Sept 12 at 4pm ET to Sept 15 at 1pm ET
Facilitators: Laurel Dykstra and Celina Medrano-Miller
Cost: Sliding scale $585, $460, $350
The cost includes the programming, overnight accommodations, and meals Friday dinner through Monday lunch.
What do creatures, plants, landforms and waterways have to teach us about stealth and fabulousness? How does the more than human world invite us to authentic gender expression? Often people with non-cis gender identities are pushed into urban spaces and find rural and wilderness settings dangerous, or we are told who we are or what we do is unnatural. This is an opportunity to reconnect with and reclaim wilderness as a queer space, to explore what the species, landforms, and elements of territory have to teach and share with us and revel in the goodness of our bodies.
Retreat content will draw from the work of Queer Nature and Contemplative Ecology, Forest Schools and the Wild Church movement as we learn from creature teachers, craft altars to our transcestors, eat food from the land, practice radical rest and play, and deepen our connection with this sacred place.
Kirkridge is a Christian retreat center that is used by people of many and no faiths. There is no expectation that participants have any faith affiliation. Wild Gender a land-based retreat for trans, gender queer, non-binary, 2 Spirit and other gender diverse adults and self-directed youth.
In order to have a balance of participants of various identities and avoid patterns of domination we are asking folks to apply rather than simply register, we will be holding a number of spots for BIPOC participants.
Facilitators Bios:
Laurel Dykstra (no pronouns or they/them) is an author, ecojustice activist, amateur naturalist, and sought-after preacher. Their Flemish and Anglo Celtic forebears came to the land of Hul’qumi’num speaking peoples near the Salish Sea as part of colonization and resource extraction projects. Laurel is and Anglican priest and founder a Salal + Cedar, a church that worships outdoors. They have experienced a life-time of spiritual formation in nature, provide accompaniment and discernment for individuals and communities involved in direct action, and have received training and supervision in nature-based spiritual direction from the Center for Prophetic Imagination. Laurel’s writing includes books, articles, and anthologies mostly at the intersection of Bible, social action, and nature, with occasional helpings of parenting and racial justice. Most relevant to their time at Kirkridge, is their newest book Wildlife Congregations: A Priest’s Year of Gaggles, Colonies and Murders by the Salish Sea (Hancock House, 2023), a reflection on interspecies loneliness in a time of mass extinctions.
Celina Medrano-Miller (they/them and she/her) is a former student from the University of British Columbia with a B.A. in Linguistics who is passionate about language, land, and culture. As an uninvited guest from an Ashkenazi and Quechua heritage born on xʷməθkʷəy̓əm territory, Celina has been learning hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓, the language of the people and lands they grew up on since 2019. Their work includes language documentation with speakers of Secwepemctsín since 2020, and being a part of Salal + Cedar with Laurel since 2018. Celina loves supporting spaces of spirituality, radical rest, and justice and celebration for/of our environment and LGBTQ2S+ community.
