2023 Paths
Rekindling Community through Music, Song and Story
Facilitators: Taica Patience and Leigh
We come together once again around the hearthfires, allowing our connection to Earth, Spirit and each other to flow through us as we play, listen and create. Joining together to express our souls with music, song and story, we will strengthen the threads and rekindle our beloved community. Music is for everyone, from complete beginner to seasoned musician, to the musically wounded. There are no wrong notes, harmony is anything your neighbor isn’t singing. Our focus will not be performance, but rather soul expression to bless and be blessed, allowing Spirit to flow through us as music. This will be a healing space for hurts around expression with our voices. We invite you to join us with your voices and your instruments!
If you are thinking of or have decided to join our path, this bit is for you, with just a few things to help you come prepared and to help us all to deeply bless and be blessed in our time together at camp.
For our collective weaving and exploration of story, please bring a journal and a writing instrument. Also for the story portion of our path, though not required, we invite you to read Braiding Sweetgrass (or parts of it) by Robin Wall Kimmerer, as a beautiful example of the potent power of story, and to bring it with you. If you would love to do so and cost is an issue, email Taica at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and let me know. It will depend on the number of requests, but I may be able to help you get the book into your hands.
For the music part of our path, we invite you one-and-all to bring instruments if you have them, to add to our collective sound. We will have our path in a place where there will be a dry place to keep them. (inside the Arts Mahal).
Taica Patience I had a quasi-nomadic upbringing with a mostly single mother, peppered with difficulty and dusted with magic. My life has been colored by the lens of living in the liminal spaces between race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, ability, neurovariance and culture. I have lived a life of using experiences, boldly cracking them open like an egg, to seek the gold hidden within as nourishment for healing and growth on the journey of a modern day mystic. I have been a Life Coach, Spiritual Guide, Healer, Ordained New Thought Minister and Artist. In them all, my deep intent is to call in growth, healing, connection, and ultimately Joy. Priestessing and facilitating the emergence of the innate balance and love in people, groups and the world are my passions. I live a joyful yet rooted life of deep meaning in nature; pulling back the layers to reveal the utter beauty and real magic of being alive. I have some knowledge in many areas and am grounded and compassionate.
Leigh (she/her): I find deep joy in connecting through music. I love the sounds of the living land and how they speak to me in song. The music path at VWC 2007 and years of music and vocal improv with Music For People (MFP) helped me to find confidence and joy in vocal improv. With MFP I've learned practices for facilitating music and vocal improv. I love how complete beginners and experienced musicians can connect and play through the simplicity of listening and expressing. Whether the tones are mournful, joyful, stirring or rousing, I find they strengthen the deeper threads that connect us. I'm grateful to share in music, song and story round the fire with our community this summer at VWC.
I live as a settler, belonging to stolen land that the Wabanaki people belong to. I spin and weave connection through practicing massage therapy and healing arts, wilderness guiding, singing, movement arts, and listening to green and wild ones. I am a green witch, an edge-walker, a guide at the threshold. I offer my devotion to mystery, the dreaming Earth, and the communities to which I belong.
Healing at the Hearth: Transforming Conflict in Community
Facilitators: Acorn and wildRose
Together we gather around our communal Hearth, faces aglow and ready to share a journey of grounded presence, listening, accountability, and transformation. From a foundation of seeing all people as whole, loving, wounded beings, we will offer magical, consent-based, trauma-informed conflict transformation strategies for preventing and addressing interpersonal conflict. Drawing from the rich tradition of Restorative Circles, as well as from our own experiences adapting these practices, we will offer a flexible, structured methodology for hosting conflict transformation circles (facilitated conversations). We will enlist magical technologies to support our journey, including grounding, circle casting, chanting, invoking allies in the work, purification, and divination. This Path will include daily practice in reflective listening and will culminate in an opportunity to practice hosting/participating in a conflict transformation circle.
We feel that leaning into conflict and addressing it sensitively and constructively, and in a timely fashion, is essential for the health of our communities. Comparatively, when conflict is avoided, or engaged with in harmful ways, disconnection from one another, and our deepest ideals, often results. By sharing tools and methodologies for navigating conflict, we hope to help VWCampers feel empowered to prevent, deescalate, hold space for, and move forward from conflict. We see this as a path of (re-)connection that makes space for each of us, our complex experience sets, and our humxn relationships, to remain together around our community hearth, rekindling flames from embers, even when conflict has existed, or may still exist.
Acorn is a queer cultural worker, cook, and parent seeking to grow the better world our hearts know is possible. They are the co-founder of Garden Gate Conflict Transformation and have been hosting conflict transformation circles since 2015. Their hearthkeeping work is also deeply connected to community food through their cooperative business, K is for Kitchen, and its sister project, the Community Supported Kitchen. Acorn is deeply grateful for the intergenerational magical community of Vermont Witch Camp, and is eager to be of service and to share this space with their witchlet, Salvia Hope.
wildRose plants the seeds of a more resilient world by sharing skills & knowledge needed to root well anywhere. Fae identify as a trans & queer cultural worker, Earth-mover, and community hearth-keeper. wildRose brings lenses of ecology, magic, and justice to bear while sharing practices that tranifest greater love, growth, and healing in the world. Fae enjoy cultivating feelings of Home & belonging, while sharing delicious food & deep breaths with friends of all stripes. In her wake, she tends to leave increasingly fertile gardens, well-fed communities, and growing, shared visions of regenerative culture. Faer humxn ancestors hail from the many connected lands & peoples around the ‘Between the Worlds’ (Mediterranean) Sea. gardengateconflict.mystrikingly.com
Combined Youth/Pixie Path (ages 1 - 12)
Facilitators: Erin Cerulean & Ponyboy
Much time will be spent playing with and amongst the wild world—meadow, forest, water. Path will be a balance of structure, responsive activities and easeful flow. The day will begin with open-ended play/hellos and goodbyes with families/book reading/story time/art projects/snacks and play plans. Path will close with reflections and appreciations.
Erin Cerulean (she/her): has spent the last thirteen years working with kids from 0-18 in a medium sized suburban public library in Western Mass. Her magical practices tend to express themselves through the domestic arts: cooking, needlework and gardening. She can often be found reading a book while cuddling a cat.
I have been a youth librarian for around 14 years, mostly in a public library setting where I have worked with kids from babies to teens and families. I have facilitated all kinds of library programs for youth from storytime and crafts to book clubs to technology programs. I have mentored teen volunteers and employees. I am skilled at anything related to kids and books, doing arts and crafts, singing, dancing and generally playing. I am a good listener when someone is having big feelings.
Ponyboy is excited to return to VWC this year to lead Pixie Path and reconnect with Witch Campers of all ages. In their muggle life Pony runs a small child care program –The (Gay) Pony School (for Babies) that focuses on play, community care, connection with nature, and building the world to come. They’ve spent most of the past decade (or more?) caring for and learning with young children and are grateful to have deepened their theoretical framework while pursuing a Masters' Degree in Anti-Bias Early Childhood Education from Goddard College. They are always honored to be part of the care networks of the children and families they serve and look forward to playing with the young folx of camp while their families/regular care providers are off doing fabulous things!
https://www.goldenrodandrose.com/