Kirsten Shockey, co-founder of the Fermentation School and writer at Fermenting Change, reminds us in this episode of Kinward, “humans play to learn.” Jakob, Kirsten’s son and founder of Project Beaver, adds later, “I’m very interested in avoiding getting pigeonholed as an expert in anything, and” (to his mom) “I think you are too—because we’re not. We’re just playing in these spaces.” 

Mother and son both note early in this episode that the techniques they’ve built their careers around—techniques for fermentation and the stewardship of waterways—are ancient. So, their work is not about inventing anything, but rather playing, as humans do, to mimic, learn and relearn these ancient ways and wisdoms: ways of the land itself and its original stewards (beavers, indigenous grandmas), and wisdoms of our ancestors all over the world who preserved their harvests in collaboration with the same microscopic allies who do so much for soil and water and our bodies. 

As I mentioned in the Immersion episode with the Shockeys, I wanted to talk to Jakob and Kirsten together because as soon as I met them I could feel the strength of the container they’ve woven together, as a family and with land, to hold their work in the world. Part of learning to nourish a world that sustains life is relearning, and affirming, ways of nourishing each other and our home places.

For more conversations modeling the sticky iterative aliveness of tending our relationships with each other and the rest of the living world, head over to kinwardmoves.substack.com. If this conversation warmed you, moved you, or made you chuckle, consider becoming a sustaining subscriber. You can also support the project very tangibly by sharing this episode with a friend or two, following us on Instagram @Kinward_Moves, and leaving a rating and review wherever you listen. Thank you!

This delicious Immersion episode with Jakob Shockey, founder of Project Beaver, and his mom Kirsten, co-founder of The Fermentation School, is a beautiful taste of the rooting and belonging that one family has woven to support and nourish their good work in the world.

Kirsten and Jakob share a morning wakeup blessing, a simple practice for connecting and grounding with each other at the end of the day, and a really yummy sounding recipe for fermented beets.

You’ll hear a lot more about their multifaceted and multi-scale work of collaborating with life in our full episode with them, which will be out soon. In the meantime, settle in next to the fire with us—you’ll hear the rain whirring and the woodstove popping—and Immerse yourself in the pleasure of being held. 

For more conversations reclaiming our interdependencies, visit kinwardmoves.substack.com, and follow us on Instagram @kinward_moves. Thanks for listening!

Renee Patrick is a triple-crown through-hiker with over 20 years of experience planning, hiking, and improving long-distance trails. She is an environmentalist and passionate outdoor enthusiast who believes that long-distance hiking can deepen our relationship with the landscapes and environmental issues that desperately need more advocates.

Intentional Hiking, one of Renee’s current projects, affirms the intimacy that hikers develop over hours, days, weeks, or months on foot in a place, and channels that intimacy toward advocacy and care. It’s an awesome project, and if you spend time hiking, you should definitely check it out. You can also follow Renee’s hiking journeys at sherahikes.com, or on instagram @wearehikertrash.

Renee walks us into this episode with a case study of Intentional Hiking from her own life, sharing examples of how she immerses herself into her journeys with the intention of growing deeper connections with the place she’s hiking through: studying its histories; its people; its needs, conservation priorities, and resource conflicts; and then feeling into the ways that a particular place nourishes, holds, and shapes those who move through it. 

Consider this first part of the episode a mini practicum, suggesting ways that any of us might deepen our commitments to the lands and waters we walk among.

I hope you enjoy this episode with Renee "She-Ra" Patrick! For more embodied explorations, go to kinwardmoves.substack.com, and follow us on Instagram @kinward_moves

Happy Beltane, dear ones. In my neck of the woods, blackbird songs are giving way to frog songs, the garden is popping, and my druid baby just turned two.

For many reasons—deep and fresh, ancient and young, celebratory and fiery—Beltane feels like the right day to release this loving, vulnerable, intimate episode with Lauren Macdonald of Ripple Medicine: my dear friend, beloved, and teacher; herbalist, doula and nurse; home-tender and student of spirals.

We lean into the pleasures of the season; explore the magical arts of sensitivity, boundaries, and matchmaking; and spiral into and out of some pretty big portals.

Among many other threads, this episode weaves with some of the life-and-death intensity of childbirth. It's up for me, this time of year. There's nothing graphic, but if you’re feeling sensitive right now about birth, you might want to gift yourself some space or stillness as you listen, or listen when you’re ready.

To root into a beautiful meditation with Lauren, check out our full moon Practicum episode with her. To learn more about her holistic medicine practice, visit ripplemedicine.com, and follow her on Instagram @ripplemedicine.

For more deep dives on life magic, earth and self regeneration, and the deep work of becoming more whole by trusting alliances and sensitivities among and beyond the human, visit kinwardmoves.substack.com, and follow us on Instagram, @kinward_moves.

Lauren Macdonald—herbalist and doula, home-tender, poet, labyrinth-walker, singer, nurse, and caretaker of a “dynamic and evolving medicine practice,” Ripple Medicine—guides us generously into a water-body meditation in this short full moon Practicum 🌕

Our full episode with Lauren—in which we invite alliances with the more-than-human world, explore sensitivity as a superpower, and honor the life magics that work through us—is coming soon, and I hope you’ll love it.

In the meantime, on this Spring full moon 🌕, take a good long look at an image of Joe-Pye Weed, pour yourself a cup of tea, and settle in for a watery, liminal meditation that reminds us of our always-enfolded unfolding.

For more practical animism, affirmations of our always-already kinship with the rest of the living world, meditations, invitations, and inquiries, subscribe at kinwardmoves.substack.com. Thanks for listening!

Kevin Swift practices low tech process based restoration, which is to say, he uses simple tools, a collaborative ethic, and a lot of humility to coax damaged and simplified waterways into fuller expressions of their aliveness. This is potent, rewarding work that is needed everywhere.

The questions that led me to reach out to Kevin are perennial questions of this podcast: how do we act practically and expressively to embody a more well world? What struggles and sufferings of the world are mirrored in the ways we struggle and suffer? How does an enlivened and enlivening world reach back into us and enliven us?

Kevin explores these questions with all the humor, grief, rage, curiosity, and humility they deserve. I hope you enjoy this fractal journey alongside the "self we need to save: the possible human."

I encountered Kevin Swift—a restoration practitioner, founder of Swiftwater Design, who describes himself as a “two-legged beaver”—at a beaver conference in western Oregon last fall, when I was still working my conservation job. Among many excellent presentations by many humans lauding the lifeways of this continent’s most extraordinary rodent engineer, Kevin’s talk stood out for its sensory embodiment, pure grief at the specters of traumatized waterways, and pure joy in the work of coaxing these hurt systems back into fuller expression of their liveliness and abundance.  

This short new moon 🌑 Immersion episode—a sensual treat in its own right, and a taster for the full episode with Kevin, which will be out soon—follows our two-legged friend as he sloshes and hacks and paddles us into his most beloved restoration project: Tasmam Kojom: a mountain meadow in Maidu homeland, Northeastern California, which he and his crew of quote “mud-loving funhogs” have worked for years to bring back to life.

Just before Equinox, my family and I spent an evening with Bobby Fossek, Brosnan Spencer, and their daughter Meadow. These neighbors-across-the-mountains are the space-holders and weavers of Naknuwiłama Tiiča̓mna (Caretakers of the Land), an Indigenous-led organization based in eastern Oregon, serving land and community: the Native people and species of the Big River (the Columbia), and the relationships that have always sustained mutual thriving here.

These good humans, who do so much good work, weave many threads and affirm many relationships in this episode. They speak about weaving; about tending land and community and tending conflict; about deprogramming from mechanical rhythms and coming back into rhythm with land; about learning from the seasons and flowing with nature to shape the future we want for our kids.

If this conversation inspires or interests you, please subscribe, rate, and review wherever you listen; follow us @Kinward_Moves on Instagram; and subscribe at kinwardmoves.substack.com.

I’m so excited to share this conversation with Craig Childs—adventure journalist, desert devotee, and “transformation junkie”—on recommitting to earth’s rhythms; rewilding (and domesticating) ourselves in ways that are responsive and responsible; and opening all the doors. We know that in times of chaos and complexity, new orders emerge.

Craig drops us into this conversation by immersing us in a recent research adventure for his forthcoming (soon!) book on dark nights: moving from the brightest of nights into the darkest, with a friend, at the speed of a fat tire bike.

As you listen to this conversation, I invite you to investigate, for yourself, what might your right pace be, your right rhythm be, for finding a personal realignment to a cosmic or an earthly rhythm? What doors need opening in you? 

I hope a corridor widens or a map expands or a flow clarifies as you listen to this conversation with Craig Childs. To support the show, visit kinwardmoves.sustack.com

Genevieve Flanagan owns and operates the one-woman show the Urban Acre Homestead: an urban farm in Northeast Portland, focused on serving fresh, beautiful, and nourishing food to neighbors. The Urban Acre is a diversified small farm with vegetables (especially greens), fruit and berries, perennial edibles, medicinal and culinary herbs, and a fledgeling tea plantation. 

If you listened to our Practicum episode with Genevieve, you already know about her tea blossom tea and her gorgeous buckhorn plantain. This full conversation with Genevieve unpacks her ongoing dance-boss-intimacy with the weather, her long history of responding thoughtfully to economic and environmental disruptions, and her ways of making magic—and a widget—with exactly what Earth has to offer as the season changes.   

If you’re in Portland, make sure to visit Genevieve at the Montavilla farmers’ market on Sundays and get yourself some seasonally appropriate sweet and spicy tart and crispy greens. Just follow the vum vum vum vum vibe and you’ll find her! You can also get an ongoing glimpse of Genevieve’s work on instagram @theurbanacre. 

For more conversations exploring our existing and emerging alignments with life, please subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen, and follow @kinward_moves on Instagram. For perks and community, check out our Substack: kinwardmoves.substack.com. 

Episode cover: Buckhorn Plantain, by Genevieve Flanagan, used with permission.