Rainforest Mind: Wild Therapy with Special Guest Stephen Tame

It's Rainforest Mind with me, Casper Thomson. I'm recording this intro about an hour after I finished speaking to Stephen Thame about wild therapy, which is the theme of this episode of Rainforest Mind. Stephen is a trainer on the embodied relational therapy training that I'm currently taking, or just, uh, over halfway through now. He's also a teacher on the Wild Therapy training year that follows that course. Wild Therapy, I've mentioned before, is the name of a book by Nick Totton. Nick developed both the ERT and the Wild Therapy training, but based on work by people like Reich like the Mindells, and drawing from other places as well. A few weeks ago I talked about some of my ideas about wildness and wilderness, natural world versus the cultivated world, and we touch on some of those themes today as well, including talking about wildness in urban settings. But I began by asking Stephen if he remembered a time when he felt particularly wild?

Well, what comes to mind is on the last Wild Therapy residential training, I decided to revisit a childhood memory of, of being invited to camp out with a piece of string and a piece of plastic.

How old would you have been?

I would have been, I think, around about 8 or 9, and it was— and I remembered it as being one night and being able to see this, the stars and it being quite magical. And I wanted to revisit that, and recently I've been thinking, I'll do this. So Jane and I were running a wild therapy residential up in North Lancashire, and I took my piece of string and my plastic dust sheet and rigged up a little tent And I think two things struck me about it. One was sleeping outside in the sense of not having anything between me and the grass and the trees and the river.

Yeah.

So actually waking up and not having a tent or an anything between me—

there's nothing to unzip, you're just there.

Yeah, yeah. And The other thing that struck me is how my relationship with the ground was much more comfortable than being in a tent. And I think that was something to do with, with this more intimate, more open connection with the world around me.

So you were more physically comfortable?

I was, I was, I was much more physically comfortable. And it's odd because one would expect, you know, I mean, I mean, people describe my tent as a carrier bag on a stick, which isn't, and the expectation was that by sort of half 11 on the first night I'd be back in the camping van because it would have failed and I'd have got wet. And, you know, but actually it was, it was really comfortable. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so something about trusting the processes of my body in relation to, to the environment around me. Ironically, the only discomfort I had was where I struggled to really trust that I was warm enough.

Okay, interesting.

So I was too hot, and each night I wore less and less clothing, and by the last night I wore virtually nothing and slept very deeply.

Hmm, so that was your bed for the week?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, great.

So my question was, when were you the most wild, and I know lots of people listening might— will be used to using the word wild to mean sort of crazy or out of control somehow. I know that isn't how it's used in the context of wild therapy, and that clearly wasn't what you're experiencing when you were sleeping by the river under a sheet of plastic. I wonder if we could you could pull out, so what was it about that experience that was wild for you?

Yeah, I mean, we do have this idea that wild is chaos and disorder and unpredictability and dangerous and scary, and I've been thinking this morning about how so much of the other-than-human world is very ordered. It's very rhythmical, you know, the arrangement of branches on a tree, the patterns, the spirals, the breathing in and out, the chewing of the cud, the rhythms in the sound of the water. So there was— so it was interesting that there was— I could hear the different levels of sound in the river. There were the top notes, and then there were these, all these different depths of note, and then there was this base note that was almost like a voice that kind of came in. And I was thinking about how what was physically happening was presumably a larger rock or a larger form. And, and after a while, I started to notice a rhythm in that.

Gerald May, in his book about wildness, which is the last book he wrote before he died, which I'm just reading, talks about camping near a stream and starting to hear voices in the knot coming from the water.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So there's something—

so, so it's that idea of, of, of wildness as, as order, as, as, as relationships working well together, um, as, as, as rhythm, as comprehensible.

Yeah, it makes me think of flocking animals and the sort of— I can't— they call it the safety distance with herding animals when they sort of move away from you in a field and then suddenly they're okay again. Yeah, different configuration.

Yeah, yeah.

You know what they're doing, it really makes sense. And if you don't know what the rules are, then it just looks chaotic.

And I think often the way that we make sense of it is actually if we drop into our bodies.

Hmm, okay.

You know, that our bodies know, they're familiar, they're designed to make sense of these experiences. Yeah.

And was that your experience under the sheet of plastic.

It really was. My head was telling me, it's raining, I'm under a thin sheet of plastic, I must be cold, I must be wet, the river's very close, the ground, the water is rising under the ground. My mind was busy, busy, busy. My body was feeling, well, this is lovely, I've got a soft curving ground under me and I can really sink into it, and I can see these beautiful droplets on the outside of the sheet and these leaves that are stuck to it, the lovely patterns of them. And I look out and there's the grass and there's this birch tree. Mm-hmm.

I can almost sort of see it and smell it and feel it underneath my feet. Yeah, looking. Yeah, it does sound like there was quite a split there between this sort of head narrative and the body experience.

It took, it took, I think it took a few days for my head to kind of catch up. Or to slow down. Yeah, absolutely.

So there's perhaps something about wild therapy that is to do with coming more into the body, or trusting the wisdom of the body over the, over the wisdom of the head, or as well as the wisdom of the head?

I think the way it works for me is that my starting point is head to environment, and then I move to body to environment in conflict with head, and, and then head gets kind of reintegrated. Yeah, so it's all, so it's all joined up.

Yeah, yeah.

So there's a kind of sequence of, um, of joining ups that happen.

Yeah, as the head begins to trust other, other parts of you.

Yeah, yeah, good. Yeah, I notice I'm thinking also about how this operates similarly but differently when, when we're doing wild therapy in a city environment. Yeah, so some—

can you say something about that?

Well, that in a way there's a, there's a similar process where when I initially land in the environment, it just seems like, say, in, in, in the wilder, wilder environment, there's lots of noise in the trees and what seems like it's chaotic, and then it settles into rhythms. And in the city, it just sounds like lots of noise, and then I start noticing these rhythms. So for example, the rhythm of the, of the traffic lights. So the way the traffic, it moves and then it stops.

Yeah.

And then there's a beeping sound and then it moves again. And there's a kind of— it starts, it starts to make sense in my body then. My body relaxes because it's got a sense of that rhythm. Interesting. I mean, I did experience the the urban environment as being more chaotic. It was more difficult to find rhythms with my body. It did happen. Yeah, it just, it just, it just took a bit longer, I think.

So there's something there about an experience of being in the natural world, whatever words you want to use to describe that, as somehow the rhythm sort of just being in one song, maybe.

Something about how things are all joined up, because it's a system that's largely working where the edges between the different elements are softer, where they're relationally having kind of relational conversations with each other. So there's a way in which it makes sense as a whole. Whereas in the urban environment, there are much more sort of sharply conflicting relationships. There's often a lot of tension between different human intentions and between the human and the other-than-human.

So more conflict in the urban environment, perhaps more cooperation? Is that the opposite of this? Would that be the—

Yes, well, more conversation, conversation perhaps, negotiation. Yeah, but then starting to notice that the urban environment, that there are these conversations that are happening, that there are these, there are these also these softer communications, these ripple effects. So what happens when somebody slows down and then everything else kind of slows down, then something speeds up and the other things speed up as well, there's a pedestrian or car, the way in which the weather is there, you know. So I was surprised at how these similar kind of organic biological processes started to become apparent once I kind of slowed down in myself and paid attention to being in a body.

That there was something about the urban environment that you could still connect with something rhythmic and even something organic and biological, even— yeah, mediated through concrete and electricity and Yeah, yeah, yeah. Would you say it's easier to feel at home in one place or the other place?

Interesting question. I think that depends very much on one's story. I think for many people in our culture, their wounding has happened in square boxes, in rooms, in relation to other humans, and their solace or their safety or sanctuary has come being in less human, more other-than-human environments.

I can certainly relate to that.

It's certainly not true for everybody. You know, I've worked with people whose wounding has come through weather or through wild animals. Yeah, so it's different there. And often I think our relationship with the other-than-human is interfered with or mediated or complicated by our relationship with humans. And so, so for myself, for example, when I, when I go out into a wilder environment the first thing I come up against is, well, what happens if I meet another human being here? You know, in the past I spent a lot of time and energy focused on that and actually really missing what my body is experiencing of being with the mosses and the trees and the beetles.

Because it's an anxiety that you have to become something in relationship to them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There was a really striking example from my family where I was walking with a family member in, in, on, on Dartmoor and, oh, excuse me, sorry, and I saw a, we saw some people in the distance walking towards us and they were probably about 20 minutes away.

Yeah, you can see a long way on Dartmoor.

Yeah, and we'd been chatting and I could see that at that point the family member I was with, that their attention became also solely focused on what they were going to say when they actually met this other person. You know, they kind of lost contact with me and their environment almost completely. Yeah, and I could really— really showed me how that, how that can happen in myself. So that's my particular one part of my particular story, and I think we all have different stories. Yeah, about our relationship with the other human.

I suppose the question behind the question is something like, well, in a lot of the reading that I've been doing, in a lot of the conversations I've been having, not just recorded conversations but with friends and other people, is that there is a there is a privileging of the natural world. We sort of see that as better somehow.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Even, even though I'm living in a house. Yeah, yeah, all those things.

Yes, I mean, one of the great things about, about living under a plastic sheet is, is that we really start to appreciate the value of the domestic, you know. So, so, so, so, Auldhous is great, Yeah, I mean, I think so. That's why we choose to live in them. Yeah, you know, talking is great, thinking is great, and ironically, I think the— in a way— so there can be a step that says there's a problem with, with human to human, with domestic, with urban, with hard edges, and so we go to the wild and the wild is soft, it's organic, it's relational, and that's good and this is bad. Actually, what's really interesting is if we can start to break down that that polarity in itself and see in what ways is it other than human domestic. You know, we think about animals and insects and plants creating their own homes, you know, effectively worms create their own homes, and the ways in which the interplay between our domesticity and our wildness, the way in which that can be very creative and organic. So I'm really interested in gardens and I I'm hoping to start offering people therapy in their gardens.

Oh wow.

Because that's where the wild and the domestic really meets, because it's where, you know, we allow plants to grow, but we also restrict them.

Yeah.

Remove some of them. We have insects and birds and animals, and we also restrict them. So it's very much at the edge of where the domestic and the wild meets, and it really shows up ideas about the right way to do it, the wrong way to do it, and what's our relationship with the wild and the domestic.

And gardens can be very different, can't they? I remember seeing a garden a while back.

I was—

it was a sort of open studio thing where you go around, yes, and artist studios, and the garden in one of them was so pristine. It was— I'm exaggerating slightly, but it was sort of razor blades along the top of the box hedge.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And yet other ones are just— there's like, you know, this chaos in the corners. And yeah, interesting.

And so in myself, what part of— part of what I see wild therapy as being is paying attention to my reactions.

Hmm.

So when I come across a pristine garden, you know, say I have clients show me their pristine garden in some way, shape, or form— then to really notice my judgments and my reactions, and to notice in which ways I'm actually coming across another human animal. Yeah, but their way of being animal is different to mine. And so the challenge is not to, is not to encourage or support them to become different to who they are, but to stretch my capacity as an animal to meet this other this foreign, this in a way wild in the sense of other, yeah, being, you know, that, that, that's very ordered. I mean, and, and of course there are countless examples of how the other-than-human environment is incredibly ordered.

Well, you know, you talked about cultivation, it makes me think of ants farming aphids. Yeah, yeah, that's the classic example.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it sounds like it in In what you're saying, there's— it's not so much prioritizing a particular way of being or a particular place to be in, but maybe the ideal is more around a way of having a conversation or being in relationship.

Yeah, yeah, it's noticing what those prioritizing are. So noticing that that I think it's safer to be in a room, or I think it's safer to be out of a room, or that clients think that. It's looking at the interplay of all that.

And that's quite subtle, isn't it? It's, in a way, it's— I, for myself, it's easy to fall into idealizing a way of being, or even as a therapist, to imagining that I know roughly the general direction that my clients should be moving, not the specificity, but sort of like a well-rounded person looks like this, or I like the sort of people who become open to the natural world or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, I think, I think wild therapy is, for me anyway, it's a lot about not knowing. It's a lot about being clueless and clumsy. And I mean, every time I go and sit in my garden I get a bit frightened because I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know what kind of messages may emerge or what may come up through my body or what I might see or hear, and my whole life may be turned upside down.

Yeah, reminds me, who was it that said a therapy session should— or you should feel like you're going on a first date when you see a client? Yes, yeah, yeah, I think that's that sort of feeling of anything could happen, and I quite quickly Well, not quick. At some point in my therapy practice, I really, I understood my nerves as my body getting ready to change and to be different because I'm making something unknown.

Yeah, yeah. The other thing that can happen, I think, that in, in, in the outside environments that can be really useful is that we start to see therapists as, as being fallible, as having bodies, as having limits. I had that wonderful experience recently of going out with a client and the client crossing a river, and my having this idea that there was a slightly better crossing point just a few yards away, and I fell in the river, you know. And it's very hard to kind of maintain a sort of therapeutic superiority under—

yeah, sure.

So I think that can be really helpful because it can support our clients to feel their own agency, their own power, strength, and also just to have a sense of wider possibility, that's more a sense of kind of anything can happen.

Yeah, the word humility is coming to mind.

Yeah, yeah.

And the idea of me as a small being in relationship to something, the world, other people, that is is actually immense. And of course, how could I be in control of where that was going to lead?

Yes. Yeah, but that, but that's the kind of illusion that I think that we allow ourselves when we're, when we're in our therapy room with our clients, you know, that we think that we do have, um, control.

And, and, and in the rest of our lives.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So it's great to be reminded of that, and ideally that comes back into the room, you know, that we can start really noticing what we don't know, and, you know, um, the idea of being wild humans together.

So I'm remembering you said you listened to at least some of the conversation that I had with Ian. Spencer, that— and recorded. I'm remembering that conversation now for some reason. I think it's because he talked about his spiritual experience as often being inspired by meeting other-than-human plants or animals in the natural world, and really having a strong sense through encountering something quite specific of something not just immense but infinite, and for him even pointing towards what he understands to be God. Yeah. And whether any of that resonates for you.

I think, I think it's very difficult to maintain, um, a sense of my self-importance when I'm really, uh, have my senses open. To a wider environment.

Yeah.

There's necessarily awe. Yeah.

Yeah.

And for me, it's both unsettling and reassuring because it's shows up my insignificance, which is unsettling and reassuring. Yeah.

And do you then— would you make— is there a particular way that you make sense of what is bigger than you? Do you— I mean, do you have a sense that there is a particular shape that the world is unfolding into, or a particular direction that it's heading in? Or is that something that is just always going to be surprising?

I think where I go to is— the first place I go to is a strong sense of 'I don't know.' And that in itself for me brings an openness, a willingness to inquire, to submit, to be led, to be taught. And I read something recently by Charles Eisenstein, Invitation into a Living Planet, which, which really kind of represents that view from Lovelock, the Gaia hypothesis, and that notion of this, this complex living personality or being that I am a small cell or a sub-cell.

Yeah.

And I think one of the things that's happened for me this year is I've really got the— I've really dropped into the experience many people have had of grief, grief for loss of species, grief for the way in which the world is thinner, weaker, wounded. Yeah, yeah. And there is a notion that the world is dying, that that's it. So what he presented was the notion of the possibility of the world recovering if we can treat it holistically, if we can see ourselves as part of the world. But also that notion from, from Joanna Macy, that's, well, if the world's dying, then let's go down with some grace.

Yeah.

So, so, so there's something about, on the one hand, feeling like there are so many fewer insects than I remember, and as a child and how that affects me emotionally. And it really, really matters. But also being willing to still engage with the beauty, still engage with— yeah, and with the possibility of change as well, the possibility of recovery, but not knowing, you know.

And there's also something about where you— how far away you stand from the picture, isn't there?

Yeah, yeah.

This version of Earth that's going to survive— well, no, probably not, but who knows what's going to emerge. And, you know, just look up at night how much bigger the universe is than one planet, even though, of course, the loss of species and environments is, you know, is heartbreaking. I don't want to undermine that. Either.

Well, there's this rather beautiful paradox, I think, because when I step right back, where I go to is I think about the heat death of the universe. You know, that eventually the whole universe will just be one bland, um, field of nothingness that's below 1 degree Kelvin, in which nothing happens. And it's possible— it would be possible to go, well, what's the point of anything then? But there is love and there is beauty and there is good intention and there is inquiry and there is dance. Jimmy had— and even, uh, even with that notion of heat death of the universe, that, that in one sense I just see that as being a kind of scientific truth, and in, in another sense it's just another myth, it's just another, uh, particular narrow view. Yeah, that I might give a certain significance to. So there's something about wild therapy in particular which gives me a sort of a willingness to dance between these different perspectives and these different attitudes or these different ways of being a human body in a, in a other-than-human world.

Which does bring me back to this idea of wild therapy being more about becoming, I don't know, light on our feet, more open to different kinds of conversation. Not always light, so sometimes heavy, but more open to different ways of being, different sorts of conversations, different experiences, different ways of relating through different senses.

Yeah.

And about— it's good to be outside.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I mean, yes, and, and there's something about how do we, how, how do we be wild inside as well? Because the reality is that for most of my sessions with clients, I'm in my room.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, but there, but there are still wider things going on— airplanes going past, insects happening. Yeah, fire, farting, you know, I mean, all kinds of biological processes.

I had this, this slightly odd experience yesterday. I had a dream about almost being visited by the cat spirit, the big cat spirit, whatever this was. And I woke up and felt really in my body. And then the next morning, I was sitting on the bench in the garden, and a blue tit or a coal tit landed on the bird feeder. And I thought, oh, food or something to play with, you know.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

I suppose the reason I'm sharing that is because I, you know, I haven't run through the jungle in the— that was the kind of image, or that it's not— I wasn't— that experience didn't come out of me being in the natural world. It was something that came out, wherever you say, collective unconscious, my imagination, something else. But, but it arrived in me when I was inside, and I just had this real strong sense of, oh, even if all the big cats go, there's some— I don't know, that there's something about that feeling or that energy. The words sort of start stopping you. So at some point around here, that is still available to me. Yeah, yeah, somehow.

Yeah, that you could— that some— that this is some element of of biology, if you like, of incarnation that's coming through this particular biological unit, which is you, yeah, to continue to bring this into the world, into incarnation.

Yeah. And there's something quite hopeful about that.

Yeah. Yeah.

The possibility of that, you know. Yeah. Yeah. And I think And it's also true that it is often easier for me to experience being moved in that sort of way when I'm in a more organic environment, personally.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that for me is a real growing edge of wild therapy, is how— so how do we— so we've been doing this, like, encouraging people to have conversations with other-than-humans within a building. And I think some other than human beings which are relatively easy to have conversations with, like plants and cats, yeah, and insects, and others like fire extinguishers and skirting boards and packets of sugar, which are more difficult. But I do think that's— that once we— that when we do expand that, when we do see these things as part of nature, you know, because we're all part of nature. Yeah, well, it's—

David Abrams talks about even if you're in a building with concrete walls and a concrete floor, you can still feel something of the earth, you know, through your bodily experience of the walls and the floor.

Yeah, I was thinking this morning about the idea of human beings as a disaster.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah, but, but specifically about human beings as being a natural disaster.

Mm, interesting.

Yeah, I found that quite a useful idea.

A plague of humans.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, you know, but not like— but not the idea that the humans are somehow imposed from outside, that they've obviously— humans have emerged from within the system, you know.

Well, that is really interesting, and it reminds me, a friend of mine, Will Buckingham, who's a writer, a few years ago, quite a few years ago now, wrote about going to a museum of armour and weapons. And the— it started with armour and weapons in the natural world, like armadillo shells and rhino horns. And then, then it just progressed into the tanks and things like this that humans have produced. And it was presented as these are all part of the same continuum.

Yeah.

There isn't something that we've gone, oh, here's something from the outside.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That sense— well, I guess you're describing almost like a human being's erupting. Yeah, somehow. Yeah, with all of our destructive tendencies.

Yeah, yeah, like volcanoes do, or— yeah, or, or sometimes plants or animals do.

Yeah. Is there a purpose to when a volcano explodes? Is there a human being's propagate.

And yeah, it reminds me a little bit of that idea of human beings as essentially being farmed by grasses, you know, that our purpose is— yes, grasses. Yeah, I can't remember where that came from, but I rather liked it. Yeah, yeah.

Well, there's the book— I know it's in the book about grass, but I have heard that.

Yeah, it helps to— helps to give me some humility as a human.

Yeah, and then again it takes you back to that place of not knowing. Like, we assume that we're destructive when I think there's some value in that assumption as well.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I guess it's also true that the impulse to restrain and to come into different kind of relationship is also emerging from the same system.

Yes, yes, because that— because one of, one of the words that's been that I've had a lot of enthusiasm for in the last few weeks is discipline. And there's a lot of discipline in The Other Than Human. There is a, you know, there's a lot of self-limiting systems and things moving in the same direction. Yeah. And I think it's, it's, it's, it's a useful muscle.

And I think in the West it's a bit of an underused muscle because we associate it with being told off or something being hard, maybe self-discipline. And particularly, you know, when I'm teaching meditation, I see, you know, I can see the sort of a reaction. Yeah, if I use that word, there's a reaction. But as you say, actually, it is a really useful tool to have in the toolbox.

I notice when I think of it, I feel excited, actually. Discipline as being exciting, because it, uh, it's like if I'm being disciplined to do one thing, then my mind is not dancing off doing 30 different things, and that's quite a relief.

Well, it can be very creative. Reminds me of Anne Bogart saying, when you put a chair on the stage, it's violent act because it destroys all the other places the chair might be.

Yes.

And discipline is a little bit like that. So, oh, this is what we're going to be doing now. Yeah, those things. Yeah, so it takes something away, but it allows for the possibility of something new.

Yeah, yeah, there's energy in it, isn't there?

Yeah, yeah, there's a sort of vigor that can go along. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's another great word.

Yeah, yeah. Wow. Well, I feel like we've talked about a lot of different elements And I've still got a lot of questions, um, well, questions that have emerged from this process, right? I think important questions for me to take away. And, and the one which I've mentioned a couple of times is this thing about— or is— what's the ideal here? Just being cautious of the ideal, or questioning the ideal. Is it that we get more people back outside, or is it that there's a different way of relating? Even, even is it that there's a— I suppose another way of saying it is, should we be amplifying the destructive tendency or the restraining, holding discipline tendency? On one level that seems very obvious, but when you think of humans as a natural disaster, I'm like, oh, well, maybe I'm not in the right place to see.

Yeah, yeah, it makes me think of those cycles of fire you know, that can happen in natural environments that are part of the sequencing. I think for me, I think the core of wild therapy is that we stop pretending that we're not biological beings within a larger natural system. Yeah, that we start with— because I think that there is this notion that somehow nature happens out there and we can come into a room with a therapist and pretend that the human relations, the solely human environment is the thing.

Yeah.

And so for me, wild therapy is about including. So when I'm taking a life history, I'm always interested in, so who were the other-than-human beings that were important to you as a child? What were the other-than-human bereavements that you had? And just recognizing the reality that they matter, that we are part of something, and to challenge the notion that we are separate. Yeah, including our notion of separateness, and that's part of our nature as well.

Yeah, of course. Yeah, and there's a sort of trust inherent in that, isn't there? That somehow bringing awareness to those things is sort of inherently a good thing to do, like reconnecting people. Would you say that's true?

For me, it's— for me, it's a— maybe that goes Well, I think for me the sequence is something like— and the sequence of my development as a therapist is something like that. So we might start working cognitively, and we're working with a client as if they are just thoughts and feelings. And then we go, hang on a minute, this person is a body as well. So we include the body. Yeah. And we're— if we're working with humans and their human relationships, which we often are, It's a matter of going, hang on a minute, this is a human animal who lives amongst other human and other-than-human animals. So not including the other-than-human is a bit like not including a part of the body. It just doesn't make sense. It's a bit like saying, come in, but can you leave your left leg outside? Or, you know, can you leave this part of you outside? It's so— it's not that it's a good thing, it's that it's, it's how it is. Yeah, it's the reality.

Honest somehow.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's been really useful for me also to, to work with clients who've been severely wounded or traumatized by the other-than-human, by weather events, because it helps to challenge that romantic notion that the other-than-human is all life and wonderful.

Yeah. Nurturing, which is very easy to believe when you're inside a house.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not, not so easy to believe when you're— when, when you, when you've got a lot of ticks and worried about Lyme disease.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, good. Maybe that's enough. Thank you. I feel like I'm really full of ideas, and that feels very fruitful and rich. To me.

Thank you. It's really— it's been really invigorating to, um, when you asked me to do this, to kind of think, well, you know, what do I think about this? What do I feel about this? And, um, where am I at in my engagement with this? And where am I at in terms of my process and my journey? So it's been a real gift for me to have chance to think aloud.

Great, thank you.