Darren Silver - The Importance Of Direct Connection To Nature

All right, Darren, welcome to the mantalk show. How are you doing today?

Doing well. Thanks for having me on.

Yeah, pleasure to have you here. And I couldn't remember when we jumped on the podcast who had connected us, but it was a former guest and a friend, Michael Gay, who people really loved some of the conversations that he and I have had. So I feel like there's probably merit in having him back on. I've been thinking more and more lately about this notion of the responsibility that we as men in our current times, that we as men have always had, but specifically right now, within our current times, the responsibility that we have to discuss openly some of the challenges that we see happening within our world, within our culture, within our societies, and to kind of have a level headed approach. Because I think a lot of the discourse that's happening specifically amongst men is very charged. You know, it's very polarized, it's very, you know, in one camp or the other. All of that's to say I've been thinking more and more about gathering good men in groups to have conversations that people can listen into. You know, kind of like a campfire style conversation. Anyway, all of that said, I'm going to begin with how I always begin, which is tell us a story about a defining moment in your life that made you who you are today.

As I say with that, there's, there's a few of them. The most significant defining moment.

Was when I went to New Jersey and studied at the Tracker School with Tom Brown. And at that time I was 20, so it's nearly 20 years ago. His school focuses on wilderness survival, tracking, awareness, philosophy. And that first course, the standard course is really physical skills like entry level survival, shelter, water, fire, food, tracking baskets, flint napping, et cetera. And at, and at the end of it, the last two days, Tom got into the more philosophical side of things and he asked the class and it felt, and it still feels like he was asking me directly. He said, what's your vision? And are you willing to give up your dreams to follow your vision at 20 years old, that, that question just penetrated me so deeply and it really began the journey of, of ask, continuing to ask that question, what is my vision? And he asked a few other questions like if you know what you want, why wait? Or something like, if you had 24 hours left to live, would you be doing what you're doing right now? And he, he really just penetrated so deeply into me and that began, that began a quest. Interestingly, I got exposed to Tom Brown when I was like 12, 11, 12, something like that, by a camp counselor. He took me out at siesta hour and started showing me edible plants, a little bit of tracks. And at the end of those two weeks, he said, hey, I learned this from a man named Tom Brown. And so I've continued to study with Tom since then.

Very, very cool. Very cool. I mean, I just. It's interesting because a couple sort of threads that got sort of tugged on there. Like, my wife and I just moved last year to a property that we bought where we built a home in upstate New York. And there's like 5.2 acres of land, and then behind us there's just hundreds of acres of land. It's been wonderful because as a child, you know, I was in Boy Scouts and all that kind of stuff, but I found myself. All of my sort of formative moments as a young boy were out in the wilderness, you know, just out in the. In the backyard, exploring at the lake, you know, going. Wandering off into the bushes. And I found this kind of renewed sense of connection with nature in the last little while, especially as I've had a son, you know, I have a boy that's turning two next Monday, actually. And so I found this kind of richness of myself wandering off into the forest and also taking him and prepping to take him camping and all this kind of stuff. And so it's interesting to hear you talk about being so young and learning about these things. Why do you feel like that's important? Why do you feel like. And is that a male specific only thing? Or do you think that there's benefit in both men and women as young boys, young girls, venturing off into the wilderness and learning some of these skills and learning to be in the sort of womb of nature, as one might say.

Mm. Yeah, I do think it's important for everybody to have that connection. And, you know, just looking on a physical level, we're wired. We evolved in relationship with nature, so we're wired to have this connection. And if we don't have that connection, and I feel like we're not occupying the fullness of ourselves or really occupying where we are. When I observe most people, they're. They're not really where they are, they're somewhere else. There's so much as. As you spoke, there's so much inspiration, awe, wonder, curiosity that can emerge from a connection to nature.

Can you say more about that? You know, when you. Because I agree with exactly what you're saying, but I think maybe for people listening, they might be like what do you mean by that? You know, that people aren't necessarily where they are. They're. They're there, but they're not there. What do you mean by that?

So it's really interesting we're having this conversation and I'm looking out my window and a hawk flew up right in the tree, right in front of, right in front of me. So cool. All the magpies are freaking out about it. How do I enter into this? That's such a tough question. Where I go with it actually is, is like a broader context.

Into the realm of vision. For me, like vision emerges from, from an ecology of relationships. Most of the time what I observe is people either have those ecology of relationships just between humans or just within themselves. And so to have an ecology of relationships with place turns on a certain capacity in us for vision then to emerge. And for example, the land where I live, there's cottonwoods, there's a red tailed hawk, there's chokecherries, there's the creek right over here. And, and having, you know, a relationship with, with three or more elements of place actually.

Gives it enough complexity that I inhabit it. I don't know any other way to say it. If it's just one thing, if it's just the pine tree out there, then it's not enough substance to actually get into to, to feel. The communication happening usually takes three or more. There's a dynamic communication that occurs. So that's really important for all of us because I feel like we all came into this world with something to give. Something that if we don't do it, if I don't do it, if you don't do it, it's simply not going to happen. You know, like I go into power when people are really interested in power. To me, empower is, or power is the amount of relationships that you can increase with place. And that's where vision naturally wants to, to, to come up from. Because nature's always expressing what is always. That hawk is nearly always going to behave as a hawk. Cottonwood is nearly always going to behave as a cottonwood. Us humans, we can fool ourselves all the time. So when we get immersed in a context which is always expressing what is, it's naturally going to draw out who we truly are.

It is interesting that we as human beings seem to have this unique capacity that is constantly drawing us and pulling us towards falling asleep with regards to our own nature and our own relationship to nature, you know, and that seems to be amplified very much when I actually, I misrepresented what what you said, because when I heard your initial statement, how I sort of took it, was that we're not present to the moment because we're so often distracted by technology and to do lists and all of the sort of normal shit that we have to deal with on a day to day basis. And so I took your initial statement as saying not simply that we're not present to the place that we inhabit within. Within nature and within our surroundings, but that we're not present to the people or the environment that we're in because we're somewhere else. In the sense that we're distracted.

Yeah. So how do those two things interplay for you? The notion of distraction moving us away from maybe a connection to our inherent place or our inherent environment?

Yeah. At the tracker school, they call it the demon of distraction. There is so much information playing out all the time in the natural world. Like to be bored out there is. It's kind of sad because there's so much happening all the time. So what I often find is we're, we're addicted to information. And when it, when it comes to.

Let'S just say, put it in the context of decisions, oftentimes people either need more information to make a decision or courage. And we, we. We don't have much courage most of the time. And so there's this, this constant addiction to like needing more information, but to actually just go out and, and sit for 20 minutes in nature most of the time for people, it just requires courage and to like, to. To slow down the desire to like, need more. And that plays into for me a conversation of initiation and rites of passage. As Martin Prechtel would say. Something like, are you willing to become the breast and no longer be just looking for milk? And it's a metaphor, so it's not quite gender specific. It's like, are we able to be generative as opposed to needing more?

Yeah, yeah. I think it's interesting. I mean, I've been diving deep. Oh boy. His name is now escaping me. He wrote Smoke Hole.

Martin Shaw.

Martin Shaw. Thank you. I had Martin Shaw on the show, I think last year, and I had gone into his work, read a couple of his books and really loved it. This sort of notion of myth and nature and the sort of calling of the soul and the importance of story. But one of the things that I really liked, and I think you're saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like what you're saying is that when we allow ourselves to be immersed in nature, that it Sort of strips away the natural distractions and what we're left with is ourselves. And this sort of natural relationship to ourselves becomes much more glaring. You know, I think it's why people go to things like vipassanas or go to vision quests is that we, we know that the rigors of our day to day life and the to dos and the kids and the businesses and the careers and the bosses, all of those things can slowly sort of constrict our capacity to see who we are or to allow the emergence of what is trying to come forward of who we are to naturally come out. So is that roughly what you're saying or how would you reword that in your own expression?

Yeah, I mean that, that can be the case. I think we're often destination oriented as well. So one of the most amazing awareness exercises that can take place in nature is to follow a four year old. You know, to follow as opposed to saying, oh, we gotta go somewhere right now or you have to do this. But to let them lead in that place of curiosity and I get the pressures of day to day life, we just have to discipline ourselves and carve it out. We have to carve out time to foster that connection or that relationship as we do with any other relationship.

Yeah, it's interesting what you're saying. My wife and I have a practice of bringing our son out onto the land and then just, just walking around with him. Right. Letting him lead the way. And it was funny at first because I think our natural tendency was to like, okay, we're going for a walk, we're going to go down the driveway, we're going to get out onto the dirt road, maybe we'll go through the, you know, the forest and the woods and whatnot. You know, there's very specific paths that we take. But then when we just sort of followed his lead and watched him explore, I mean we just, we went all kinds of different ways, you know, it was nonsensical and we're sitting on trees and going underneath the bush and I mean it was really, it's really a beautiful experience to, to do that. And so we try and do that, you know, at least once a week is just on the weekends take him out and plunk him in in the middle of the forest somewhere. And then we just, we just follow him, you know, if he wants to climb or what, what have you. And it's what I find fascinating is I can see this like snarling sort of addict in me that's just like shouldn't you be doing something. Don't you have emails to get to? You could be using this time to create content. Right. So don't. Did you email back that client? Right. So, like, all of that chatter initially, the first sort of like five, ten minutes of doing this exercise with my boy, I can feel that part of me, that sort of, like, locomotive of like, do, do, do, do, do, do do really manifesting heavy.

I don't.

I want to come back to this, to this conversation, because I don't want to go too far down this rabbit hole. You said something that I really wanted to be the basis of our conversation and, and have that kind of be a segue into your. Into your work, which was the masculine is influenced or impacted by culture, and the feminine is impacted by nature. I was hoping that you can maybe just start by unpacking what you mean by that. That the masculine is impacted or influenced by culture and the feminine is impacted by nature.

Well, I. I go back to. To rites of passage. Um, and if we just look at the initiatory process of. Of intact cultures, the time of a rite of passage or initiation into womanhood for girls was biologically informed. When their moon time came, they were brought into the initiatory cuts, if you will, and taught what was needed to know by the elders. For boys, it was different. It was when they started to exhibit certain behaviors. Overly competitive, deeply possessive, started to want to court. Those type of behaviors indicated that it was time for initiation. And it was usually a bunch of boys that happened simultaneously. 5, 10, 20, 30, at the same time. And so how I really define culture is the reflection or a mirroring of place. Place being the earth, being a place where the people live. And how I work with that is the earth is a feminine quality. And so to be informed and be initiated for boys was to learn structures, language, relationship with place that reflected the feminine quality of the earth. So culture, in a way, I mean, I don't know how to say this, like, kind of crassly, but it is kind of crass. I believe that men need.

A certain external structure that informs them of how to be in relationship more so than women. It's not like one or the other, but more so. And so when I look at culture today, it actually does the opposite of what its place was for thousands of years. For all of us, no matter where we came from, was to be in relationship with nature in a way that perpetuated its life. The exact opposite's happening right now. We're extracting, pilfering, possessing at a scale which is just terrifying, actually. So to have culture to be initiated into, that brought people into and brought men into a physical, emotional, spiritual relationship, taught them how to be here and be supportive of life. It's like imagine being inside as opposed to outside. Like having an intact culture. Is being inside the earth in some kind of way as being born out of the mother's world into the great mother's world.

I've heard it described. The way that I've sort of come to understand it is like knowing that you're a part of that. You're an intrinsic and inherent part of that ecology of the Earth, of life itself, of nature, versus this kind of outer version of it, you know, that you're somehow removed from it or outside of it. And I think what's interesting about what you're saying is this notion that rites of passage for young boys and for men brings us into an understanding of the culture of the place that we inhabit, the culture of the village, the culture of the tribe, or whatever that might look like dependent on where you are. And what initially strikes me as very challenging is that it seems like, especially social media, something like social media has made it so that nobody really feels anchored to a place any longer, you know, because you don't necessarily have to. You can feel at any given moment connected to anywhere on the planet and any person on the planet based on who you can be in touch with. And that's. That's a very specific kind of disorientation, you know? And so can you just speak to that a little bit in terms of how that might skew our ability to connect to place as men?

Yeah. Well, it's a false sense of participation. It's like we. We think we're in participation by, let's just say, a social media. Looking at a waterfall in Hawaii. We actually think that we're participating, but we're not.

It's, like, hollow.

It's completely hollow.

It's. I started to interject again, but I've sat with this more and more and more to try and understand this, and it's. And it's. The only way that I can describe it is that it feels to me like it's lacking in some kind of vital nutrient that my mind, heart, soul, body require of being in the place versus that sort of illusion that I'm there experiencing it.

Mm. Yeah. You know, when. When I make a fire, not all the time, but a lot of the times, an outdoor fire, I use a hand drill or a bow drill, so fire by friction. Um, if I'M starting a fire in a wood stove or something, I usually don't. What I've noticed with that is I have direct contact with fire. I don't necessarily create it, but my hands and, you know, my work helps facilitate the creation of fire. So there's the. The degrees of separation between me and fire are very minimal. When I'm driving down the road with my car, if I'm heating up, you know, water for tea, fire is still there. But there's so many degrees of separation that I'm not able to find that pure and simple communication with fire. Whereas when I. When I do it with a hand drill or a bow drill, the degrees of separation are so minimal that I'm actually able to be in communication with that, with fire. And when that communication and that relationship is formed, one, if someone has never had made it, had never made a bow drill, fire encourage you to do it because something lights inside that. That never goes out. But also there's there. There's spiritual truths that come through being in direct relationship and reducing those degrees of separation. But it also, like, it's not uncommon in intact cultures that we learned about how to be humans through our connection, connection to nature, healthy attachment. It's not uncommon that that was learned through our relationship with place, with a river, with a tree, as you mentioned. I don't know if it was right before we jumped on about being a kid and going out and playing outside. I had that too. When, when people come and do work with me, it's like, did you have a place that you like to go when you were a kid in the forest? And nearly everyone was like, yeah, there was that big rock or that stream, or there was that tree that had that knot in it that looked like a face. And it freaked us all out. And that is a place where we can form attachment, healthy attachment. Fire is a great one because it's living. It requires a relationship. So, you know, the degrees of separation. Like, how can we reduce the degrees of separation with all that we're participating in? If we're looking at a waterfall in Maui, there are so many degrees of separation in that it's like we're not going to get anything from that other than a. Than a fantasy.

I like the analogy with the fire. And it's interesting because when we moved into the house that we're in right now, part of what I wanted to do, you know, we were talking about just getting all this stuff for the house and. And my wife was like, well, we'll probably need a barbecue. And I was like, you know, I don't, I don't know about that. There's like, there is this sort of separation that comes along as you're talking about with that, with that, with that nature. And I wanted the sort of old school cowboy style of cooking, you know. And so I managed to find something that acted as a fire pit outside, but doubled as a quote unquote barbecue. Right? So it's a fire pit that has a grill on it that I can build a wood fire in and then cook, you know, our steak or chicken or vegetables or whatever, whatever it is. And I've used it a number of times now. And it takes more effort. Certainly, you know, it's a lot harder. I gotta start, I gotta chop the kindling, I gotta, you know, gather this stuff to, to light the killing on fire, blah, blah, blah, blah. But there is something so much more rewarding about it that is almost indescribable. If I cook a steak on a cast iron over the stove versus cooking it on the grill over top of a fire that I built, there's something inherently rewarding about it that just is very hard to describe, I think, to people that maybe haven't experienced both. And so I love this notion that you're talking about of, of almost like removing, maybe not removing, but being aware of the degrees of separation that have removed us from simple things in life and, and to find opportunities to reconnect to the relationship directly, whether it's to the waterfall or the fire or the, you know, cooking a meal or what have you. I want to loop back on this notion of the masculine being influenced by culture because I feel like there's something there that maybe we haven't gotten into. Tell me a little bit more about this relationship between the masculine and culture. Is there something that the masculine, like, is it about power? Is it that the masculine likes to shape culture? Is it that culture is influencing the masculine? Like, what is that relationship? I'd like to flush that out a little bit more.

Yeah, it's. It's tricky because it can go like, real. I just want to say to the listeners, like, it's not fixed. This is a. An exploration in, in some way, it's my ponderings, it's things I chew on. So if we look at the female body and its power to, to create life, us men folk don't. Don't have that. We participate in it, but we don't have it. We cannot create a baby inside of us. So there's. There is a certain cyclical flow of the female body that is that inherently internally is bound to the fecundity of the earth.

Ooh, good word.

Us men folk, we're like, what does bind us? What does bring us into participation with life in that way? That's like that element of. Of culture. And so then it's like, what. What capacity do we have to bring life? And if we look at a lot of initiatory processes of old cultures, there was often some type of sacred wound inflicted upon the boy or the man. To do what? To draw blood. You know, so it's. It's something that. That we're learning how to participate in. The female body naturally does that drawing blood is a type of indebtedness to create life. And so the wounding involved. You know, I spent some time in Africa and. And of course, in North America with indigenous people. There's. There's this wounding that draws blood. It's an agreement to be part of creating life in a different way. And so. Yeah, I'll pause there for right now. Is that fleshing it out a little bit more?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's our role in, like. There's this great quote by Richard Rohr that I've talked about a couple of times where he says, unless a man is brought on a journey of powerlessness, he will always abuse power.

And so I think in some ways, what you're talking about is bringing us into contact with some of what our inherent powerlessness is as men. That's sort of baked into the fact that we can't carry child or produce life in our bodies, which is such a wild thing in and of itself. And so there's this natural kind of degree of separation that I think we as men can have in understanding the sanctity and the fragility of nature and life itself. And that we can take that for granted. And so that maybe the culture in the way that you're describing it, and maybe. Maybe I should have you actually sort of define the framework of how you. Or just sort of define how you view culture. But it's almost like culture becomes the avenue in which we can see our relationship to nature. Yeah. And we can see our. Our relationship to life.

Yeah.

And, you know, that makes sense. You know, I think when I look out of the world today, that sort of shows up with, you know, guys being obsessed with politics or. Or money or the economy or, you know, gender politics or whatever it is. It's almost like this attempt to try and connect to something larger and broader than themselves. So. Yeah. Am I Am I sort of coming close to what you're saying? And then maybe secondly, could you give a little bit of, of a definition of the territory that you're describing when you, when you use the word culture?

Well, just to, to go back a little bit. In my work with men, it's not uncommon that a phrase that I hear is I just don't feel like I'm enough. Just don't feel like I'm enough. Good enough, strong enough, make enough money. It moves through men in a lot of ways. And just to put that through the lens of a culture that could teach us how to participate in this incredibly abundant earth or one that is constantly extracting. It's not surprising to me that men don't feel like there's enough inside of them if they're informed by culture and participating in a culture that is constantly devouring in not enoughness. So the way that, you know, it's why reducing those degrees of separation and participating can, can soften those edges so much. Or hunting, going out and hunting and like doing this thing that we've done for such a long time can soften those edges of not enoughness. I like to find the simplest way to define things. And so let me see if I can find another way to just to, to define culture. But it's, I said it before, like the, the mirroring of place, the, the structures which mirror the place upon which a people live. Like if, if we look at, in, even in North America, like a lot of nature, native cultures, they'll, they'll know, they'll hear the stories, the mythological stories since they're children, about why there is, why beaver has a flat tail, why moose hangs out in water, why there is so many tipi poles in the tipi. But when the time of initiation happens, all of a sudden those stories expand tremendously and they provide a mythological context of which to be in relationship with the whole of life. You know, a lot of anthropologists when, when they tracked a lot of these stories, they got the four year old version because they hadn't been initiated. And so, yeah, it's that type of depth of participation in a road I can go into. I like that where it leads us today. But maybe we'll go there, I don't know.

Yeah, I mean, I like that notion of culture is reflecting, is a reflection of, of or mirroring of the place and an emergence of the stories told there. The land that's there, the environment that's there, the people who inhabit it, the traditions, the rituals that maintain that relationship to that place. One of the most. My grandfather was a very interesting character. I'll just preface what I'm about to say with this. He was a very interesting character. Fought in World War II, was born in Scotland, came to Canada, grew up in, in Saskatchewan, which is like the center of Canada, which there's, there's not a lot of people there. There's not a lot going on. It's farmland.

Yeah.

Nobody really wants to be there. Right. But I remember as a young boy, one of my favorite memories as a young boy is that whenever they were around, I would wake up first thing in the morning and I would go and run into my grandparents room whenever they were visiting and I would go jump into bed. And my grandfather would tell me stories about the animals that inhabited the land that we were on.

Oh, wow.

And so he would tell me stories about the moose and he would tell me stories about the bear and the wolf and he would, you know, he would just sort of tell these stories. And I didn't know it as a child. I was obsessed with it. Right, right. I loved it because there's all these characters and they were going on these journeys and, and I had almost forgotten about it until I found myself doing this with my boy. It makes me, it makes me emotional to actually just talk about this. But yeah, I started to, to have all these memories of being, you know, sort of like laying in bed or out on the land with my grandfather sitting around the fire and him telling these stories of these different animals and, and you know, their existence and them going on these journeys and them relating to one another. And I think that in, in many ways, as I've started to tell some of these stories or make up my own stories for my boy, you know, even though he doesn't, he's. He's just starting to speak and so he doesn't. I think he kind of gets it, but, you know, it's. It'll probably make more sense for him later on. But I think one of the things that was really valuable is I started to see the gift of those stories. Helped me really understand nature in a very different way and helped me understand not only my relationship to nature, my place in nature, but also the relationships of nature, you know, and that was fascinating because I didn't see that anywhere else. I wasn't getting that from my dad. I wasn't hearing those conversations. I didn't see that on tv, you know, and so it was very interesting that he did that. And I don't know if he did it intentionally. But it was just such, such a gift because I was hearing all these stories of the beaver and the moose and the wolf and you know, them going on these journeys and their relationships to one another and, and it was, I find it wildly fascinating as a boy. Yeah. But as we're having this discussion, it's like, oh yeah, I was learning about the place that we inhabited because he was a man who was so, I mean, he grew up on the land, right. He was a farmer, he was a hunter. You know, he would go and hunt elk for their dinner. You know, they raised cattle and, you know, pigs and stuff like that. And so I think it was just a very different connection. So anyway, that, that sort of story emerged out of our conversation as we're piecing together the masculine's relationship to culture and how culture is a mirror or a reflection of place. So hopefully that helps the listener start to get some more of a description or a real felt definition of what we're talking about. Do you want to add anything into that?

Your grandfather was born in Scotland or he's.

Yes.

Oh man. Yeah. So he, he was carrying, carrying a long lineage of, of that type of relationship. It's really, it's really powerful. It touches me too to hear that story.

So how do we, how, how does the average person. Let's, let's just maybe take a left turn into your work or school vision quests. Because I'm curious, you know, I think people hear a lot about, you know, this, this type of stuff and it's, I think it's hard to contextualize the value of it or the importance of it or I think we're in a very consumer base. I think that the therapeutic industry and the self help industry has become very consumer based. And so when people look at, even when people look at like coming out to our men's weekends, it's like, well, what am I going to get from this? And my response is almost always, well, what if I can't describe to you what you're going to get? Do you still want it? And, and so I'm, I'm a little apprehensive of, of even trying to like, what are people going to get out of a vision quest? Because I know it's the wrong question, I really do. And so I empathize with the terrain that we're about to traverse here. But tell me a little bit about the value of this work and what are some of the things that transpire on a vision quest and really who's it for? Because I think One of the things that I think is important is that I've come to the learning that it's not necessarily for everyone all the time, that sometimes there's sort of specific moments where people are called towards this type of. Of experience. So I'll just open the door for you to. To do with all of what I've said, as you will.

Yeah.

Without a re. Without a real tangible question in there.

Yeah. Well, I appreciate just recognizing the clunkiness of. Of. Of that, you know, of like, what will you get? And it's. It's. Yeah, I appreciate that A lot of, you know, it's. It is vision. Quest is such a powerful ceremony. Some form of. It took place in nearly all cultures around the world. And it. The way that I approach it, it is really important for someone to feel called. Um, the calling has to be there because otherwise it can be dangerous. People aren't going to make it through there. There has to be a sense of a calling or a connection to the calling inside. And, you know, to speak about distraction, the way that I do it, you know, the. The heart of the experience is four days and four nights solo with water and very minimal gear. The first two days can be brutal because everything is screaming inside for something to. To fulfill our attention. And after that, something else happens, something else happens. And this isn't always the case, but sometimes the case that it's some form of the trickster that gets us there. Like, I need to go there to work on this. I'm going there to mark this in my life. Or. And then day three, all of a sudden it goes, oh, wow, that. That was just the bait to get me here. And, And. And this is what it's really about. And it's often something incredibly simple. Healing, an epiphany, a sense of wholeness dropping into the core of ourselves. Often happens like lightning. And so simple. So what I've noticed people really come away with is this centeredness inside of them that's. That is. That's un. Unshakable. Or. And they. And the thing is, is they don't really know it. Like, people will often call and go, so is there plant medicine involved in your programs? And I may say, yeah, but it may be the juniper and the ponderosa pine and the soil and the tall grasses. Like, it's a slow drip. You're not going to have a psychedelic experience. If one has a plant medicine experience, they come away and go like, whoa, I was blasted off into the cosmos in some way. Quest is very different. People have really don't get how far they go until they return.

And they come back and go, whoa. My sensitivities, my sense of perception and perception, how I define it in the context of a quest, is that which you're seeing is also seeing you. And when that happens, there is so much communication. All of a sudden, the whole forest is listening. You know, there's. There's so many stories I could. I could. I could tell of men and women going out and having just the most profound experiences of communication with the natural world. I mean, there was. Can I tell one of those stories? We have time.

Please? Yeah. Please?

Yeah. There was a young woman that went out on a Quest, probably 26, had been a model since she was 13. And simultaneously since she was 13, she hadn't been able to sleep at night. Terrified of the night. And so, I mean, I'm a little nervous about her going out on her own and do my best to prepare her. The first couple days that we're out at base camp, and I'd wake up in the middle of the night, you know, know, in. In their base camp, in their tent to take a pee or something. And I would see across the meadow, like, her light on in her tent, and I'm like. I'm feeling it. And she goes out, and this is someone that's probably walked the Runway a hundred times. And she's literally. Literally tripping over her own feet as she goes out to her quest area. She goes and she sits down, and she has a beautiful tree that's. That's kind of defines her quest area. About an hour and a half in, on the first day of four, she hears something 20ft in front of her, and she looks out, and a bobcat comes out from the bushes with two. I can't remember, it was two or three babies. And they walk right in front of her, and they all stop, and they look at her, and then they keep going. And she's filled with so much awe, power, and inspiration and strength by this experience. And they move on. And at this particular. This was in northern New Mexico. I mean, everybody before they went out saw one or two bears. There's bears everywhere. But she was fearless with that. Just moved right through. And about an hour later, she's leaning against the tree and she has her eyes closed, and she's in. She's, like, in a prayerful state. And she. She hears a twig snap next to her, like, right next to her, and she opens her eyes, and she, like, begins to scream. As she looks to the right of Her. And as she connects, it's a chipmunk that at that point is 3 inches off the ground, screaming for its life, too. Chipmunk hits the ground, runs into the bushes. She's like her whole, you know, nervous system is firing, and she's like having to breathe and. And something hits her. She goes, oh, my God. My whole life, Since I was 13, I've been thinking I was that chipmunk. You know, I'm actually a lot more like that bobcat now. Just that moment, just that she was fearless the whole time. Um, she felt horrible about terrifying the chipmunk, but the consequences. Afterwards, I talked to her six months or. And a year afterwards, she was no longer afraid of the night she slept. The dark didn't terrify her. Like there was something that shifted where she was able to find something in her that she no longer identified with being, you know, this little tiny chipmunk, which I love chipmunks. But it was more of that bobcat that was more accurate reflection of who she was. I mean, there's so many stories like this. Yeah. Yeah. I kind of. Kind of went into story land. So there's a. There's a simplicity to it. Tom Brown will say the vision quest is. Is like a sledgehammer killing a fly. I mean, it's just. It shatters. It shatters so much. My job is to prepare people for that. And then when they return, really give them the skills and the tools to return home.

And really be able to. To live. What. What came up for them?

What's the sledgehammer and what's the fly?

Cause I think I like the. I like the. The analogy. It's funny, A mentor of mine once pointed out that I have a tendency to. To use a tank to kill a mosquito in my life. He said, you know, there's this thing about you that for whatever reason, you seem to like to bring out a bazooka or a tank to try and kill a mosquito. It might not need that. It's like, oh, yeah, that's probably true. Anyway, so what's the sledgehammer and what's the fly in this? If we could. Yeah, we'd just see if we can do that.

That's a great question. That's such a great question. The sledgehammer is life. And the ceremony, I've never experienced that. That is wielded by our own strength out there. It's the whole of life. The fly is all the bullshit that we think is important. It just gets. It just gets smashed.

Perfect.

Yeah.

Such a good Such a good descriptor. And I think, yeah, I mean, it's interesting because I've gone and done a number of these things over the years. And whether it's plant medicine, whether it's. I mean, I guess probably seven years ago, maybe. Oh, lordy, maybe more than that was my first sort of foray into it where I packed up some equipment and I was living in British Columbia at the time. And there was a lake that I had wanted to hike to, and it was a four hour hike from the parking lot out to the lake. And it was, I think it was April, March or April. And so it was still quite cold. But I ventured off there solo for five days and I did three days of fasting and just water. I mean, it was wild. It was wild how it just sort of coming back this, you know, the bullshit that you're talking about, coming, returning from that and just being like, oh, that's that stuff that I was fretting about doesn't matter. And this stuff over here that I was obsessing about is so insignificant that it's ridiculous, you know, and like. And the, the laughter started to emerge, you know, out of, out of how easy it was for my mind to get caught up in that before, you know. So I appreciate that description. Talk to me a little bit about the Earth School. What is that? What's the Earth School? Yeah, what's the sort of the mission? I know you talk about empowering the genius within. I think this is an interesting thing to talk about because I've noticed more and more of these things starting to come up. I've had Stephen Jenkinson on the show who has his own form of this, and Martin Shaw has his own form of this. So talk to me a little bit about what this is from your side.

Yeah, the greater school. It emerged out of two.

From two kind of experiences. You know, I've been guiding in the wilderness and started with wilderness therapy with teenage boys and then about 10, 11 years of guiding quests. And one of the experiences with is people come down and they go, hey, man, like, this is so powerful. I want to learn more about this. I just want to drop into this more. I want to learn from you, from. And I want to do this, but I have my own vision. I want to learn something. So that's one experience. The other one is people coming down and three months later going, man, I was so with it for three months I was with my vision and it just eroded away. Life caught up to me. The demands of life were overbearing. Or I didn't have the skills to bring it into my relationships, or I didn't have the skills to form it into container that can hold my vision, whether it's a business or a podcast or a training. And so hearing that mostly past like three or four or five years over and over again was enough for me to say, okay, I'm ready to provide that. To provide a container where one can really develop the skills to bring forth what emerges in the context. Because vision is talked about so much, it's got so many different names, but the lens that I see it through and in relationship with vision is. Is different than I've heard it spoken about. And so to create a longer duration of time where people can really develop the skills to bring it out into the world is. Is what the greater school is all about. Yeah. And so it starts with the physical, then goes into the wilderness and the relational and then leadership. And there's elders involved because I need a bunch of elders to keep my ass in line on. And you and me, both personally and, and for the school that. They're there. Yeah, they're there. So it makes me really happy.

Beautiful. Well, Darren, thank you so much for this very fruitful conversation. This was. This was fun. I feel like the. The gods of conversation led us into some. Some good areas today. If people are wanting to learn more about you and your work, obviously we'll have the. The links to that in the show notes. But where would you recommend people learn more about you? Where should they follow along?

Yeah, going to my website. It's great. Darren Silver, Earth. It's a good one. I am on social media, on Instagram, DS Silver. Not on there so much, but the website's really great. Yeah. Ways to. To see the work that I'm up to, to connect with the great Earth school, to connect with me. Yeah, I'm really grateful for, of course, for you, Connor, for having me on. And then if the listeners have made it this far, thank you for listening.

Awesome, brother. Well, thank you so much. And for everyone that that is out there listening, don't forget to man it forward and share this podcast episode with somebody that you know will enjoy it. And that's it for today. Thank you so much for joining us. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.