Tracking, Tending and Questing in Community
Methow Community Ceremony ~ A Story of Belonging
by Scott Davidson and Darcy Ottey
Methow Valley, WA - Through the seasons into Summer
by Scott Davidson and Darcy Ottey
Methow Valley, WA - Through the seasons into Summer
Belonging grows in reciprocity and needs to be well-fed. Otherwise, the centrifugal force of industrial growth society, as Joanna Macy calls it, continues its self-perpetuating work of isolating and disconnecting us from ourselves, each other, the earth, and the Divine.
A dear friend in a painful life transition humbly asked for support, “Darcy, can you help me? I am in a big transition. Will you help me create a ceremony?” So began a wide and wild circle of belonging offering healing beyond one life and one town. Maybe a truly homegrown, community-supported ceremony is the truest feast for the soul, real healing for the ancestors and those still to come.
May it be so for all people and places calling each other home.
A dear friend in a painful life transition humbly asked for support, “Darcy, can you help me? I am in a big transition. Will you help me create a ceremony?” So began a wide and wild circle of belonging offering healing beyond one life and one town. Maybe a truly homegrown, community-supported ceremony is the truest feast for the soul, real healing for the ancestors and those still to come.
May it be so for all people and places calling each other home.
When Christina Baldwin, an elder quest guide, circle holder and author, invites us to simply “ask for what you need and offer what you can” as an essential community practice, our deeply secret stories of belonging begin to unravel us individually while re-weaving our being into a collective. This work runs deep in often unseen ways.
In response to a friend’s time of personal challenge, we offered a series of monthly councils in folks' homes leading up to a community supported four-day ceremonial fast, followed by an incorporation council and ancestral feast. The wounds at the roots of deeply seeded individualism, colonization and capitalism lay heavy in the bones of each of us - which calls for a collective healing response whenever possible.
Where am I from, and where do I belong?
Who are my people, and what am I here to do?
These questions guide us into deep grief and great thanks for life, knowing that these steps are contributing to collective healing in these times and bringing even more beauty in this life.
We invited this friend and others who all live in the Methow Valley in north central Washington State: let’s gather in ceremony as best as we can as settlers on stolen Indigenous land, honoring our own ancestors and ancestral traditions while working to transform their legacy. As part of the ceremony, let’s explore how we can collectively take steps to build deeper relationship with peoples and ceremonies of these lands and give back in some way. We saw our coming together as an effort to build our community of culturally-responsible, land-based ceremonial practice, honoring seasons and cycles in our lives and world, toward greater healing for ourselves, our peoples, and this beautiful watershed we love. One friend became many ready to cross a threshold in their home watershed with prayers for healing and wholeness in all directions. Sown seeds began to sprout in very fertile grounds.
As we circled monthly in community (in person and via Zoom in these covid times), we reached out to Indigenous peoples of this land, sharing our intentions with leaders and elders, vulnerably asking for permission to be in ceremony with their homelands. We reached out not just to ask for what we felt we needed in this year but to truly get to know each other over time, to re-imagine and co-create a future together in reciprocity for many years and generations to come. We were willing to humbly accept a “no” if that was the response. The connections and responses came slowly, a soft allowance, seeds sown for ongoing tending.
In response to a friend’s time of personal challenge, we offered a series of monthly councils in folks' homes leading up to a community supported four-day ceremonial fast, followed by an incorporation council and ancestral feast. The wounds at the roots of deeply seeded individualism, colonization and capitalism lay heavy in the bones of each of us - which calls for a collective healing response whenever possible.
Where am I from, and where do I belong?
Who are my people, and what am I here to do?
These questions guide us into deep grief and great thanks for life, knowing that these steps are contributing to collective healing in these times and bringing even more beauty in this life.
We invited this friend and others who all live in the Methow Valley in north central Washington State: let’s gather in ceremony as best as we can as settlers on stolen Indigenous land, honoring our own ancestors and ancestral traditions while working to transform their legacy. As part of the ceremony, let’s explore how we can collectively take steps to build deeper relationship with peoples and ceremonies of these lands and give back in some way. We saw our coming together as an effort to build our community of culturally-responsible, land-based ceremonial practice, honoring seasons and cycles in our lives and world, toward greater healing for ourselves, our peoples, and this beautiful watershed we love. One friend became many ready to cross a threshold in their home watershed with prayers for healing and wholeness in all directions. Sown seeds began to sprout in very fertile grounds.
As we circled monthly in community (in person and via Zoom in these covid times), we reached out to Indigenous peoples of this land, sharing our intentions with leaders and elders, vulnerably asking for permission to be in ceremony with their homelands. We reached out not just to ask for what we felt we needed in this year but to truly get to know each other over time, to re-imagine and co-create a future together in reciprocity for many years and generations to come. We were willing to humbly accept a “no” if that was the response. The connections and responses came slowly, a soft allowance, seeds sown for ongoing tending.
We offered ourselves fully as guides, not with a program or a price but with an invitation for fasters to consider what they could generously give in reciprocity, directly to these lands and waters, to the First Nations peoples that are still here and to us as guides to support our work in this season and the seasons to come. There was no guarantee there would be enough and yet our practice was to trust that all needs will be met with this prayer. And they were, with surprising abundance and care. Every formative step and choice of this emerging ceremony was with community support, from the group camp kitchen gear and borrowed off-road vehicles, to synchronicities and unseen help. Magic was clearly at play here.
Bumps in the road disappeared each time we chose to listen to the third, that relational place where 1+1=3, the generative synergy of true partnership. Sure I have good ideas and you do too, but when that trusting loving creative place between us speaks through, new pathways open up that are often free of bumps. Voices of ancestors and future generations, as well as the lands themselves have space to speak through us in exquisite partnership.
Bumps in the road disappeared each time we chose to listen to the third, that relational place where 1+1=3, the generative synergy of true partnership. Sure I have good ideas and you do too, but when that trusting loving creative place between us speaks through, new pathways open up that are often free of bumps. Voices of ancestors and future generations, as well as the lands themselves have space to speak through us in exquisite partnership.
Family and friends and community folks brought smooth river stones borrowed from the banks to the public park send-off ceremony as gifts for us to bring to basecamp, which then formed our threshold circle. Parts of the river valley came up the mountain with us to hold a special space, then returned to those beloved waters as we returned to our people.
In the weeks before, two folks stepped out of participation to tend to family matters, sadly and respectfully. Then they each leaned strongly in to help hold the community send-off and reception. Such gifts in surprising ways, each of us doing our part in this sacred family of beings.
In the weeks before, two folks stepped out of participation to tend to family matters, sadly and respectfully. Then they each leaned strongly in to help hold the community send-off and reception. Such gifts in surprising ways, each of us doing our part in this sacred family of beings.
We completed this ceremonial arc through four seasons with an incorporation council and ancestral honoring potluck feast, simple and meaningful from our home. That night we also realized who to extend these gifts to and how, with 20 percent of all money gifted to us guides given to three local indigenous-led organizations with whom we have varying levels of direct relationship.
In our times and world today, Belonging is often not so well-fed, perhaps even starved in many of our lives. We give thanks for the nutritious and nourishing feast, and what becomes possible as we let this bounty fully in.
In our times and world today, Belonging is often not so well-fed, perhaps even starved in many of our lives. We give thanks for the nutritious and nourishing feast, and what becomes possible as we let this bounty fully in.
Darcy Ottey (she/her) is a cultural practitioner, facilitator, and co-director of Youth Passageways. The descendant of Quaker settlers, British coalminers, and Ukrainian peasants, rites of passage have been part of Darcy’s life since her youth. Darcy’s first book, Rites and Responsibilities: A Guide to Growing Up, was recently published by Lost Borders Press.
Scott Davidson (he/him) is a wilderness rite of passage guide, wildlife tracker and cultural repairman who has given his life to community stewardship for more than 20 years. A son of North Sea ancestors and born on Ohlone homelands, he now stewards the sanctuary of Three Creeks in Payahuunadü, in collaboration with Nüümü Paiute peoples and Beyond Boundaries, currently in a process of returning land and water back to Indigenous care.
Scott Davidson (he/him) is a wilderness rite of passage guide, wildlife tracker and cultural repairman who has given his life to community stewardship for more than 20 years. A son of North Sea ancestors and born on Ohlone homelands, he now stewards the sanctuary of Three Creeks in Payahuunadü, in collaboration with Nüümü Paiute peoples and Beyond Boundaries, currently in a process of returning land and water back to Indigenous care.