Living a SoulFul life

Meeting Death alive

a four day land-based retreat in living and dying

Outside of Asheville, NC

October 2025

Knowing death so we can fully live

When it's over, I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

-Mary Oliver, When Death Comes

Death as a gateway to soulful living

As the wheel turns and the tides of the seasons shift from the blooming green summer towards the falling leaves of spring; we witness our outer experience as a reminder that we too will fall to the ground like the once green leaves and life will continue. Turning downwards, towards the soil that fed our bones for so long is our guarantee in life, the guarantee that you and I will die. This stark reality is hidden and masked by industrial growth culture but what if our ending, our whole life was a gift, a bouquet of flowers we can offer for our diligent service during our stay here?

Living a Soulful Life is a community gathering to come together and become more present and loving with this wondering in heart and mind. We will get closer to our gifts and our soul by asking:

 Who am I? 

What do I love? 

What do I want to do with my small and precious life? 

Knowing I will die, how do I live? 

We will ask these questions to our dreams, to our ancestors, to non-human beings, to our inner voice and apprentice and court their elusive, numinous, and poetic replies. Their mysterious responses will shape our ways forward and the vows we will make to life and to those we love. This is an opportunity to get closer to death to become more intimate with life.

In this retreat You will…

Wander about your place in life’s unfolding

Process what your life and death experiences have been communicating to you about your own meaning

Talk with wild ones about deaths role in life to get closer to the beauty of life

Praise life in morning walks to be with ease and love as part of life

Tend to your nightly dreams in morning dream work to deepen into what soul is asking of you

Tend grief to release what you no longer need and be present with what is on your heart

Write a eulogy and have a self-designed funeral to get closer to soul (what gifts remain)

Presence how you want to live in your short time here

Make vows to your life, loved ones, ancestors, and descendants for how you will live

Be supported by the guides who mirror and offer invitations for you to continually move toward fully embodying your soul

Have ample solitude in nature to see what the larger natural world is mirroring to you and sense your belonging to all of life

Co-create powerful ceremony to get close to soul, meaning, life and to listen to outside forces for guidance

Feel a sense of belonging with the group from sharing what you’re tracking in your life, what meaning is arising for you and listening to their stories too

Apprentice and court elusive, numinous, and poetic replies from your ancestors, from the night, from death, and from the more-than-human to deepen into your gifts and meaning

Western North Carolina:

Dates in 2025

We will be camping in the Black Mountains of Western North Carolina near Celo, NC. Site is remote and shared when enrolled.

This offering is limited to 16 people. There are bathrooms, showers, and a river on site.

Focus on living and dying

We believe that you carry a poetic mysterious ingredient needed for a more thriving and just culture AND industrial growth culture makes living a soulful life hard.  We believe that as each of us leans into knowing we will die, our longing to be honest about who we are, how we want to live, and our destiny comes to the forefront. Recognizing our finite life brings us to questions waiting to be asked. Questions that lead us to ourselves, our gifts, and our belonging to our home. As we get close to death, we get closer to our gifts and to living a soulful life.

Registrants will receive a preparation package including practices to begin and recommended resources for review.

Dinners are communal meals. Everyone is responsible for their own breakfasts, lunches, and snacks. We bring group stoves, kitchen equipment, water, and all other needs.

Lineage and teachers

This offering will be guided by Remembering Earth guides Jacob Erickson and Madison Ledgerwood.

Drawing upon many teachers, we primarily source our learning in soul-centric eco-psychological or depth psychology practices as taught by The Animas Valley Institute, School of Lost Borders, Erica Rhineheart of Moonpath Mystery School, and the works of Michael Meade, Francis Weller, Joanna Macy, and adrienne marie brown.

Exchange for this program

We acknowledge systemic differences in peoples’ access to resources, therefore the cost of this program is on a sliding scale of $640-$1280 with payment plans available. We have two spots at $320 for BIPOC. Payment plans are available for all options. Please apply to begin the process.

Flourish Rate:$1280

If you are funded by an organization or business, or have access to financial security, own property, are in a double-income home, have personal savings or your household income is over $115,000.

Sustain Rate: $960

If you have access to steady income and stability in your home/life, and have access to resources through family or friends, and ability to budget for opportunities such as this. The median price is suggested to help cover the full cost of hosting this class.

Support Rate: $640

If your access to resources is limited and your economic situation limits your ability to attend at the higher tiers.

If the tiered costs are a barrier, please send an email and we can chat about a reduced cost option. These spots will be dependent on ongoing enrollments.

your guides

 

Madison tell

Madison is a soul-centric guide dedicated to earth rooted relationships, wholeness and ancestral connections that enable individuals to see the mysteries of who they are. She believes these guide people toward their most fulfilling, authentic contributions to life-enhancing and just communities.

As her own mystery unfolds, she continues to apprentice to wells of meaning and depth where the ancestors, human and more speak. Through ritual, ceremony, dream states, immersion in nature, intuitive listening and a re-membrance of our sacredness, lineages, and belonging, she feels each of us can access and fully embody our gifts for our communities. She believes these gifts were passed to us through our blood and bones long, long ago for this particular socio-ecological moment of peril and possibility.

Her work is greatly informed by elder community activists, community organizing in social and environmental justice movements for over a decade, and being raised by two sets of grandparents who loved land, liberation and life. Madison’s trainings and personal work with Erica Rhinehart at Moonpath, mentors at Animas Valley Institute, and her mentors for her masters in Sustainable Communities shape her frameworks, processes, and practices in eco-depth psychology.

Jacob Erickson

Jacob guides people to wild and ancient places for them to uncover their gifts in this precious life. He believes individuals befriending death and darkness opens doorways to fall in love with life and further prepares them to be the gift we were meant to be.

Jacob desires to tend the flower beds of our individual lives so we may be the bouquet of flowers to offer death, to make beauty with our life. In these times of rapid unfolding and unraveling, he believes we can still orient to our unique service to the world and one another by bravely going forth amidst the perilous storms ahead by carrying a light amidst the darkness.

Jacobs relationships with the night and her creatures, death, the hunt, and stewarding the wild world guide his work. Through deep imagery, dreams, trauma-informed care, mindfulness practices, wilderness backpacking and nature immersion, Jacob feeds the internal and external world.

Apply for our next program

To register please fill out the application below. We will be in touch soon. If you’d like more information, we would be glad to connect with you - please email us.

 FAQs

 

  • Yes, this is a small offering of only 12 people and staying for the full duration of the program is necessary for us to deepen in and feel held by one another.

  • Yes, we will include time for you to check in with either of us 1:1 where we can answer your questions, mirror whats arising for you, tend to a dream, offer invitations and co-create ceremonies that may be useful for you.

  • No, if you have it great. If not, we have tents, sleeping pads and sleeping bags for you to use. Just let us know.

  • Yes, people of all genders are welcome.

  • This offering includes 3 nights and four days of camping in Celo North Carolina. Each day you will receive personalized and group invitations to deepen into the questions and responses of this offering. You will be guided into ceremony, ritual, dreams, wandering on the land solo, journal practices, meditations, group talking circles and ecological awareness activities.

  • No, if you are in an active crisis or emergency we encourage you to seek personalized therapeutic support.

  • No, we believe consciousness is altered through our various practices and want you to experience the transformation without additional substances. Please email us if you have any questions.

  • Any cancellations more than 60 days before the start of the program will be provided a full refund, minus processing fees. Any cancellations between 30 and 60 days before the start of a program will be provided a refund of half the program cost, minus processing fees. Any cancellations less than 30 days from the start of a program will not be refunded, unless another applicant fills that spot.

  • Yes, we are offering 2 half-priced spot for BIPOC. If you are interested and this applies to you, please email us. We also have a scholarship for one person. Please email us if you would like to apply for the scholarship.

  • Thank you! You’re incredible. You can paypal wild@remembering-earth.com with the note naming who you are paying for. Please have the person you are paying for fill out the application.