Wild Awake in the Forest
Rewilding in the Forest of Giants
Toolangi State Forest
Give up the boxes and screens for a day and reawaken your natural knowing in the forest. And not just any forest - the forests in Toolangi contain the tallest flowering trees in the world in a temperate rainforest that has remained the same since Gondwanan times. As modern humans accustomed to hunting the broccoli in the supermarket, we have lost our ability to be alert, awake to our senses, guided by our instincts. It is as if we are in bubble wrap. Imagine if you could read what is happening in any landscape by tuning to the language of the birds? Imagine if you could experience the land as sentient, responsive, a mirror to your own inner landscape? This true aliveness is our birthright. This is the practice of rewilding.
Join barefoot explorer and rewilding facilitator Claire Dunn, and ecologist Jem Little on an experiential journey of rewilding. Explore together nature literacy, concentric rings of awareness, sacred silence, nature play, bird language, and what Rudyard Kipling calls ‘Jungle Law’.
Claire Dunn is a writer, educator, journalist and barefoot explorer. Claire worked for many years as an environmental campaigner with organisations such as The Wilderness Society, before turning her attention to the human-nature connection, studying Deep Ecology with Joanna Macy, eco-psychology, and wilderness survival skills. In 2010, Claire embarked on a year of bush living, completing the ‘Guunuwa Independent Wilderness Studies Program’. Her recent book My Year Without Matches: Escaping the the City in Search of the Wild is a memoir of that journey. Claire is a passionate advocate for ‘rewilding’ our inner and outer landscapes, and facilitates nature-based reconnection retreats and contemporary wilderness rites of passage. See www.naturesapprentice.com.au
Jem Little has been inquisitive and curious about nature his whole life. He has pursued this curiosity and has an Honours degree and PhD in ecology. He has worked for government, universities and not-for-profit environment groups in conservation, land management, wildlife research and community engagement. He has intuitively followed his heart through many natural landscapes, often choosing the road less travelled. He has immersed himself in the jungles of north Queensland for nearly two decades before coming to Melbourne. He is passionate about nature connection and this is the key to protecting nature, living healthily and happily and connecting to spirit. Explorer, bird whisperer, barefoot bushwalker, geomancer, scientist... Jem wants to share his wisdom and experience and help other deepen their connection with nature, self and spirit.
Part proceeds will be donated to Friends of Leadbeater's Possum for their court case protecting vital habitat of the Leadbeater's Possum, Victoria's now critically endangered faunal emblem. As forest continues to fall in these very forests, your attendance will help maintain the integrity of this landscape.
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