Grateful for Existential Grief .. and few invitations

I went to the high mountains recently for what was meant to be a fun day of backcountry snowboarding at a time, mid March, that is normally peak snowpack.

It was forecast to be 85 degrees down in town - the 3rd time in a week that summer-swelter record-breaking heat was upon us before astronomical Winter even ceased.

And as we turned the last bend up to Cameron Pass, at 10,452 feet in the Northern Colorado Rockies, my brother and I both gasped…

The Snow was gone.

I left that day of non-snowboarding with a felt sense of I-want-to-puke style dread.

Upon returning to town, where folks were parading around local parks, in t-shirts, shorts, with picnics and frisbees strewn about like it was a freakin’ summer holiday - I noticed something else: the river has risen, significantly.

Run-off.

An event normally reserved for late May/Early June with peak run-off being usually around the Summer Solstice.

Peak run-off is forecast for a few weeks out (mid-April).

By August, the rivers may be dry.

And that feeling, of existential grief - it’s stuck with me.

And I’m so grateful.

I’ve known for a long time that we Anthropocene humans are royally fucking up our home. But amidst the glimmer of my iPhone, the drama of our politics, and the difficulty of my own survival dances - it’s been easy to not feel it.

Too busy is capitalism’s ultimate tool to veil its destruction.

So to finally feel the grief and dread - in my bones - as horrible as it is - also feels like a relief.

Like the Earth is finally lifting the glare of my own gaslighting, and not-so-gently waking me back up to remembering: things are not ok.This feeling only gnaws and tears at my soul when every day we’re spending 1 billion dollars to drop bombs on the Middle East, adding heat, inflammation, and unnecessary death to this planet, burying ourselves deeper into perhaps irreversible collapse.

And so what to do?

Above all, I think we need to gather, and feel, share, speak, wonder and grieve, together.I’m reminded of a song by Ahlay Blakely, (who recorded a whole community-choir grief album (which I’m on), in which she shares:

You do not carry this all alone / This is way to big to carry this on your own.

In that spirit of not carrying our grief alone, I am pleased to announce that I am part of offering a Community Grief Ritual at the REVEL Convergence gathering this summer in Colorado over July 4th weekend.REVEL is a culture-making event, that’s more of an experimental interwoven web of workshops, dances, rituals, than it is a festival. It’s put on by my dear brother, Spencer Jacobson, and his organization Dance Meets Tantra, and it will be a really mature, eros-positive, grief-literate, anti new-age BS type of gathering. It’s kind of like going to a deep-dive retreat, but with less hand-holding, but perhaps even more support, creating what I surmise will be a deeply transformational experience at way less cost than a high-level retreat. This event will be intimacy focused and an amazing place to meet new friends, lovers, colleagues (and kick it with me!)

And I have a discount code you can all use.

Get Tickets Here and use the discount code: JOHNW at check-out.

Lastly, I’ve revamped my ancestral divination offering, which continue to be such high impact healing spaces, this work having up-leveled my life and many of others I love, precisely because it’s drawing on power/insight/medicine from the Ancestral/Spirit realms.

It sounds rather far-out, but is actually as ancestrally-to-the-bone and grounded as healing gets. Years in, and I’m kind of wondering/laughing at why so many western peoples try to solve their issues from just the prisoned interiorization of psychology.

I’m booking out through Spring.

Find out about ancestral divination and book here

I’ve a got a long-form essay series on my recent sojourn supporting an indigenous buffalo hunt coming later this month. Keep your eyes out.

Until then,

John Wolfstone

P.S. In May, we will resume our normal office hours and have regular monthly events thereafter.