Hi my dearest people,
it has been a while, the last three weeks were a bit crazy & I did not have the mental space to write.
In short: I did a week of rewilding in the middle of the forest, no electricity, no warm water, no phones, no time, all while bleeding due to my period.
The day after I came back, my dog had surgery & teeth extraction,a week long diarrhea, then I went to a work trip to Finland, basically painting 24/7 :D
I felt like sharing the rewilding week with you today by speaking, it feels easier since its more emotional & I think it makes for a better connection.
So today, I leave another voicemail for you. But for those who would rather read, below I will add the transcript, so you can read through it instead :). Just be aware: the transcript is spoken words that have been transcribe, it might read a bit weird :D
Love,
Daria
Transcript of my voicemail:
Hello everyone.
The last time that I sent something to you, it was a voicemail as well and it’s been three weeks ago and I finally managed to get back to Substack again. The last three weeks have been a little bit crazy. I’ve been on a one-week rewilding trip where we basically lived like back in the days in the forest: without electricity, no hot running water, sleeping under tarps, washing ourselves in the river. So it was completely disconnected from our phones, from time. It was one of the best experiences that I’ve had in my life.
I came back the day after I went to the veterinary with my dog to get x-rays and she had a surgery. 13 teeth got extracted, which caused me to be basically thrown back harshly into the reality of life compared to the week before, where I was completely disconnected.
It caused me to cry a lot, all the things of grief and having a bad feeling and, you know I’m conscious about all kinds of things and being a bad dog mom and all that stuff which was not quite reasonable. Then it took her a while to recover, she had diarrhea for five/six days, meaning I had to get up several times in the night to let her release herself and then it stopped.
I then went to work trip, to a scientific conference in Finland. It was for the scientific journal that I’m working with and I thought I’d like to use that time for me as well and create art. So we decided that I would create personalized merchandise for people there, asking them for their favorite plants and drawing/painting them there.
It was my first live drawing event and it was crazy and awesome and then I just came back this week and the next day after I immediately went to the vet again which is one and a half hour drive, to have a checkup with my dog. Everything is fine and the next surgery will be scheduled in two to three months.
I really did not have emotional space to write. Even though I really like to write, I painted a lot these last days, weeks, everywhere I went.
I just wanted to share all that with you. And I actually wanted to share this experience in the wilderness as well. I might actually write about it too, but just for today, it took me also a while to digest it and I’m not really sure if I have digested it already. And I’m completely unsure, you know, how to say… if I internalized it because it was, as I said, it was six days where we were completely disconnected. We didn’t even speak about time. We were 19 people, 3 people that were organizing it, we had ecologists there, we were doing restorations of the river, of the forest and the area between the river and the forest.
We had many introspective moments, walks, games, plays, conversations. We were divided in three groups and we had rotating responsibilities of taking care of the fire, cooking and also the washing and the water. We knew exactly where we were supposed to. We lived close to the river on a little hill.
We knew where we would take the water that we cook with and drink. And then further down the stream, we would bathe. We had sessions with ecologists where we would go through the river and look through different types of species, turn around stones. We built trout beds. We learned how to do friction fire.
We built our own fishing rods from material that we found there every day, we collected wood to have firewood to cook, we had a brunch and a dinner with snacks in between, we had a lot of interesting talks and conversations around the fire, lots of introspection, lots of sharing, lots of vulnerability.
Each one of us was allowed to bring gifts, any gift that we want to share with people, so sometimes there will be Contact improvisation or another dance. I made a painting/drawing session. We had an eco-poetry session. We had kulning, singing. We were singing and dancing and playing music at the fire.
It was beautiful. And there were many moments where… that were very meaningful for me. I actually got my period in that time. And I asked before one of the organizers how to do. So I got the material I was supposed to get, cotton pads. And I got my period on the second day.
In all my life of having my cycle, that one was the most natural way of how everything happened and how….I generally have a very unproblematic cycle. It’s regular, all is good. I don’t have PMS and stuff. But it felt like that’s the way it’s supposed to be. I would wash myself in the river.
I would swim with others. All the fears of, you know, what if blood starts running out, down my legs, everybody sees it. Nothing happened. It was like my body... It was like completely in tune and one with the nature around and so was I and with everybody around as well.
It was a beautiful experience to bleed in the forest basically. There was no shame around nakedness. We would all go jump into the river naked, wash ourselves, swim around, get out, get dressed and continue. We walked around barefoot, you know, after two, three days, I felt like none of us was able to get rid of the dirt underneath our nails. We had, you know, it was this kind of really immersing ourselves into what it means to live in the forest, drink from the stream, the only hot water we had when we would cook tea in the pots above our fire.
We didn’t actually have tea. They recommended us also to not have tea or coffee. And we didn’t have any tea, like in the sense of tea leaves, but we would collect spruce branches, anything we would find. We had some ginger as well, we would eat local food.
It was all gluten and Lactose-free, local fruits and vegetables from an organic farm. We had wild boar, moose, fish. We had a fridge; digging basically the moose and the fish into the soil and covering it up and it would hold cold for several days.
We carried fire by using the timber mushroom that we activated in the fire, then packed it in sphagnum moss and carried it to the next spot and start the fire again, which was amazing.
When we did some fishing, several people of us caught fish and they were killed. We were thanking the creatures of giving their life to feed us. And then we had to, of course, open them and clean them. And during the whole procedure, I was just crying. It was so emotional for me. I was never able to do that.
And I’m just very glad that there is people that can handle animals’ death in a respectful way to provide food. One of the most, like maybe almost creepy thing is, that the fish were dead for half an hour and then we took care of them and took out all the organs and the heart was still beating after 20 minutes lying on the floor of the forest! It was just lying there and still beating. The fish was dead. The organs were removed and the heart was just alone lying on the moss. And that picture is something for me that’s gonna stay with me for a long time.
And I realized at some point, that I haven’t seen myself. I have brought a little mirror, like a hand mirror to see if there’s anything you know in case something happens in my eyes and stuff but I’ve actually haven’t seen myself, my whole body the way I look.
I washed myself and all the time there was no problem with hygiene, for none of us, but then you know… and I used soap and the river as well but I never bothered about “Do I have greasy hair or not?” “What do I wear, how do I look? Is my hair in order?”
None of this because I haven’t seen myself these six days. It was crazy. I still don’t know what time we woke up. When we had our eating sessions, we were woken up with a drum and self-made instruments. And it was a beautiful experience.
And I, in the toilet also, like the toiletries, there were certain rules, you know, if you want to do number one, peeing, pick a tree. Pee there, because everywhere were blueberries and of course we also picked blueberries. So we knew, don’t pick the blueberries next to the tree because the likelihood that somebody peed there is high. Number two was on the other side of the road that we arrived.
We had to dig a hole, poop inside of it, cover it and then take two sticks and make a cross on top of it so people would know that there’s some poop there. And instead of toilet paper, which we could have used, we had Sphagnum moss.
I mean, I can recommend anybody to at least once in their life try to poop in a forest and use Sphagnum moss as toilet paper! It’s much better :D. I mean, seriously.
So all of that, there was lots of retrospection, lots of... introspection and moments in silence that were deliberate; where we would cook in silence, walk in silence, not speak. We had several nice ceremonies, tea ceremonies or the last ceremony, wishing the river all the best, that we tried to help with doing all the restoration work we did.
I felt at peace at all the time and It was such a meaningful experience and I actually wish everybody to experience this at least once in their life. What it means to live far off with none of the modern luxuries that we have. We need much less than we think.
So yeah. So that’s what I wanted to share with you today. And if you have any question around it, let me know.
And I feel it’s a, you know, it suits a little bit better to speak about it because I, yeah, the words, trying to find the words, how I felt or how I feel about it, what it also did with me afterwards, is very difficult, whether it’s in writing or in speaking.
But I felt a lot of peace and calmness and quietness. And I didn’t feel like seeing people afterwards. But I wasn’t exhausted by people, by those that were there. On the contrary, that was a very good experience. So yeah, that’s this. And I hope I’ll be able to get back to writing.
Or maybe I will leave it at this little podcast. I don’t know. I... There are so many things I’m thinking about and I want to do and change. So it might be a little bit irregular here for a while. I hope that’s okay. And yeah, that’s it for now. Thank you so much for listening.
Love,
Daria
