We hope that you found deep beauty in this week’s solstice. The Earth’s seasons and shifts offer us the space we need for reflection, for action, for meditation, for connectionβ€¦Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ 

Access this newsletter in our online archives

Dear For The Wild Community, 

We hope that you found deep beauty in this week’s solstice. The Earth’s seasons and shifts offer us the space we need for reflection, for action, for meditation, for connection.

As a team, we’ve been dreaming together about all that For The Wild has been and all that it might be. With this, we want to share several offerings of gratitude and reflection as we ready ourselves for 2024.

End of Year Update

In the spirit of the solstice, we are taking a pause from our regular episode schedule. We’re also taking the time to express our immense gratitude for the wonderful community that makes For The Wild possible – our lovely team, our community of guests, our Patreon community, and our listeners all over the world. The past year has been one of beautiful synthesis. We released over 40 new episodes, and it is incredible to see the conversations, actions, and connections that have been sparked by For The Wild.

Tune into this update for some messages from our team, reflections from Ayana, and updates on upcoming projects!

A message from our Co-Director, Erica Ekrem: 

β€œHello For The Wild community, I’m Erica Ekrem. I currently serve as Co-Director and have also nourished For The Wild through many seasons as graphic designerβ€”bringing calm beauty and a rooted visual language to the website and socials, the growing archive of zines, and a new, tangible vein of print and audio journeys we’ll be sharing in 2024. I hope these visual poetics have inspired you to delve deeply and be held in Earth’s generous embrace.

Alongside For The Wild, I’m nourished by the living library of land that continually instructs and guides me closer to natural rhythmsβ€”spiraling me into co-creative practices, nudging me to lean into the trouble of these times with humility and reciprocity.

Thank you, For The Wild community, for being here with us. Your support is integral to the continuation of this grassroots anthology and I’m humbled to be among you in our ever-tendrilling story.”

New Zine:
Towards a Culture of Gratitude
 PURCHASE FROM THE WEBSITE - $15 
 GET THE MONTHLY ZINES ON PATREON - $5+/Mo 

Towards a Culture of Gratitude is our third installment in our new zine series. This zine is meant to facilitate rituals of gratitude, call forth reflection on the meaning of gratitude enacted, draw attention to the contradictions and dissonances of life as it is touched by the expanding tendrils of capitalism, and offer up prayers and antidotes for a life of appreciation. Towards a Culture of Gratitude features wisdom from Vijay Prashad, Raj Patel, Dori Midnight, Tricia Hersey, Jenny Odell, and Joanna Macy. Split into three parts, this zine first presents the realities of capitalism and inequality, then contemplates an antidote to disconnection, alienation, and exploitation in the form of ritual practice and mutual aid, and finally, rests in a practice of gratitude that may sustain us.

Zine cover art by Catherine Sieck.

To access our zine, you can purchase it on our website or you can sign up for our Patreon at The Study ($5 USD) tier or higher.

β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”

As a thanks for joining us on our newsletter, we are offering a sneak peak of Towards a Culture Of Gratitude:

An Introduction
Capturing our attention, our wellbeing, and our livelihoods, capitalism and the endless pursuit of extraction seem to eat at our souls from the inside out. How can we hold both deep gratitude for this life on Earth and a strong awareness for the troubles of this world?

How can we make the space to imagine other worlds? How can we move in ways that honor resistance? 

Gratitude Ritual II 
Altars and offerings are powerful motifs across the world. Offering up space, time, and material in the name of gratitude can cultivate a beautiful and nourishing practice. 

  1. Set aside some space. It could be in your home, on your counter, in your journal, or even in your mind. 


  2. Mark your altar. Dedicate it to something greater than yourself - speak your gratitude and intentions for this space out loud.

  3. Add objects that remind you of your gratitude for this life. They do not need to be beautiful. They need to be real. 

  4. Write down the immaterial things that make you grateful for this world. Add the list to the altar. 

  5. Write down or add objects that represent the hard things in life too. Offer the hardship up as well. 

  6. Make your alter specific to your environment. What plants, landscapes, companions, etc. make you grateful for where you live? How can you represent them on your altar?

  7. How can you carry your gratitude off your altar? How can you offer up your talents and resources to the world? Look for ways to contribute to mutual aid in the communities you are a part of. 

  8. Return to your altar when you need a reminder of your gratitude. Add to it when you feel called. 

  9. Take your altar down, transport it, transform it when it is time. Attend to what you need, what the earth needs. Let it serve you. Let it serve your calling to be a part of a broad community.

Musical Playlist
The zine also features a playlist that centers themes of grace in the face of disgrace, spinning webs amidst erosion, the right to rest, the joy of release and ease, and a moment of gratitude from head and heart.

Access the playlist on Patreon: $2+/mo >

This Month on
For The Wild
 LISTEN TO EPISODE 

SANDOR ELLIX KATZ on Cultures of Fermentation /359

β€œEvery organism exists in the complexity of biodiversity.” – Sandor Ellix Katz

β€œNo organism is an island.” As Sandor Katz reminds us in this delightful and informative episode, all life on earth is deeply interdependent. Though modern food systems alienate us from our environments and from the ways, we cannot totally sever ourselves from the environments and nutrients that make life possible.

Sandor shows that alienation and disconnection will not free us. Rather, settling into the overlapping and diverse entwinement of the more-than-human world may bring connection and sustenance in close relation to our food production. The story of humanity is embedded in our food, embedded in the daily tasks and practical measures that sustain us.
 LISTEN TO EPISODE 

The Edges in the Middle, VII: BΓ‘yΓ² AkΓ³molΓ‘fΓ©, Sa’ed Atshan, Cecilie Surasky

We perform grieving as a form of errancy, as a strain away from politics as usual, as a making space for our bodies to do different kinds of things in the world. – BΓ‘yΓ² AkΓ³molΓ‘fΓ©

Continuing the conversation series, β€œThe Edges in the Middle,” presented in collaboration with UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute, For The Wild is delighted to share this conversation between BΓ‘yΓ² AkΓ³molΓ‘fΓ©, Sa’ed Atshan, and Cecilie Surasky. 

Starting from the premise that all people belong and all lives are grievable, Bayo, Cecilie, and Sa’ed explore how honoring each other’s grief may allow us to reclaim each other’s humanity and perhaps shed light on a path forward to belonging in Israel-Palestine, for Muslims, Jews, and Christians, and for all people around the world. Bayo, Sa’ed, and Cecilie will journey into what it might be like to glimpse at the world through tears: what visions are possible when we postpone the compulsion to see everything clearly?

Journaling Prompts
for Listening
 

This past month’s episodes inspire deep questions and options for conversation.  Write with these prompts in your journal, share them with your kin, or shout them into the wild. However you engage with them, we hope they offer a moment of pause, respite, and imagination.

THEME: Interconnection

  1. How do you use consent as the baseline upon which to build in your relationships?
    –from BETTY MARTIN on the Language of Consent

  2. What seemingly compulsory aspects of our world do you refuse to consent to? How do you hold firm against the sway of society?
    –from BETTY MARTIN on the Language of Consent

  3. How feel into your connections to those across the world? How do you situate yourself within the global pursuit of liberation?
    –from The Edges in the Middle, VII: BΓ‘yΓ² AkΓ³molΓ‘fΓ©, Sa’ed Atshan, Cecilie Surasky


  4. How does grief connect you to others?
    –from The Edges in the Middle, VII: BΓ‘yΓ² AkΓ³molΓ‘fΓ©, Sa’ed Atshan, Cecilie Surasky

  5. How do you see the impulse for purity showing up in your life? How can you welcome in generative collaboration, connection, and interpolation?
    –from SANDOR ELLIX KATZ on Cultures of Fermentation

  6. What more-than-human organisms (and micro-organisms!) make your life possible?
    –from SANDOR ELLIX KATZ on Cultures of Fermentation

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Gratitude
Giveaway

This month we are excited to partner with Katydid Hill for a giveaway on our Patreon. Katydid Hill offers 100% Pennsylvania grown herbal teas for rest, pleasure, and connection. 

We are giving away 3 gift boxes complete with ~ 3 herbal teas, a hand thrown ceramic mug, a wooden tea nest, and a herb bouquet notecard.

To enter–

  • Follow @for.the.wild and @katydidhill on IG

  • Join For The Wild Patreon community and comment with how you’re celebrating the solstice on the Patreon giveaway post


The giveaway ends December 26th, and we will choose 3 winners on the 27th! 

Please note that given the nature of the items, we are only able to offer this giveaway to those living in the United States.

About Katydid Hill
Katydid Hill is a farmer owned herbal tea apothecary where we are committed to growing 100% of the herbs in our teas and elixirs on our hillside farm in central PA. Chamomile is our favorite crop to grow around here, and we specialize in crafting the most aromatic and flavorful cup of chamomile tea you’ve ever had. We believe that the flavor is the medicine and craft each blend to delight, uplift, or simply meet you where you are at. 

Katydid Hill is co-owned by Katelyn and Ben, partners in love and farming, and grew out of our devotion to the land and creating space where tea is shared. Pour a cup with us!

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Support Us
on Patreon
 JOIN OUR PATREON 


Join us on Patreon for a library of deeply-rooted resources.

In an effort to continue this work and support our small team we would deeply appreciate your support. As a grassroots, independent media producer, listener support is one of our main funding sources. If you have found value or meaning in our offerings, please consider making a one time donation at forthewild.world/support or by joining us on Patreon at patreon.com/forthewild. 
FOR THE WILD

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