expressing joy in such a sorrowful place?
Guess how many superfund sites there are in America?
Answer: More than 1,300.
How many have you visited with sacred offerings?
These and other questions about creating a more intimate relationship between people and the troubled places of the earth is the subject of a new project I will soon be launching. Radical Joy for Hard Times will be writings, pilgrimages, eco-theatre, ceremony, art and attitude.
Updates to follow!
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BOOK AND WORKSHOP NEWS
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Upcoming Vision Arrow programs:
On Sunday, September 7, I will be leading a different kind of nature walk in the Florence Shelly Wetlands Preserve, just one mile from my home (also the site of the Endless Mountains Vision Quest). Instead of a guide pointing out interesting aspects of natural history, we will all walk slowly and in silence, noting what fascinates each of us. Then we will sit in circle and tell the stories of what we saw and heard and experienced.
On September 14, I will again be among the presenters at the sixth annual Wilderness Therapy Symposium at Naropa University in Boulder, CO. This three-day program features a variety of people doing incredible work geared toward healing and wholeness of people through nature. My program is called "The Hero's Epic Journey."
At the end of September I will be going on a vision fast myself, then visiting friends, deserts, beaches, and tall trees with my husband in California!
Call 570 727 4272 or email me if you have questions or would like to talk about any of these programs.
For more information about these and other programs see the Vision Arrow website.
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Contact Information
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phone: 570/727-4272
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