Wisdom of the Forest Dweller
“Journalist Florence Williams reports in her book The Nature Fix that North Americans spend over 93 percent of their waking hours indoors or in cars (and the other 7 percent is spent walking between buildings and cars)...Regular—or any—experience of deep wilderness is missing from most of our modern lives. Without such contact, our radiant mental and physical intelligences are being diminished.”— Lyanda Lynn Haupt, Rooted
The backside of Mt Shavano
December 1st, 2025
📍Salida, Colorado, USA 🇺🇸
Greetings from the wilderness!
I hope you all had a life-giving Thanksgiving and are recovering from your food coma, ready to embrace the start of winter. After being in the "big city" of Denver these last 10 days, I'm really glad to be back in the forest and nature's embrace. While I'm excited to be on the warm beaches of Mexico a month from now, I’m in no hurry to leave the quiet intelligence of these winter woods. They feel like the last honest thing in a world sprinting toward nowhere in particular.
After being surrounded by the frenetic, neon-lit hustle of the city, it hit me (again) just how easy it is to lose ourselves in the churn of our post-industrial age of convenience—on-demand entertainment, same-day deliveries, the 24-hour outrage-cycle. I enjoyed visiting my "old life," but my nervous system made it very clear that it prefers pine trees over push notifications.
My soul needs nature.
As an Enneagram 8 with a very strong 7 wing (a love of adventure), my core motivator is lust—sexual, yes, but it also shows up as a zeal for life, determined action, a can-do attitude, and the belief that I can do anything I set my mind to. As with the core motivator of all the Ennegram numbers, these are both my greatest strengths and my greatest weaknesses. My superpowers and my kryptonite.
Spending time in the city reminded me that these are glorified traits in our modern world. Out here in the forest, they get lovingly dismantled because the woods don't care how productive I am. They don't care how many things I get checked off my to-do list. They care about presence. They care about honesty. They care about whether I'm actually inhabiting my life.
With a lack of understanding and healthy boundaries around these superpowers, it is no surprise that I faced life-threatening burnout twice before I was 40. Slowing down—learning to move with the seasons, not sprint ahead of them—was one of the most transformative parts of my burnout recovery. And for me, nothing ushers me back into sanity faster than forest solitude.
The neighbors
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
Here's the twist I didn't see coming when I became a quasi-forest-dweller: I became more ascetic—not in a sackcloth-and-bare-feet way, but in the "I genuinely don't need as much as I thought" way.
Living in the woods has quietly rewired my desires.
I'm less attached to stuff.
Less seduced by convenience.
Less convinced that "more" is the way to peace.
Asceticism has gotten a bad rap because we've confused it with punishment. But at its core, it's simply the practice of uncluttering our lives so our souls can breathe. It's choosing simplicity so we can actually perceive the holy. It's loosening our grip so God can loosen our burdens.
Turns out, the forest teaches asceticism better than any manual ever could. The trees don't hoard. The seasons don't hustle. And nothing in these woods wastes a single ounce of energy trying to be something it's not.
My life here has become a quiet apprenticeship in living with less—and finding out that "less" is where the real abundance hides.
This lifestyle shift echoes a beautiful, ancient concept: Vanaprastha—the Sanskrit stage of life known as "the forest dweller." It's the season when a person steps back from the world's frantic striving and turns toward wisdom and contemplation. Not to escape responsibility, but to see it more clearly. Not to abandon community, but to serve it from a rooted, spacious heart.
Living in the forest has pressed me into a new kind of maturity—one that values quiet over noise, depth over speed, presence over performance. The Desert Mothers and Fathers understood this long before I ever caught on: stepping away from the world isn't about fleeing; it's about finally being able to see.
So here I am, in the forest, not retreating from life but becoming more awake to it. Letting nature reshape me. Letting the woods apprentice me in wisdom. Letting this season be a teacher, not a timeout.
Winter invites that. The forest insists on it.
If your soul is craving the same kind of quiet recalibration—the kind that only darkness and stillness can give—I'd love for you to join me for our Winter Solstice Ceremony on December 21st.
We'll gather on the longest night of the year, wrapped in the music of Himalayan bowls and gongs, slow movement, and a guided body scan meditation that helps you drop back into the present moment. It's not religious, not performative—just a sacred pause in community before the holidays sweep us away again.
Come step into the wisdom of the stillness with me. Let's welcome winter the way our ancestors did—with reverence, rest, and room for God to speak.
With Love, unconditionally—
Jennifer
P.S.—I’d love to hear from YOU! Rather than emailing me or dropping me a DM, please post a comment below 👇
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