12 members of the Earth Listening Circles of the Deep Adaptation Forum, facilitated by Sasha, visited places local to them and did an Earth Exchange, as part of a global collaboration to listen to wounded places.

This river runs through the town where I live. I’ve had some of the best and worst experiences of my life her on the river. It has also changed over the years, and some of the changes—like the water being more silty—aren’t positive. The last visit I made before this Earth Exchange, was anchored in the grief of my dog’s severe illness which meant she was not able to enjoy the visit and I had hoped she would. She died soon after.  haven’t returned since. In returning to do the Earth Exchange with my good friend Gene Weinbeck, I got in touch with the sadness, and cried. Many other memories wonderful and difficult also flowed through, like the water. Then I began to notice the surroundings as they are now. Things have changed! Gene said it well, “this is a place of powerful transitions,” he said, as we stared at the huge uprooted trees that surrounded us from floods, and the lush greenery of summer in the Ozarks entwined all around it. I noticed a stone that looked like an egg—potential—and was inspired to create a nest from some of the tree roots of the uprooted trees, and to fill the nest with the rock-eggs. Life flows on, some hard, some easy and the river keeps on flowing.