Walk Around

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I am currently at a residency, in the midst of a self-funded project. Donations on Buy Me A Coffee, PayPal, or Venmo are all seriously appreciated right now—Thank you!

In this episode I share a poem I wrote in Idaho last summer, reflections on the residency I'm attending, and some insight about remnants, joy, and grief—life, and death. I also have shared some photos from recent times.

Listen, read, and subscribe on the website: https://walkaround.run!

If you think about it, what draws people toward something these days is often about reclaiming our humanity.

What's healthful, and thus has gravity, are positive expressions about who we are, resiliency, and beauty, especially amidst hardship and grief. Dance, song, creating—expressions of our hands and bodies, and what we can do as humans. The modern craft movement is reweaving the tapestry of our culture—towards something that is functional and healthy, through our own hands and bodies.

Mo Hohmann first learned to grow and weave willow in the mountains of Oregon from Peg Matthewson. A craft older than pottery, weaving comes from our ancestral past. Nowadays it's being brought into the light of the present by courageous and inspired makers like Mo and Peg.

"It's an innate human experience to be drawn by beauty. And beauty is pretty subjective. But it's my experience with the baskets that there is this gravitational pull towards what is beautiful. Because it feeds this deep need as human beings. It's a soul food right? It's something that brings a sense of belonging."

Check Mo’s work on her Instagram and website: https://woventhresholds.com. Also, Mo offers online classes through Coyote Willow Schoolhouse, and plans to offer in person classes soon.

https://linktr.ee/woventhresholds

2025.03.08 Update: In the podcast, Mo discusses watertight baskets and her teacher Peg. However, Peg did not teach her about them, which may have been unclear in the original episode

There's a moment in most of Miyazakis films, when the dialogue and often the music cuts, and a single character (usually the protagonist) is left alone in the raw and open experience of something. It takes mastery to convey a moment such as this, a moment of space and presence.

This is the kind of moment I can relate to, when I know that I am who I am, when everything makes sense, when I know right from wrong, when there is magic in the landscape around me. But this type of moment is under relentless assault. https://www.walkaround.run/p/ma

Transcript

This morning I downloaded and logged into Instagram

Something I haven't done in a month or two

I mostly got off of the platform because I don't really think it's doing good things for humanity

The problem is so many people use it

Their communication and time is used up on it

And many people have a picture of their reality from it

And so to not participate is somehow to not exist as a creative person

This is something I've been ruminating on for years

But this is just such a short note because what I saw on there this morning, after I made a post about possibly selling some prints to support my schooling, was the two of the most extreme directions that humanity participates in, which are death and birth

Death and birth

And I saw them in extremely gross expressions

I saw an explosion on a roadway

I saw a giant fireball engulfing cars in a place that I have no idea if I've ever been to or will ever go to or know any of the people or even if it's real

Because it very well and even likely could have been something that an application generated

I don't even like to use the word, but artificial intelligence

It was probably that

It probably wasn't even real

Another thing I saw was a video of someone getting slapped so hard that they passed out

But it wasn't only that

It was an AI-generated image that showed his face collapsing in an unbelievable way

But it wasn't real

But if someone's just scrolling and they're not paying attention and they see these things, they think, oh, this is real

That just happened

Something I thought could never happen just happened in front of my very eyes

And so that's death

That's actually the death of the human spirit

That is complete collapse and destructiveness

Basically to be creating fear through falsehood

And then on the other side, I saw a picture of a woman in a dress

Could have been AI

I don't know

I don't know the context

I didn't click on the image

But she was standing in a shimmery dress

And so these images..

I guess I should add that the dress was very tight-fitting

So basically what I saw was extreme violence and pornography

That's what is being shown in the algorithmic feed on Instagram that people in general are just being subjected to

So what do we do with that? Well, I reported every single post that I saw

It's not going to change anything

It's not going to do anything

But it made me feel better to at least do something

In fact, it might make it worse

It only took me about five seconds to do these things

But I think it was worth it

The point of this, though, isn't to blame the Instagram platform and the creators for being evil, even though they are

Even though the platform is destructive and horrific and terrible and useless

It's also useful and creative and profound and abundant

The fact is, everything in the world ends up being related to these things

To skate along on the surface and believe that these experiences won't touch us is impossible

But by interacting with the world through a screen, it seems like we can have some distance from the realities

And we can just entertain ourselves by watching them instead of engaging with our lives

And I think that this is extremely dangerous, and actually more dangerous than being shown violence

I think what's more dangerous is complacency and lack of connection and engagement with life, which is what these platforms really want

They want you to just feel fear, feel lust, and then not do anything about it

Just to consume more fear and more lust

That's the goal

But there's something profound beneath all of this, which is that the reality of fear and desire is inescapable in life

But the fact is, we have to be in control of our fears and desires

And it doesn't matter what the world shows us or serves us, what the algorithm displays, if we can't keep a center, there's no hope

Right now, it's election day, and the political stratum is basically birth and death

Not a positive form of birth and death, but the most deranged forms

Is one better than another? I don't know

It's all part of a cycle

The cycle doesn't want to end

So, we have to be the end

I don't really know what that means, but I'm going to keep engaging with my internal world, with my internal work

Staying true to what I know is important and what matters

I'm going to keep focusing on what is beautiful, and what seems powerful to me

And I won't let my center be swayed by violence and lust

Thank you for listening.

Questioning my assumptions, and an encounter with Amanita, the Fly Agaric mushroom. Be sure to check out the images of the Nehalem and Wilson as well as the dunes at Bayocean Spit on the website

Hello,

Welcome to Walk Around. This is Hudson Gardner. It's been a little while.

I've been out and about, traveling, hiking, running, doing things that I love, spending time with wonderful people, seeing beautiful things, having really beautiful conversations—learning about myself, learning about others, and by that, learning about this world we all co-create and exist in together

I'm back in Port Townsend, where I live, and sitting in the pasture near a stand of trees on the edge of the field.

It was my birthday a couple of days ago, actually, a week ago, and I have been coming back into some kind of personal awareness and depth inside of my own body and mind recently, thinking about things I've left behind for too long, things I've been incapable of doing, reflecting on life in general.

Read more here at walkaround.run

Transcript (includes errors)

Hello.

Welcome to Walk Around.

This is Hudson Gardner.

I am sitting at the edge of a field where the trees come out a little bit into the grass.

And there's a little secret spot surrounded by hawthorn trees, there's an aspen that has a lot of young aspen around it.

And down beneath the willow tree is a place that I come and make a little fire and have tea.

I want to tell you a story today.

Something that happened 10 summers ago, which feels like a different life, completely different time. A different world, a different person who was living and somehow that person was me and it was the same life in the same world.

A hummingbird just landed on a twig of this little snag and he's just watching me.

I almost feel like he's listening.

So I'll tell him the story too.

Ten years ago,

I was living in southeast Nebraska in the town that I more or less grew up in called Lincoln.

And I was getting ready to do something.

I had been there a long time.

My luck was running out.

There was a general feeling of uncertainty, major change coming that I sensed.

I had gotten out of a relationship that was,

had been about three years long and it was a messy breakup and it was a hard time.

My mom was living on a farm outside of town.

And so I was staying in one of the guest rooms as I figured out what I was going to do with my 25-year-old life.

And back then I felt that I didn't really have a conviction yet about who I was or what I had to offer I had the beginnings of it, but it was more like just a question and it's safe to say that I now know what that answer is but how to do it is still elusive.

But back then I'doften go out to this zendo

outside of town on a farm called Branched Oak Farm.

It's a dairy farm with probably 15, 20 Jersey cows, some pigs, chickens.

Pretty sure it's still going.

And it was the best milk I've ever tasted in my life came from that place.

Deep, deep yellow.

I've never had anything like it.

There's something about the pastures in the Great Plains that are just unlike any

other place from all those millions of years of bison and care.

And one time I went out to the Zendo and I was in a strange headspace, I guess.

I mean, who doesn't go to a Zendo in a strange headspace?

And I went out there and before I went to the Zendo that day, I went out to this

little reservoir nearby.

It's the namesake of the farm, Branched Oak Reservoir, Branched Oak Lake.

And below the Branched Oak Lake, there's a series of loess hills that were blown there by the wind over millennia.

And there's grass and trees and little groves of flowers and

I pulled off on the dirt road and in Nebraska you pull off on a dirt road 20 minutes outside of town and you can sit there for an hour and you don't see anybody else.

It's a quiet place.

And it was probably one of those days like today, beautiful, sunny, big puffy cumulonimbus clouds growing on the horizon, some kind of storm forming in the distance—the wind blowing across the grass and I went into this draw and I don't know what drew me there.

I just had a feeling that I should go there and I walked up through the grass and I came to a grove of plants. And I had this intense feeling inside of me this anger at myself for being so old and so incompetent.

I felt like I didn't know anything about the world,

like I'd been wasting my life sitting around putting myself through school and

college that I didn't want to go to,

staying probably too long in a relationship that wasn't good for me or for the other person, unfortunately.

And just being too comfortable.

And so I had all those feelings when I walked into the draw and I knew I was on the brink of change.

It felt that way.

And I felt so angry and there was this plant, there's a big patch of them.

And I thought I'm going to show that I have some competence.

And I know what to do when I'm out in the wild places.

And I took out my knife, which is something I would never do now.

And I used it to dig up the root of one of these plants.

And it was a pale white root.

And it smelled like carrots.

But it was not carrot.

It was hemlock.

And I ate it.

And I didn't die.

I've been thinking about why that happened.

I've never really figured it out for all these years.

And the fact is there's so many things to learn in the world and there's so many ways to learn.

There's such an expansion of possibility, so much beauty.

so much intricacy, so much information.

And then it's also so simple.

And because of that, it's so heartrendingly elegant and it's so beautiful.

And it's taken me 10 years to find out what the simplistic, elegant message from that plant was for me.

And it happened just a few days ago.

I was harvesting hawthorn flowers with a friend.

And there's this kind of back corner of this tree.

pasture I live on and it's all overgrown with roses and blackberries and it's all

brambly and thorny and there's a bunch of hawthorn trees back there and we were

kind of going through this shadowy shady part and as I was going through there with

my orchard ladder and picking bag moving on to the next tree I suddenly realized I

was surrounded by hemlock

And it wasn't even that I saw them.

It was almost that I just sensed that they were there.

And I didn't even pause.

I just thought, well, hello.

Hello again.

It's been about 10 years.

It's definitely been 10 years since that plant showed up that intensely to me.

And there it was again.

And in this case, the hawthorn had led me there.

As the next few days went by, I thought about my discovery of that plant here.

And I thought about that time a long time ago where I nearly could have died and about my encounter with it this

time and what it might be telling me

And I believe that there's a part of life and a part of us that if a person is not

living according to their code or to something that matters to them,

we're really on the process of finding that out or being genuine and honest that

the body itself and maybe our spirit in some way will begin to

a series of self-destructive mechanisms because there's no point in living life without meaning.

And somehow our bodies know that more than our rational minds.

And at that point, 10 years ago, I was led to that plant because my body

My senses, my spirit were saying, no, you cannot stay here anymore.

You can't just live out your life in this little corner of the world.

You can't be comfortable anymore.

You need to go out and find yourself.

And so I did.

I planned to move to Oregon and then two weeks,

maybe even,

I think it was two days before that I decided to move to Vermont and I didn't know

a single person in the state.

I think a friend of mine was traveling through fortunately.

And so I connected with her and somehow I found a place to be.

But that started off this whole chain reaction,

this trajectory of where I am now,

which is someone who has an understanding of themselves and their abilities and who

feels some level of competence in the world.

I've gone from misidentifying hemlock and almost dying to having a relationship

with the plant and to knowing hundreds of plants and to being

on the path of a physician or a healer or someone who helps others.

And that's the type of competency that's hard to achieve.

But I believe that I will achieve it.

And so now I don't even need to

have my spirit endanger me in order to know that I'm at another point of departure.

All I need to do is see that plant and think, oh yes, this guy again.

I just need to pay attention.

As you all know,

or some of you,

or maybe not most,

but a few,

I have been in the process of entering school for acupuncture and Chinese medicine

this fall.

And I recently decided that it was too much.

I don't want to go into debt.

I don't want to compromise my health for three years at a program that's going to run me ragged and

I mean,

if you think about it,

it's going to possibly push me to achieve things I never thought I could,

but not on my own terms.

So I don't know what the point of that is.

I think I'm going to find my own way to practice medicine.

And, um, a friend of mine is starting a cohort that I'm going to join and we'll see where that goes.

But it won't lead to a license.

So it's going to be curious to see how it will work out for me.

But I believe in myself and in my abilities.

I believe in what I see and understand.

And I believe in living a life on my own terms as much as I can.

I believe in freedom.

And I think by living this path, my most genuine path, that I'll be saved from despair and depression.

And I will eventually find belonging.

That's the message that I've learned from Hamlock.

Thank you for listening.

This poem came to me when I was sitting on the rocks near a wharf off water street in Port Townsend. I had climbed down off the sidewalk and found a spot where kids hang out and tag. It’s a quiet place but some other person came with a notebook and started sketching. She kept looking toward at me, and I wonder if I made it in the drawing.

I’ve been out on my bike recently, and the color of the sky and water is almost unbelievable. I’ve started to notice things again, my sense of smell has begun to return, my mind feels clearer. I get headaches now and then, still sleep strangely, often feel like crying or angry out of place, and often the urges almost overcome me. But I am not going to give up.

Thank you for reading & listening.

AQUAMARINE

The water blue,

As spring has gotten into gear around here, I've been noticing the general abundance of plant life, and weather, and birds, and social engagements—and it's got me reflecting on different kinds of abundance, overabundance, scarcity, relationships, community... From that corner of the human experience of consuming and creating the dynamic between those two aspects of our nature, you could say...

Listen & Read More

This podcast covers the issue of addiction.

If you are in need of help, call the national hotline, 988.

Transcript (may contain errors)

There's a bell that I've taken around with me wherever I've lived

I can't remember where I got it, maybe in Portland at the Japanese Garden

And I've often hung it up outside and the sound has become familiar, even as all the places I've lived have changed for so long

And that familiar feeling just hit me as I rode up this little hill through an orchard towards the cabin that I'm living in these days

I never really realized I'd developed a familiarity with it until that moment

Now I'm standing out kind of more towards the field behind the cabin looking at a willow that's flowering and the first bumblebees I've seen this year are collecting nectar and pollen from the flowers

That's pretty hopeful

Back in the forest behind the edge of the woods there's a giant ant nest, the biggest I've ever seen actually

It's probably home to hundreds of thousands of ants

It's probably four or five feet wide, a couple feet tall

It's been there who knows how long

Old growth ant nest, ant pile

Read more or listen here: https://www.walkaround.run/p/thank-you-for-listening