To All the Edgewalkers
Edgewalking is a gift desperately needed in these monochromatic times. If you're here, you're probably an edgewalker.
In this deep-Winter episode I'm talking about the necessity of edgewalkers, Deer as edgewalking mentors, and what it might mean to move between worlds and make medicine from our journeys.
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Welcome to A Wild New Work, a podcast about how to divest from capitalism and the norms of modern work and step into the soulful calling of these times we live in, which includes the call to rekindle our relationship with the earth. I'm Megan Leatherman, a mother to two small kids, writer, amateur ecologist, and vocational guide. I live in the Pacific Northwest, and I'm your host today.
Well, hi friend and welcome. I'm really glad that we can be here together today and really honored to be in this space with you. Winter is still here where I live in Oregon. This is often the time in February when we get snow and ice and it's been actually quite mild this year. It's possible we'll get snow this week, but it's been pretty dry and part of me is you know, worried about the lack of snow and rain and all of that, but I'm just trying to be present with things as they are, not as I believe they should be. The daffodils are sprouting. My Daphne bush is quite slow actually this year. Last winter she was already starting to bloom by this time. So...
I don't know what's happening. Every season is different and just taking it day by day, noticing the changes and seeing who's doing what and how it feels. And I hope you're finding some windows of connection and adaptation as well. think it's kind of all that we can do right now every day. We're just making the choices we can and taking signals from the land and acting accordingly. I think that's a good course of action at this time.
I’ve been thinking lot about edgewalkers these days, those of us who live between worlds of some kind, whether it's between this world and the other world, or walking the edges between gender binaries or between cultures or those who live on the fringe of dominant culture. And if you're here, you're probably an edgewalker, because we don't really talk about anything very linear on this show or anything that's just one thing.
We're talking about how to navigate capitalism and hold our humanity intact. How do we bring the lessons of the village and the wild forward? How do we exist in a death culture and also embrace life? And so I'm honored to be an Edgewalker with you. And in truth, we are all Edgewalkers because the edge between life and death is a thin one, and we are walking it each day.
But there are certain ones among us whose gift it is to edgewalk as a way of life. And those gifts are being attacked in this sick and dying culture. Trans and non-binary people who know what it is to walk the edges of gender expression. Shamanic practitioners who know what it means to walk the edges of this world and the world of the ancestors. Great musicians and artists who know how to transport us into something deeper.
These gifts are most certainly needed and they deserve to be lifted up so that we can find our way right now. We need all edge walkers and the gifts between worlds that they bring. We need translators. We need people who know how to adapt and be fluid and move between a culture that cannot accept the mystery of worlds or belief systems merging and separating and merging again, multiple things being true at once, that's not a culture in alignment with the earth because the earth is mysterious, duplicitous, changing, and the earth holds a multitude of things to be true at once. Thousands, millions of different ecosystems and beings, millions of different weather patterns and expressions of the sun's strength, all of those exist on the earth at once and all are true and all are really happening.
So in today's episode, I'm going to be offering an ode to the Edgewalkers and to our gifts. And one of my Edgewalking teachers is Dear, these graceful beings who seem to leap between our world and the next. And I'm excited to share some of Dear's wisdom and what I've learned from them with you today. I have a couple of announcements to share before we dive in.
First is that I am about to close enrollment for my one-on-one and group guidance programs. And these are essentially processes for Edgewalkers who are trying to find their way in the midst of this culture and capitalism and what are their gifts and how can they adapt and bring those gifts forward to the village right now in this certain time and season. And so this process, it's an 11 session process, whether you do one-on-one or group, we meet over eight times subsequently and then three times throughout the summer. And we cover kind of everything I know right now about how to answer your calling. It's an intensive program. It's spiritually rooted. It's rooted in the rhythms and the land. And I would love to have you if that resonates. We start February 24th. So I know that's not a long time from when this episode will come out, but.
If you feel inspired to do that work together, you can go to awildnewwork.com slash guidance and see if there are still openings or reach out to me directly at hello at awildnewwork.com.
I wanna say a big thank you to everyone supporting the show financially, whether you're a sustainer member who is giving a little bit more each month to help keep this actually sustainable for me or you're someone who's pitched in once or by $5 a month, it's all so welcome and appreciated. I'm really, really grateful. This work would not, could not, should not happen without your collaboration and your just reciprocity and resonance. I learned so much from you and I'm so gifted in these relationships. Even if I don't know you, I know that you exist and I'm honored that hundreds of you listen to each of these episodes. That's not something I ever take for granted. So if you would like to pitch in and help support the show, you can do that at buymeacoffee.com slash Megan Leatherman. And there's an option there to become a sustainer member, which includes a seasonal journal every time they come out, free access to my seasonal classes, and just knowing that you're supporting the show at maybe a more robust level. But it's all welcome and appreciated.
And I want to say a big thank you to Martina and Arianna, recent supporters, for coming into the fold and pitching in what you can. I'm so honored and grateful.
OK, so let's shift into our opening invocation before I dive into this week's material. So this is a good time to just notice your body, your posture. How are you carrying yourself today? Do you need a deeper breath or to let out a sigh, do you need a drink of water? Do you need to find something beautiful in your field of vision or in your heart? May each of us be blessed and emboldened to do the work we're meant to do on this planet. May our work honor our ancestors known and unknown, and may it be in harmony with all creatures that we share this earth with. I express gratitude for all of the technologies and gifts that have made this possible. And I'm grateful to the Multnomah, Cowlitz, Bands of Chinook, and Clackamas tribes, among many others, who are the original stewards of the land that I'm on.
Okay, so I want to start by talking about deer, specifically, as Edgewalkers. And this is my experience of them. I find deer to be incredibly graceful. They're often very quiet, even silent.
They feel to me like very regal travelers between this world and the world of the forest or the world of spirit. You know, it's like they bound out of the forest or walk slowly and are just sort of suddenly there and then just as quickly they disappear. And deer hold a special place in my heart because of a process I went through two years ago.
And it's been really up for me again lately. So I thought it might be worth speaking to as I was just thinking about deer and my relationship with them. As I've talked about on the show before, two summers ago, I went to a wilderness vigil in England with Martin Shaw's school of what's it called? West Country School of Myth. That's right. And before we did the vigil in July, we were asked to do a 12 hour, what they call a medicine walk, which is a dawn to dusk fast, and you go somewhere wild and you just walk and listen. And what you experience in that smaller walk is meant to be a sort of preview of your larger vigil experience, which is a four-day fast in the woods alone.
And when I went to my medicine walk at Oxbow Regional Park, which if you're local, you'll probably know, and it's where I do a lot of my land work and events. It's a really special place. And that day I was wandering around this old growth forest and along the Sandy River and the flood plains there. And I saw multiple pairs of does with twin fawns.
And I didn't realize before this that twins are common among deer, but I saw multiple sets of mothers and, you know, twins, and it was really sweet and special. And the deer out there at Oxbow are used to being around people and, you know, they're not too skittish. So I got to spend a lot of time and I watched the fawns nurse from their mothers. I watched them kind of play and bound and it was just a really special day and I knew that deer were important. Something about them was important in my vigil experience and in the initiation process that I was about to enter. And so then I got out to England and to the Dartmoor National Forest over there and got set up with my spot, you know, and my tarp and started my vigil and
A lot of what you do is essentially the same as the medicine walk you're listening and you might be conversing with whatever forces you believe in or the larger, you know, web and psyche of our universe. And I on at least two, two and a half occasions, because one time I didn't see the deer, but on multiple occasions I would express something about like doubt or fear that would come up, something I was dealing with and working through in my life or in the visual experience specifically. And at least on two occasions, as soon as I said this thing about being afraid or doubting myself, this big buck would leap into my view once from my right and then on my left. And I believe they were two different bucks because they looked a little bit different.
And that was really special because I don't see many bucks out here, I've only seen one or two at Oxbow, and in my medicine walk, I only saw females and babies. And so a big part of my vigil experience and what I was learning and having to integrate is the sort of wild masculine, the stag, these antlers, this ferocity that they came in, and they didn't just wander into view. Both times they bound into my view very boldly.
And we locked eyes, you know, and it was a thing, and then they would bound away. And the other occasion, I just heard one of them, but didn't see them. And then on the last night of the vigil, you stay up all night and you are praying and asking for visions and asking to be reborn with the dawn. And so for the last night, I was leaning against this old oak tree and I would move around the tree in the four directions and just be praying and trying to stay awake and trying to get warm and watching what was happening and a lot happened that night. But one of the really special things that happened was that when it first started to become dawn, like not even you couldn't see any light, it was just that it wasn't as dark and in that practice and then in subsequent dawn practices, I've learned how nuanced the dawn actually is and how long of a transition time it is. But in this one period where the night was just barely starting to give way, I couldn't see a lot, but I could kind of make out what was around me. And I started to hear quite a bit of noise to the east of where I was in this field of wild blueberries.
Which were really hard not to eat after four days of not eating. But I heard all this commotion and I got really scared to be honest and I felt really frozen. But then I realized it was a herd, a small herd of deer, males and females and babies and a whole group of them coming together after experiences of seeing them apart and
For me, it just felt like this affirmation of the work I had done and some kind of peace offering that an integration had been made. And there were other signs of that individual that I won't speak to. But it was really special to see this herd of deer come at the edge of night and day, at the edge of my own vigil experience, about to leave and walk out of the woods.
It was a new moon in Cancer, so the sky was very dark and everything just spoke to this, you know, being reborn and it was really, really special. And so the deer have always been known as that for me since then, as these holders of the edges, of these keepers of separate worlds and thresholds and things that we cross as beings who can cross, you know, into civilization and out, you know, from the wild and through into the night and the morning into the spirit realm and this world. So I think they really remind us in part that the other world is so close. The lines between this world and that world are so thin. The lines between civilization and, you know, the wild are very thin and they're ambiguous, they're not set and they're not sturdy. If you leave an abandoned building to itself for a year or more, the wild is gonna come in and take that over. So the deer remind us, those of us who have edge walking hearts, that our ancestors, our heritage, our gifts, they are all right here, so close in a web with you, inextricably linked. They're not way out somewhere, far away.
Part of the reason why I chose to go all the way to England for this vigil was because I was in a period of wondering if I could really ever feel loved and in love with this place where I live now in Oregon as a colonizer still. And so I felt like I needed to go somewhere where I had ancestors actually buried people who lived there in my line of blood and DNA. And what I found, what the land told me there, was to just love and be loved by the land where I lived. It didn't actually have to be very complicated. And that doesn't mean that we erase colonizer culture or that white people can suddenly just be indigenous. I'm not saying any of that at all. But I do believe that the land just wants to be known and in relationship with us, whoever we are, with whatever baggage we carry. And part of that is making repairs with what harm has been done and living in a good way and learning from the indigenous people who still know how to be in right relationships with the earth. So everything is here. Everything you need is here. It doesn't mean that it's not hard and that you don't need more, but you have, we have so much support right here in the little web, the little ecological niche that we're in, but we have to invite in that help. We have to invite our ancestors in and we have to be clear about the help that we're asking for.
As Edgewalkers, especially in these times, it is our mandate to live each day holding the threads of both worlds at once.
Living with the awareness that we are part of a vast web that is mysterious, that cannot fully be known, that has implications in our day-to-day mundane material life, as well as in our spirit, dreamtime, otherworld life. We are here in precious bodies and we are also spirit and those two things cannot be separated. We are invited to remember that our choices have ripple effects that we cannot always see and that this life is worth living to its fullest edge, that these edges are gifts. We're meant to meet new edges and grow and change. And a lot of us have bought into this idea that nothing really matters or that, you know, even if we're like spiritual or we identify as spiritual, we sort of live under this haze like our...
This belief that our words don't really have consequences or that promises can be broken or that relationships can be sort of set aside or don't really matter. And I think in previous times throughout human history, of course, there can be a lot of like unhelpful superstition or things that just get kind of wild. But among our indigenous ancestors, let's say like my indigenous ancestors in Europe,
I think there was a much deeper, profound level of etiquette and support and awareness that the choices we made mattered, the way we approached each thing in our day-to-day life mattered, the words that we spoke mattered, that these things have echoes in this world and in the next. And sometimes, as I'm doing my own ancestralization work, I'm realizing this more and more, and it has given me a new perspective just on how I spend my time and my life. I talked about in a newsletter recently that between Imbulk on February 1st and the Spring Equinox, I decided not to watch TV by myself. Like I was just in a really not helpful pattern of watching a lot of TV at night. I was so tired. I just felt like that's all I could do. It's what I saw my parents doing each night. Like I just, that was how I would kind of shift down and relax and enjoy myself. And there's nothing wrong with that. But the more I grow in my connection to the ancestors and in my gifts, I started to notice that the multiple hours of TV watching that I was doing every week just like didn't really fit or didn't resonate with what I was being invited to do from you know, the guides and ancestors that I believe in and work with.
You know, it's like it's one thing to just watch hours of TV and like numb out or just have fun and be entertained mindlessly and then just go to sleep. But if you know that your great, great, great, many greats grandmother on your mother's mother's line was like an epic witch in her time and she's just watching you watch, you know, some portraiture show on the BBC for hours. Like, it just kind of changes things, you know? It's like, why am I wasting my time on these things or on my own, like, mindless baggage when I should really be living out my gifts? And I think this is true for all of us. Once you, once you develop more of a relationship with that web that you're a part of, whether you you work with your ancestors or not, or whatever you believe in. Once you believe that it's real and it has consequence and that your life has consequence, it's much easier to step into your role as a medicine person of some kind.
You know, like what if it was true that your ancestors had really sacred relationships with certain animals or fungi or plants and that it's not a coincidence that a certain one of them keeps popping up or that you're feeling drawn to one right now or that you dream about some of these beings. What if that meant actually you're meant to become a caretaker of them and learn from them and develop a real actual tangible relationship with them in this life? You know, so once we start to embrace our role as an edgewalker, whether it's whatever that means for you,
Once we can see that it's part of our mandate to bring those threads into the world together, I think it becomes easier to live a full life that feels more meaningful and that feels certainly more interesting. So whatever your particular place on the edge is like, or whatever it is that you're straddling the worlds, I believe it is true for everyone that the other world is always trying to speak with us, that life is always trying to invite us into a conversation, and all we need to do is embrace our role as an edgewalker and listen. And it's hard to listen and to hear accurately in dominant culture in everyday, busy, capitalist life right now.
The wild is where the gods, where spirit, where our ancestors, where life itself can often get through to us because it's quieter on a certain level. And there's a way that we can actually tune into our unique kind of channel or radio frequency when we're not surrounded by dominant culture and society. And this has been my experience at least.
It's possible that the way you connect to your channel is, you know, through important conversations with others or making your art or in your dreams at night. Whatever it is, I encourage you strongly to connect to your channel more regularly right now, to find those places where you can click into your unique kind of frequency and hear what you need to hear from the other side so that you can weave it in, bring it in, and give it as medicine to the world around you. So many of us need your translations. We need what you're hearing. We need what you're experiencing. We need to know what it's like to travel between something and something else. And so the more of that that can be occurring, the better, in my opinion. So Edgewalkers know that there is more to life than meets the eye.
Someone can be born in a female body with the soul of a man, and there's a gift in that. That is natural, it has always been that way. And the violence inflicted upon queer, trans, non-binary people is wrong and unnatural. It is absolutely wonderful that people should be able to move between genders in different bodies, and that that is a gift that holds a special place in human culture and society and should be welcomed. And there are many other examples of this, like something may appear or present as one thing, but actually have the soul or gifts of another thing and the blending of those, the convergence and translation and reemergence and transition of all of that is a beautiful part of the growth process of life.
And so in keeping with our learning from deer today, we can see with our edgewalker eyes that deer are not just animals here to be looked at or hunted or enjoyed. They are also the divine, the earth itself, walking on four legs. And this doesn't mean that they can't be hunted or should never be hunted, but that it means that there are repercussions when the way we relate to them is disrespectful and is done in an extractive, hungry ghost, awful kind of way, like most hunting among white settlers still is today. I found out a couple of months ago about this awful disease that's affecting deer and elk in the United States and Canada. It's called chronic wasting disease, and it's essentially mad cow disease, but for deer, it's also called zombie deer disease.
And it's called a prion disease, which is when normal proteins in a body misfold. Something happens, they mutate, and it causes neurological degeneration and other incurable symptoms. And it always leads to death. There's not a cure or a vaccine yet. And it's really sad to look at the pictures of these deer that have been affected, who are starving, who are out of...balance who can't walk normally. And the disease has been reported, last I checked, in 32 states so far and in all four of the states surrounding my home state of Oregon. And so there are a lot of people trying to prevent the spread and it thankfully is less common in wild populations. But if it were really to get out of control, it would be devastating. And it's already been devastating to many communities of deer and elk and other antlered beings. And it's possible, it sounds like, that it could be transmitted to humans who eat venison from infected deer, but that's still being studied.
But it's an absolutely tragic disease, and I really pray that it can be limited or stopped so that our beloved deer can stay safe. You know, they're valuable and special and important just as they are, and they also play a really important role in an ecosystem.
Keeping the grasses down and eating the plants, fertilizing the soil and spreading seeds, being food for predators. They're essential. They're really, really important. And I was thinking about this disease, zombie deer disease, and just how treacherous it is. And then I was thinking about mad cow disease. And I was young when that was really happening. I didn't pay much attention to it. But that is equally devastating.
Right now we're hearing lots of reports of the avian flu among birds, bird populations being decimated. These are all real diseases to be sure, like scientific research on these is really important. We need to study them and know them as diseases. And they are also symptoms of our lost relationships, good relationships with animals and the land.
These diseases are much more common in farmed environments where animals are held against their will, who are bred against their will, who are slaughtered against their will for human pleasure and consumption. And so we have totally forgotten as a culture how to be in right relationship with these animals in a sustainable, respectful way. And right relationship can certainly include hunting and there are many beautiful indigenous practices around hunting that I believe are important and help the ecosystem to grow. Predators and hunters are also essential to the growth of an ecosystem. But a right relationship to an animal that you're going to hunt does not mean viewing them as objects that are solely here to feed our bellies or line our pockets or grace our walls.
You know, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife on their page about preventing the spread of zombie deer disease, they just refer to these deer as like, you know, your trophy, or if you have harvested a deer, like what the fuck are you talking about, trophy? This deer or this elk was someone's mother or father or grandmother or grandfather or child, you know?
If all these people in our culture believe that their dogs and their cats have feelings and internal lives and that they're important, if I believe that our bunny Buzz has feelings and that his internal world is important and that he can experience pain, if we believe that about our pets, then it sure as shit is true about wild animals like deer or even domesticated animals that are being slaughtered, like the chickens and the turkeys and the...cows that had mad cow disease. These beings are members of their own families with their own languages and social structures, their own unique purpose in this ecology, in this world, with their own access to the other world. And this is a truth that so many of us have forgotten and it's wreaking havoc on our planet. Industrialized farming and mass produced meats and egg production. It's unleashing these diseases that are horrible for the animals themselves and will also eventually get to us as well. So I don't know exactly how to be in right relationship with animals in this culture. Some of the things that have worked for me are that we eat mostly a vegan diet in our family.
And I know that doesn't work for everyone, but it's what works best for our family. And a big part of that is that I just don't have good feelings about eating what I won't kill myself. If I don't know how to kill and process a cow, and I'm not willing to do that, and watch as it's slaughtered, I don't feel like it's really right to eat their meat.
There are times where we eat fish that I haven't killed. I don't know how to fish, but I would be willing to learn. I want to learn and plan to. But when we eat fish that someone else has caught, it's a big deal. You know, we try to buy the best, most sustainable kind. We say prayers and thanks to that fish who gave its life to feed us. Sometimes I'll make a donation to organizations protecting the rivers where the fish live.
It's just not something that we take for granted. And I'm not accusing you of taking anything for granted if you eat meat or eggs or dairy. But I do think that it's really important to be intentional about bringing some of this back into balance and wherever we can, trying to repair those relationships so that we relate to the other beings we share this planet with in a respectful way.
Things are so out of balance. It's not an accident that these diseases are here among animals. They're horrible, vicious diseases. So whatever we can do as loving people who are also edge walkers ourselves is, I think, so welcome. People in right relationship with the earth, whether it's indigenous people living today or our own indigenous ancestors, they know what it takes to hunt well.
To use every part of the animal so that their life wasn't wasted or taken in vain. People close to the earth and right relationship with it know that they know what it means to walk the edge between life and death well. They know what it means to take a life, the implications of that. And maybe it means that they will also know how to meet their own death well too. And maybe we could learn how to do that in our own lifetimes.
One other thing that I want to share today about deer is that this time of year from at least in Oregon from about December to March for deer and then I think February to April for elk, the male members of these families are shedding their antlers, shedding the mantle of the last growing cycle. And the male deer and bull elk experience a drop in testosterone starting in the fall and winter. And this kicks off a process called abscission, where their antlers demineralize and the connection between their, I can't remember the name of it, but the sort of node where the antler grows from and the antler itself starts to separate and loosen. And so the antlers just fall off. And if the word abscission is familiar to you, could be because that is the same word that's used for the process of leaves falling away from the trees in the fall. So the leaves have gone through a process of abscission. They fell from the trees. They were cut off, cut away, causing no pain or harm to the tree itself, but released. And in the same way, the deer and the elk are releasing their antlers at this time of year.
Because if you think of the purpose that antlers serve, you know, it's defense and communicating status or accolades. And so if we think about what it might mean to shed our antlers at this time of year, right before the spring is here, we might think about what it was that helped us, you know, win quote unquote last year in the last growing cycle and consider what it would mean to release that, to release our defenses, release our status, the things that helped us, so that we can actually be more agile, more free, and be born anew this spring. What needs to fall away in your life so that you can walk your own unique edges more freely with less burden or complication?
What are the things that keep you from crossing the worlds that you are between or sharing what you find there or translating it? What are the habits that keep you from trusting what you hear or your ability to see multiple truths at once? You what would it mean if your defenses fell down for a little bit right now? Or if you shed your accolades or your status, would that help you to embrace even more your role as an edgewalker right now?
So this is a really special thing that deer and elk do each year. And I would love to find a pair of shed antlers this winter. I'm gonna go look. I've never done it. I've never found them in the wild, but I could imagine that being such a special experience to literally hold minerals that grew out of a deer's head. That would be pretty incredible. So.
I encourage you as we move into the transition period between spring and winter and we straddle these worlds, these seasons, I encourage you to consider what your most realized, edge-walking self would look and feel like. What does it mean for you right now to embrace what is weird or unexplainable or queer or the things that are this and also that or that were once this and are now that?
Can you feel the other world close to you and really listen and share what you find, bringing back what you hear because we really need it. I wanna say a big thank you to the deer, the elk, the reindeer, the caribou, all of you antlered, graceful, bounding wise ones who walk the edges between worlds. Thank you for teaching us and showing us what that's like.
May you be safe and protected and healthy and fierce and strong in your communities. I hope today's episode felt useful to you, sweet listener. These are weird, wild times, but you were born for them. So feel your deep roots, feel the courageous fire in your heart, and keep going. Please make your medicine and make it strong for us. We need it.
Thank you again to all of you supporting the show, whether it's sharing it or talking about it or leaving a rating or a review or supporting it financially. I'm so grateful. If you would like to pitch in a few dollars or become a monthly member, you can do that at buymeacoffee.com slash Megan Leatherman. I'll see you in two weeks when we will be really in the transition period between winter and spring. And that's a potent time like all transitions are.
And your edge walking skills will serve you well then. So take such good care and I'll see you on the other side.