Reflection on a decade of guiding: from ‘wilderness solo’ to ‘sitout’

'Alone, alone, you are not alone', whispers the stone

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2021 will mark the tenth year I have been guiding people out on the land through Leaves of Lien. But, my ‘wilderness solos’ are fast disappearing with the dimming light of winter, and with the returning light, I’ll be welcoming home an ancient indigenous European tradition – the sitout.

'It is not wilderness.' Me and my friend, who is a well-known ancestral skills teacher, both turn silent. Outside, the blue hour gives the snow its characteristic in-between haze. The Arctic evening is falling rapidly. The woman speaking is a Sámi elder who comes from a traditional reindeer-herding family. She spent much of her life on the tundra tending to the animals in the elements. And she tells me this landscape isn't wilderness. I don't dare to interrupt to ask what it is instead. As she continues talking, my unsolicited answer arrives anyway. 'You can choose to go and sleep out there for the night, then come back. We do not have that choice. We belong to the land.'

The land is home.

It has taken me years to understand both the significance and the inconvenience of this truth. Today, ‘wilderness’ is defined as 'a tract or region uncultivated and uninhabited by human beings'. Such a place can easily become exotic, exciting or even hostile. Wilderness is not somewhere we belong, it is somewhere else. It is seperate from us. Consciously or otherwise, by speaking of ‘wilderness’ we are reinforcing a colonial notion that places us at a distance from both nature and place. It can unwittingly hinder the extent of our (re)connection with our earth body when we step over the ceremonial threshold.

Hearing voices

Between you and me, I had already dropped 'wilderness' from ‘wilderness solo’ a while back. Those who have been following my work will recognise that I simply offered 'solos'. Surely this was an apt description of the experience of going out alone on the land ? Alas, no. I have awoken to how loaded even the ‘solo’ is. Ask anyone who has consciously been out on the land and they will tell you they found themselves in colourful company. If anything, out on the land, the more-than-human world pierces through any illusion of our own solitude: The river sings to us in many voices, the birch tree watches us with a thousand black-and-white eyes, the dark snake from last night's story slithers by. 'Alone, alone, you are not alone', whispers the stone.

In ‘sitting out’ we end up bathing in the diversity and abundance of relationship. We are felt, we are witnessed, our intention is tasted. And there is a basic exchange in all this – a trade. We do not go out in order to receive clarity, strength or direction merely for our own benefit, but in order to give of ourselves. In the old stories this reciprocity is a common thread. There is some old contract in place.

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High & holy

From now on I would like to invite you to sit out. This phrase might not hold many glamorous promises but in its simplicity it describes your one task. It comes with an action, even when it is as potentially boring as sitting. The Lakota ceremony, hanbleceya, we know today as a 'vision quest' (a term coined by western anthropologists in the 19th century) translates as 'crying for a vision'. Even though the ‘vision quest’ type ceremonies westerners hold today might have little resemblance with the traditional Lakota ceremonies, they do have something essential in common: during our time on the land, there is still something for us to do. Namely, to make known to the spirit world how serious we are about our undertaking and how willing we are to surrender.

There is another reason why I am going with ‘sitout’ from now on. It salutes my European ancestors and their intimate connection with the land. Ancient Germanic sources, such as the Edda and the Icelandic sagas, refer to utiseta. This was a practice involving occupying a high and holy place, such as a burial-mound in order to gather wisdom (if this sounds morbid to you then keep in mind that pre-Christian European culture had a strong tradition of honouring of the ancestors and that death was very much considered part of life). Although we don't know exactly what they were doing, the elements of going out alone on the land suggests utiseta is a trail to follow if we want to respectfully create a contemporary ceremony rooted in our own traditions.

ldco


Are you called to sit out? The 2021 dates are to be announced soon. Click here if you want to be among the first to hear about them.

Inspiration

Thanks to Linda Wormhoudt for her seminal work and wealth of knowledge around utiseta and seidr. 'Seidr het Noordse pad. Werken met sjamanistische sporen in noordwest-Europa.'

Thanks to mythologist Martin Shaw and to my fellow myth students.

Thanks to Pinar and So Sinopoulos-Lloyd for queering up the work


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