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Winter Rewilding Retreat | Whidbey Island

  • The Whidbey Institute 6449 Old Pietila Road Clinton, WA, 98236 United States (map)

Learn and Practice Seasonal Rhythms & Rituals for Sacred Guidance Through the Natural World to Grow an Earthen and Elemental Guidance

How are your spiritual practices changing in the face of climate change? How does your faith flourish as our forests burn? How do you engage the wild edges of your life, not as a place of chaos, but as a place of profound creativity? How do our prayers hold the ecological grief that howls within our hearts? A response to these probing inquiries demands a return to a whole-relationship with creation and re-membering, or rewilding, ourselves to a profound sense of the Sacred within and with-out the wild and wonder-filled world.

Rewilding Retreats are offered quarterly, each exploring the entire round of the Rewilding Wheel™ while going deeper into seasonal practices that connect to the corresponding cardinal direction and element. The Rewilding Retreat will invite daily, monthly, and seasonal practices that will embed you in an interconnected, sacred relationship with your bioregion. You do not need to register for all four retreats to be profoundly impacted and invited into a new mindset of being in solidarity with creation; however, each quarterly retreat will spend time focusing on the sacred themes and practices that correspond to that particular seasonal quadrant. 

What's Included

  • A one day retreat experience within The Whidbey Institute's Story House and the surrounding wild landscape

  • Expert teaching and soulful group facilitation

  • Invitation to engage with meaningful rituals and nature-based spiritual practices

  • Rewilding Wheel Workbook

  • Guided nature walk

  • Introduction to and support during a forested labyrinth walk

  • Thoughtfully prepared and seasonally focused vegetarian mid-day meal, snacks, and herbal teas

  • Wild-crafting materials

  • Supported nature solo time

  • Access to a 100 acre trail system in a legacy forest

Please Bring

  • Personal writing materials (journal, paper, pen/pencil) and backpack

  • Warm comfortable layers, weather proof outdoor wear, and sturdy water resistant footwear

  • Personal water bottle

  • Flashlight and fully charged cell phone

  • Emergency whistle

  • Fold up camping chair

  • A seeker's desire and the posture of seeing the stranger as a sacred guide!

“Blessed is the life lived at a pace that is in sync with the land on which it is lived.”

~ Wendell Berry


2020 adjusted rates account for costs of bringing in seasonal specialists and materials. All retreats involve a 10% donation of proceeds to acknowledge the indigenous land upon which we live and learn, and to support the ongoing educational and land-based work of Eloheh Farm and Dr. Randy Woodley (legal descendent of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma, and a mentor and teacher to Mary DeJong).