When Once I Was Alone in the Woods with a Wild God

Aka how to say yes to what's hunting you.

I went out to the hazelwood,
because a fire was in my head.

—William Butler Yeats

Cernunnos by Emile Corsi, 1912

Greetings the Dangerous Potential in You~

Some seasons have such intimate names. It was being-dreamed-by-Bear season for me. My mother had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and had been given eight to eighteen months to live. She lived just the eight, and it was during this cavernous, heart-wrenching passage that Bear’s visitations began.

In truth, my mother’s illness, while at the very center of my unraveling, was not the half of it. My life as I’d known it was simply crumbling, in many and nuanced ways. And beneath it all flowed a river of awakening to what I really longed for, who I really am. I was beginning to catch glimpses of my true self out of the corner of my eye, but they were vague and I was terrified. 

So Bear came to me in the night, chasing me. And I’m doing the thing they say not to do… running from Bear, desperate to get to safety. Each time, it’s my husband who saves me. He grabs my hand and takes me into one shelter or another in the nick of time. And yet, each time, he tells me there’s nothing to fear. As gently as it can be put he highlights my overreaction. But I don’t believe him. 

The dream repeats three times. Between these dreamings, I pull the Bear card three times. A card I had never pulled before then. 

tanjand.livejournal.com

So much was happening in my heart at that time, it’s difficult to put to words. It was an immensity. I longed for a lost aliveness, just as I was tasked— out of nowhere— with letting go of my beloved mom. I wanted to be in love with the world again, and to be loved back. I wanted to touch my power, even my own essence, more than anything. I wanted to know my place in the world. But it was all swirling in my mind like stardust soup, and the mind is no place for such ordeals.

Soon after the Bear dreams, I’m in the Mt. Hood wilderness, in waking life, a few dozen miles outside Portland, Oregon where we lived at the time. A stunning place, home to Bear and Mountain Lion, Trillium and Snowmelt River, Oak and sweet-scented Ponderosa Pine. I’m on a wilderness immersion and over breakfast, we’re invited to share our dreams. Nervously, I share my Bear dreams with one of the guides, a woman who would become my dearest and most important mentor. 

I could feel her way of listening deep in my bones. I wasn’t sure I’d ever been listened to like that. It was unnerving and exhilarating. She guided me into the dream. She invited me to stop running. To turn and face Bear. What else could I do? I tried it.

Bless Our Mess, Etsy

To my surprise, when I did, Bear stopped running too, stood up in a kindly, endearing way, and frantically started looking around for whatever it was I seemed to be running from! She was simply trying to catch up to me to deliver a message. She had no idea what I was running from, and neither did I. Clearly, step one was to stop running, then turn and face one’s fear. Still, Bear was not inclined to give me her message right then and there. Only to note it was not she who was chasing, but I who was on the run. A message enough… but there was much more.

So my mentor asked me: Would you be willing to go wander in the woods today, on Bear’s terms?

Would you be willing to tell Bear you’re ready to listen, to hear her message, come what may? In a culture that tells us we ought to do everything on our own terms, and as safely and tidily and rationally as possible, imagine my longed-for wonder and terror. A mystical kind of relief washed over me. To admit: I don’t know what’s happening to me. And there are forces trying to help me. And I keep running away. To imagine: I am not the only one in charge, and thank god because a moment more of living my life that way was sure to kill me. 

Nevertheless, the choice lay there like a wedding proposal, across the cool, summer-morning air. With every chance of being stood up and at least a small chance of being devoured alive and never heard from again, I said yes…

John Bauer, Poor Little Bear, 1912

I wandered for a while amidst the dappled light and shadow of a thousand Oaks, listening to the Land and praising her Beauty aloud, as I noticed more and more the feeling and sound of her deeper song. I came to a place where my body slowed and I felt I had reached a portal place. A place in which to make my intentions known. So I said aloud, and loud enough for Bear to hear:

Bear Mother, Bear Sister, Bear Grandmother… I see you coming to me in my dreams, to tell me something. I have been running from you but I am not going to run anymore! I am ready to hear your message, and on your terms! If you don’t feel this is the time, I accept that fully. But if you want to meet me here, in this wood today, to give me your message, I am ready to hear it! To greet you, however you choose to appear. I am here and I am open. I am all yours!

Silence answered back, and the call of a lone insect in the summer heat. I kept walking, the aroma of an occasional Ponderosa Pine sweeping my mind clear from time to time. After a while, I reached a crossroads. The trail I’d been walking along reached a T at a wide path.

I stood unsure which way to go, listening. I noticed a very thin deer trail directly across the wide path from me, and decided to take this road less traveled. A few feet into this path, I detected a clear change. I had left everyday reality a ways back, when I’d declared my intention and stepped through the portal. But now, I found myself suddenly deeper in. 

The hairs on my neck stood up, and instinctually, I began to walk much more softly and slowly. A kind of self-possessed sacredness arose in the atmosphere around me. To be a quiet presence in a wood may be our simplest offering these days, so I did that. Just as I was settling into this more sensual interrelating, creeping playfully along, as if I hadn’t invited a Bear to meet me… it happened…

THUMP THUMP, THUMP BADUMP… leaf-scatter, branch-crack, heavy-breath. I had startled a very large animal, mere feet from me yet hidden by the thicket. I stood frozen to the spot. Heart in mouth. Jaw clenched; eyes wide. This is it. I can’t yet see who it is, only that it’s very big and that in my gut I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt: Bear has said yes today, too…

Last week, I asked what kind of lover you are. This week, I wonder~ have you ever fallen in love with an other-than-human being? Have you ever felt utterly captured, body and soul, by a place or tree, an expression of Wind, or any other wild Other?  Maybe it was a particular moment that enraptured you?

The answer is always yes. And yet, without a language for interspecies eroticism, or with one so limited and shame-laden, we often miss or disregard what is happening to us. Nevertheless, wild gods do walk this Earth and mermaids do swim beneath your boat, dear traveler. 

At certain times in our life, this is what we most dearly want and need… to be allured, captivated, to fall into and be filled with love’s elixir. We all come to times when Love is simply our focus, and though we try to stay-in-line and “regulate” ourselves, this need for wild love embraces us. It will not let us go. It’s not possessive and yet it will possess us… this want for more-than-human love only.

from The Visionary Art Gallery

Often when this yearning arises in us, this most basic instinct to romance and be romanced by the world, to hunt and be hunted, we mis-recognize it as a longing for a new, human love affair. We look to our old lover or a new one to satiate our thirst for holy attention, catharsis, revelation, adventure, sacred possession… and everything else in-love-ness offers.

Erotic human love is a beautiful thing, but I have found there are erotic callings that can only be sought in the wild depths within and surrounding us.

So true is this, it could be one of the greatest losses we risk in our ecocidal destruction of the wild Earth: The love affair, in and of itself, between a human soul and the more-than-human world.  

It is this love affair which reveals to us what is hidden in our own depths. It’s what shows us what we gave away, what we failed to notice about our own selves. It is a force and a dance that shows up to claim us, body and soul, in order to bring us closer to our true nature and unique path. When such a love wants us, we come undone. Things in our life begin to unravel and often what most matters to us is amplified. Delicious surrender follows. Such surrender is not easy, but it has the ingredients needed to set or re-set us on the one path that is our own. Such love affairs restore our power and humble us deeply all at once.

To deny the call of eros when she comes is understandable, in this wasteland for the heart we daily endure. To continue denying her, however, is a kind of death-by-cynicism. And the soul loathes cynicism. It will hide itself— vanish even— as soon as the grey edge of the cynic in us appears. The cure is eros. 

BRIAN KIRHAGIS

When we’re children, it’s quite natural in us to fall in love. In childhood, we experience a kind of innocent eroticism; we’re led by a nurturing, parental eros for the purpose of learning about our world and our place in it. As we grow, this eroticism serves the same end, but becomes more dangerous. Sexual, steamy, romantic…. wild beasts in the woods we can no longer outrun. This is as it should be. We’ve learned to be safe enough in the world, which in our culture is to say: we have healed enough from not having experienced fundamental safety in the world that we can let things get a little dangerous again. The best kind of danger, that is.

We may think it’s up to us to know when we are safe enough to get dangerous with our living, but in my experience, it’s the Earth, the Mystery, the Soul of the World who knows us better than we know ourselves. When she wishes to make this known, she shows up in ways that might be called initiation… ready or not! We are often— though not always— more ready than we give ourselves credit for. 

But like my wander, there’s always a choice. We say yes and cross the threshold. Or, we choose to delay the adventure… As Neil Gaiman says, “If you turn around here, you will lose no face; I will think no less of you.” But if we’re ready enough, safe enough, then we must ask ourselves: what is it at risk if I say no? 

And then, the task is to let Mystery have its way with us, in very grown-up ways indeed… intense attraction, hunting, wooing, dissolution, remembering, mating, conception, new life. Truly, the stuff of legends. Right here, in our own little lives. Whenever we hear the call.

Seconds seem an eternity, but finally I gather the courage to creep a foot to the left, where there is a less density of bush. And there, just twenty paces from me, if that, is a buck. A young but sizable buck. In my heart, he is Stag, eyes as wide and alert as my own. At first, I am so relieved. Ah, a gentle Deer, I think. The day is alive beyond compare. My heart is still racing. Instinctually, I crouch down. A kind of movement that I’d never before felt. Without thinking, I am overcome with the body-sense of Mountain Lion, who had been my utmost companion since I began journeying with a drum over twenty years ago.

Gini Chase, Cougar

I’m squatting down, like a little Simba in the grass, and I don’t know why. I don’t mean to do this. I just… do. I don’t even notice it happening in the moment. All is erotic and, out of this danger playing out of its own accord, suddenly Buck snorts. He snorts and stomps, and then… the pounding of hooves, as I see just enough through the branches he is not alone. His family is here with him. And I am Huntress. His family scatters off, but he remains, eyes locked on mine. The atmosphere has changed now. Not so friendly, yet even more romantic.

My mind floods with a best friend’s tale of encountering Elk up-close in the woods and choosing to run. An easy misstep, as I well know. That Elk chased her up a tree and proceeded to ram itself into the tree. This went on a terrifyingly long time until a ranger happened upon her, shined her jeep lights on Elk who, not without resistance, finally sauntered off with a huff and a puff and your life will never be the same again.

As if he could hear my thoughts, Buck stomps again. Snorts. I swallow and tell myself— and Bear too— I will not run. Girl, don’t run. And that is the moment I stopped running. That singular moment. The choice of a lifetime. Instead, I take one step to the left, telling this Wild God I am in his debt. I wish him no harm. Please accept my apologies, for I’ve frightened you. And also, I love you madly. Can’t you see? Please, Beloved, do not kill me today. 

Buck takes a step to the right.

Jodie Muir, Cernunnos

I take another step left, repeating my mantra in a hushed poetry only he and I and Bear can hear. Later that day, I would sit in council and tell my tale. And there, back in the safety of the village, I would let Buck charge me. And when he did, though it took several tries, I would become him— intensely female, yet wholly possessed by the soul of a wild god. I would wear the antler crown. I would accept Bear’s message, not into my mind, but into my trembling body. And tremble I did, in and out of PANic attacks as I came face to face with my own power… that which I’d been running from so long, whose seed was planted deeply, finally, in me that day. 

But there in the Greenwood of that holy moment, there was no distress. Only an aliveness so profound we have no words for it anymore other than panic, and so that is usually all it can become. Not this time. Not this moment. My beloved and I, we danced to the edge of our shared aliveness, in utmost respect… trading roles.. hunter and hunted… she-beast and he… flesh and soul. So slowly we danced apart, until he felt it safe enough to bound off into the soft, deep, hot forever.

We have never been apart since.

If you would like to dance with such mythic themes together (and the kinds of techniques which helped this important encounter to take place) in order to more deeply touch your power, self-love and sacred relationship with the earth this Beltane season, join us for:

May in the Wild Becoming Sanctuary:

Live class, dream circle, guidance session + supporting, self-study exercises. $44/month provides all this + access to the full library of past classes & exercises.

May you turn towards that which stalks you with its offering of love~

This post is lovingly dedicated to my mentor, WrenBear… wilderness guide & teacher, soul initiation guide, mistress of compassion, intuitive genius, rare teacher in the lost art of wide-awake love affairs with what one most truly and passionately wants out of life & to Bill Plotkin, for his decades of crafting beautifully wrought experiences that invite the best kind of danger to come rushing back into our broken hearts, enlivening them again…
thank you ~ Enchantress roaming the world’s wildest love stories…