Nature Evolutionaries – Details, episodes & analysis

Join us for the fifth session of our Soil Conversations series, featuring a compelling discussion with Hunter Lovins, renowned environmentalist, author, and champion of sustainable development. This session promises to delve into the intricate relationships between soil health, climate resilience, and sustainable agriculture. Lovins will share her wealth of knowledge on how nurturing our soil can lead to a regenerative future, offering insights drawn from her extensive experience and pioneering work in the field.

In this conversation, we will explore practical strategies for improving soil health and enhancing ecosystem services. Lovins will discuss the role of innovative agricultural practices, such as agroforestry and holistic management, in building resilient food systems. Participants will gain a deeper understanding of how healthy soils contribute to carbon sequestration, water retention, and biodiversity, and how these benefits can be realized on both local and global scales.

This session is an invaluable opportunity to hear from one of the leading voices in sustainability and to engage in a dialogue about the future of our soils. Hunter Lovins’ unique perspective, grounded in decades of activism and research, will provide a rich context for understanding the critical importance of soil stewardship in addressing the pressing environmental challenges of our time.

L. Hunter Lovins is President of Natural Capitalism Solutions. NCS helps companies, communities and countries implement more regenerative practices profitably.  

A professor of sustainable business management at Fordham University, Hunter teaches entrepreneuring and coaches social enterprises around the world. A Managing Partner of NOW Partners, she is also a board member of Aquion and several non-profits. Hunter has worked in energy, regenerative agriculture, climate policy, sustainable development and resilience for 55 years.

A consultant to industries including International Finance Corporation, Unilever, Walmart, the United Nations and Royal Dutch Shell, as well as sustainability champions Interface, Patagonia and Clif Bar, Hunter has briefed heads of state, the UN, and the US Congress, leaders of the numerous local governments, the Pentagon, and officials in 30 countries. 

Author of 17 books – including the recently released A Finer Future: Creating an Economy in Service to Life, which won a Nautilus Award – Hunter has won dozens of awards, including the European Sustainability Pioneer award and the Right Livelihood Award. Time Magazine recognized her as a Millennium Hero for the Planet, and Newsweek called her the Green Business Icon. 

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Join us for a compelling interview with Hilary Giovale, a writer and community organizer who is deeply engaged in the work of truth, healing, and repair. Hilary will share her personal journey as a ninth-generation American settler coming to terms with her ancestral legacies and the responsibilities they carry. We'll explore her process of ancestral repair, her solidarity with Indigenous-led movements, and how her relationship with the land where she lives informs her activism and personal growth.

In this conversation, Hilary will discuss the challenges and insights she has encountered as she navigates the complex terrain of unlearning white fragility and committing to reparations. She’ll offer a candid look at how these experiences have transformed her understanding of kinship, responsibility, and resilience. Expect an open and vulnerable dialogue that goes beyond intellectual analysis, inviting us into the realms of intuition, dreams, and practical rituals for healing.

This interview is an opportunity to hear firsthand from Hilary about her ongoing work to address the harms of colonialism and racial hierarchy. Whether you're beginning your own journey or have been on this path for some time, Hilary’s reflections will offer valuable perspectives and practical tools for those dedicated to creating a more just and equitable world.

Hilary Giovale is a ninth-generation American settler descended from the ancient Celtic, Germanic, and Nordic peoples of northwestern Europe. She lives at the foot of a sacred mountain, a being of kinship, that stands within the traditional homelands of Diné, Hopi, Havasupai, Hualapai, Yavapai, Apache, and Paiute Peoples, as well as several Pueblos. Her relationships with this land inform her life as a mother, community organizer, writer, and philanthropist. In 2015, Hilary became aware of her ancestors’ longstanding presence as American settlers. Since then, she has been living a process of inquiry that includes ancestral repair, solidarity with Indigenous-led movements, reconnection with Earth, apology, forgiveness, and reparations. She is the author of Becoming a Good Relative: Calling White Settlers toward Truth, Healing and Repair (now available for pre-order).  Hilary also co-facilitates the Rekindling Ancestral Memory circle hosted by ONE.  To read more about her work, please visit www.goodrelative.com.

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Join us for the third session of our Wetlands Series as we explore the confluence of Water and Earth in sustaining abundant life.  Drawing on her years of work with communities, rivers, and freshwaters worldwide, Earth Elder Myra Jackson will share about her co-creative partnership with water and wetlands as places of wonder, unity, and connection.  These awe-inspiring, unifying spaces foster biodiversity, mitigate climate change, and help sustain life on a global scale.  

Immerse yourself in the reciprocal movement between water, a life-giving and dynamic force, and wetlands, which purify our ecosystems. Delving into the intricate relationship between humanity and wetlands, Myra will skillfully guide us to feel our connection with the freshwaters in our own landscapes.

As we approach the Spring Wetlands Gratitude Ceremony, let's come together to honor the magic of wetlands and deepen our connection to these vibrant, vital aspects of Nature.  https://www.natureevolutionaries.com/wetlands-gratitude-ceremony

Myra Jackson is an Earth Elder who has held careers in engineering, holographic organizational development and academia. She carries the title of Diplomat of the Biosphere with a primary focus on transforming our societal relationship with Nature through public policy approaches that recognize Nature's intrinsic rights to exist whole along with all Her life forms. She also serves as an expert on the platform of the U.N. Harmony with Nature Program. Her life’s work is anchored by her role as an Evocateur of the Sacred and those ideas whose time has come.   

Myra participated in the Women Working for the Earth Summit hosted by ONE and has been a webinar guest sharing her highly popular topic, “Nature’s Embrace: The Way of True Reparations”. 

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In this episode Susan Draffan offers a brief overview of Sea Turtle evolution and mythology and shares her understanding of their esoteric purpose and requests for humanity in the context of the transformational shift of the ages that is currently unfolding. Together Susan and her Sea Turtle guide lead us on an inner plane journey to remember our true selves and birth our soul’s gift to our beloved planet.

Sea Turtles are one of the most ancient, widespread, fascinating, mysterious species on Grandmother Earth. They occupy all our planet’s oceans except the polar regions, and are both fundamental to and indicators for the health of marine ecosystems. All 7 extant sea turtle species are currently endangered or threatened. Turtles embody central roles of honor in the cosmological and creation stories of many world cultures, and sea turtles in particular act as gatekeepers for liminal portals – the “thin” places between sea and land, unseen dimensions, and levels of consciousness.

Susan is a vibrational essence co-creator and practitioner, plant spirit healer, animal communicator, and seer. Her background includes a former career in clinical medicine and research, spiritual studies in the Western Mystery Tradition, and a lifelong connection to the animal, nature, and fairy realms. She lives and dreams in a sacred valley rimmed by mountains near the sea, where she is presently developing a line of essences with native plants and places while holding a vision of the New Earth.  To contact Susan, please email susan@shiningspirits.net or visit her website www.shiningspirits.net.

Listen to Susan's talk below

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In this episode, Rachel recounts some of her experiences communicating with the whales, shares her observations and concerns about the booming new “whale-watching” tourism, and offers guidance on how to reach out to these beings without disturbing their lives. She leads us in a meditation practice to make contact with the whales, receive their wisdom, and share our love.


Rachel Baird is an artist, peace activist and writer (best known as a poet). Her books in print include Uplands and Valentines and Other Tragedies.  Baird's conceptual art, including video, installations, and peace centered work can be viewed at  http://rachelbairdart.com.  Currently, she is working on a series of "Peace Wells"- kinetic sculptural installations aligned to the Earth's lay lines, these wells provide visual cellular memory points for the frequency of peace and also create a collaborative energetic grid that will help generate and sustain the frequency of peace across the planet.  The Embrace Project is another of Baird's peace focused creations- utilizing our common human ability and need to be held, this project gathers groups of people in a series of mindful embodied connections to invoke personal and global transformation.   

Since childhood,  Rachel has been aware of communicating with beings of the natural world, particularly the whales. She facilitates voyages to commune with whales and leads guided meditations to “help us reconnect with our water ancestors, meeting them where we are and creating a future together – helping hold the common dream to restore an ocean of peace.” 

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Larch Hanson is a seaweed harvester on the North Eastern coast, running a family business out of his home in Steuben, Maine. Along with seaweed harvesting, Larch is a structural body worker, a carpenter, a cook, a gardener, just to name a few of his many talents. 

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Storyteller April Thanhauser recounts traditional tales of the sea and guides us in a meditation journey of remembrance of our ancient and intimate soul connection with Ocean.

April is an educator, healer, and story-teller whose spiritual path has brought her to love a kind of meditation that is based in communion with Nature.  She draws upon her life-long devotion to folk and fairy tales,  and to the ocean,  to share magical stories of ocean spirits interacting with humans.

Mermaids and silkies, nereids and sea gods, are very much alive in our collective imaginations and our mythology.  No matter where we live now, there’s a good chance our near or distant ancestors lived in close relation with the sea. Traditional folk and fairy tales are carriers of our ancestral wisdom, speaking to us down through the generations of things that are important for us to remember. They may instruct us, caution us, make us laugh or shiver or simply entertain us. Many, many of these stories, though, are meant to illuminate aspects of our soul’s journey and remind us of our connection to spirit.

Since the Ocean is indeed our Mother, having birthed the first life on earth so long ago, and since, therefore, her creatures are our relatives, it makes sense that the story of our soul’s journey is filled with ocean connections. The water in our bodies was likely once flowing in an ocean current, and the tides of our emotions are subject to the same cosmic forces which orchestrate the seas. At some deep level, we recognize our kinship with whales, dolphins, and seals. 

And so, there are powerful stories, from many cultural streams, in which the Ocean beings are central. They remind us of the Ocean in us all.

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We explore common wild edible plants found at this time of year (late August) and delve into recipes that turn them into tasty delicious food!

Dina Falconi is a clinical herbalist with a strong focus on food activism and nutritional healing. An avid gardener, wildcrafter, and permaculturist, Dina has been teaching classes about the use of herbs for food, medicine, and pleasure, including wild food foraging and cooking, for more than twenty years. She produces Falcon Formulations natural body care products and Earthly Extracts medicinal tinctures. She is a founding member of the Northeast Herbal Association, a chapter leader of the Weston A. Price Foundation, and an organizer of Slow Food-Hudson Valley. She is the author of Earthly Bodies & Heavenly Hair: Natural and Healthy Personal Care for Everybody and Foraging & Feasting: A Field Guide and Wild Food Cookbook.  www.botanicalartspress.com

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Loving our Mother through the ecological crisis by hearing and intoning poetry in the Wild.

Timothy P. McLaughlin is a poet, spoken word artist, and teacher. He founded the Spoken Word Program at the Santa Fe Indian School and he and his students received numerous awards and were featured in many media publications and programs, among them The New York Times and The PBS New Hour. He is the editor of the award-winning book Walking on Earth and Touching the Sky: Poetry and Prose by Lakota Youth and the producer of a poetry album and documentary film both titled Moccasins and Microphones: Modern Native Storytelling through Performance Poetry. McLaughlin received a Lannan Writing Residency Fellowship in 2011 and his writing has appeared in a variety of journals. His debut collection of poems, Rooted & Risen, chronicles an inspired intimacy with the still wild places & presences of the Earth. He is best known for his powerful style of embodied recitation and his commitment to revitalizing ancient oral traditions in fresh contexts. He offers concerts, workshops, and ceremonies—often in collaboration with his wife, singer & sound healer Madi Sato—meant to awaken an integrated body-soul continuum and rekindle humanity’s basic reciprocal, loving relationship with the Earth. McLaughlin lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico with his wife and their three children. Visit him on the web at www.TimothyPMcLaughlin.com or https://praisingearth.org/

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As humans, we are born from the living web of wildness that is the universe itself. The galaxies are wilderness, as are the planets, the oceans, and the creative depths of the human soul and psyche. Yet much of our modern culture has had the effect of alienating us from the cosmos and our creative selves. Together we will explore the transformational shifts in worldview and practice that are reconnecting us with the Great Community of life. As John Muir wrote, "The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness."

Drew Dellinger, Ph.D., is an internationally known speaker, writer, poet, and teacher who has lectured and taught extensively across the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. He is author of the award-winning poetry collection, Love Letter to the Milky Way, and the upcoming book, Martin Luther King – Ecological Thinker: Toward a Cosmology of Connection. Dellinger has lectured at numerous colleges and universities and has taught at Prescott College, Schumacher College, Naropa University–Oakland, the Sophia Center, CIIS, and John F. Kennedy University, where he was Associate Professor and Director of the Program in Social Ecology. Dellinger has been called "a national treasure," by Joanna Macy, "a deep and courageous poet," by Alice Walker, and "one of the most creative, courageous, and prophetic voices of his generation," by Cornel West. www.drewdellinger.org Twitter: @drewdellinger

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