For this month’s circle, another co-planned session, our starting point was extending from a recent youth collaboration with the theme of movement and stillness. Broadening the scale, we thought of travelling and staying, also connecting to the many March holidays underway with school breaks, and sending out our best hopes for safe return. For the opening activity, we wrote a short post card to someone or to ourselves connected to memories of travelling or visiting that hadn’t gone as well as we’d hoped. We talked about things that can’t be re-framed, such as grief in losing close loved ones, as well as re-framing as a radical possibility for even the most entrenched thinking coming out in our times.

We also thought about travel from the perspective of digital or remote connections, as well as the importance of dream space, as one group member had been recently contemplating through the work of Toko-Pa Turner. In addition to dreams, and allowing time for intentional movement and stillness and even intentional boredom, we spoke about art-making and creativity as a space of dream travel. With a few powerful stories, we were called to contemplate faith, in examples of like-minded people finding one another across the globe against all odds, and healing journeys that may be long, but mysteriously guide you to the the right place when you are ready.

Considering the ethics of travel, we talked about times we have chosen not to travel because it uses fossil fuels, and others when we regretted not taking part in something that was very meaningful to loved ones. Concluding that everything is conflicted, and activism can easily be pushed to burnout, re-framing can sometimes serve our well-being, and others can detract from making clear decisions aligned with our intuition. Although it didn’t really form part of our conversation, the art at the top of the post includes honouring salmon’s travels across thousands of miles when they are unimpeded, which reminds us that making journeys home is natural, and we have a role to play in stewardship so that natural travel across lands and waters can be restored. Our own travels can also be one more way to see ourselves in connection with the seasons and cycles of our lives and the Earth.