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Deer Medicine with Suzy Muir
1.1k Plays1 year ago
Can rocks be your besties? Are the shadows safer? How does Deer Medicine help women avoid becoming prey?
Get into this conversation with adventurer, wilderness guide and creature of place Suzy Muir – who, alongside her intrepid husband Jon Muir – live a radically simple off grid existence in the Grampians.
I was lucky enough to meet Suzy in her natural habitat, purely by chance, and have considered her a friend and mentor ever since. Her stories and wisdom and wildness may just have the same effect on you; something to hear with your bones as well as your ears, singing to ancient and latent parts of the soul. Enjoy this whole conversation.
Suzy + Jon’s home on the web ~ Grampians Nature Programs
Suzy + Jon’s accommodation ~ A Boat in the Grampians
Watch Alone Across Australia
Watch Suzy & The Simple Man
Mary Oliver’s poem ~ Wild Geese
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Reskillience
00:00:04
Speaker
Hey, I'm Katie. This is Reskillience. It's pouring, so I'm going to tell you a little story.
The Gift of Inspiration: DVDs and Meeting the Muirs
00:00:15
Speaker
Many moons ago, my mate Mick handed me two DVDs. You've got to watch these docos, he said. They're right up your alley.
00:00:23
Speaker
One was called Alone Across Australia, about a dude walking across the country with little Jack Russell. The other, Susie and the Simple Man, about a couple growing food and living off-grid. I'd never heard of them, and it had been centuries since any of my devices could play a digital, versatile disc. So I did the next best thing and stuck them on my bookshelf. I could at least watch their covers collecting dust.
00:00:47
Speaker
A few lunar cycles later, my dear friend Kim invited me on a trip to the Grampians, which are grand and rugged sandstone ridges a few hours west of here. We planned to stay with some folks she'd recently and randomly met who lived on a property that bordered the National Park. They offered accommodation in exchange for help in their garden. They're really interesting, Kim told me. You'll like them a lot.
00:01:11
Speaker
After a long drive and an even longer driveway, I arrived at Anana, a sanctuary fringed by thick bushland and sandstone escarpment, more emus than fence posts and not a human insight. Apart from Kim, who proceeded to show me around. Our accommodation consisted of a beached yacht called Shannon, where we'd be sleeping, a beautiful glass conservatory and a huge open-sided shed with a fire pit and kitchen.
00:01:37
Speaker
And I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw, on the far wall, two posters that my brain momentarily couldn't process. They were so familiar, these posters. They were for two movies, Alone Across Australia and Susie and the Simple Man. I looked at Kim, kind of confused. That's who we're staying with, she said.
Building a Bond: Katie and Susie Muir
00:01:56
Speaker
The people in the films, their adventurers, kind of well known, John and Susie Muir.
00:02:03
Speaker
That evening Kim and I walked across the field to Susie and John's place for dinner, scattering wallabies, seeing the full moon's silver forehead peeking above the sandstone parapet. We sat outside on picnic rugs listening to pobblebunk frogs. John and his kilt, Susie and her plats, a most memorable scene. I couldn't wait to tell Mick what I thought about the cinematography, even if I hadn't watched the films.
00:02:28
Speaker
John has been called our country's greatest living adventurer. Susie is also an adventurer, as well as a wilderness guide and facilitator, filmmaker, writer for National Geographic and Wild Magazines, curiosity enhancer for children and consummate creature of place.
00:02:45
Speaker
During our stay, Susie took us wandering in the forest, pointing out where the deer sleep beneath the cherry balart, and which innocuous plants make incredible tucker. She led us practice with her bow and arrows, led us in on her dance with cancer. And since that heady getaway, I've been lucky to call Susie a friend.
00:03:05
Speaker
a mentor, a role model, a woman who appears on my doorstep at opportune moments and communes with some part of my zoological DNA that I can't quite pin. Recently Susie sat at my desk here on Jara Country.
00:03:21
Speaker
fielding my questions and sharing just some of her wildness on air. The resulting conversation roams from connection to country and building your own shelter, to cultivating invisibility, minimising your disturbance and calling on dear medicine to stay safe in the city. You'll hear Susie's words not just in your ears but in your bones, which is useful on public transport without headphones.
00:03:44
Speaker
And before I go, I invite you to queue up Susie and John's incredible documentaries, Alone Across Australia and Susie and the Simple Man, which you can stream and support on Vimeo. Because ignoring them on your bookshelf for the better part of a year has all kinds of consequences. I'll pop the links in the show notes and meet you on the other side of this powerful, peaceful conversation with Susie Mueller.
Connecting to Land: Susie Muir's Spiritual Journey
00:04:12
Speaker
I'm sitting in the tea house with Susie Muir, who has become a very dear friend and role model of mine over the past year or so.
00:04:22
Speaker
And to start the conversation from a very grounded place, I'd love to ask you about Inanna. I'd love to start us at Inanna, which is where we met and is the place you call home in the Grampians. There's a beautiful quote on your website that says, Inanna is a threshold for launching into your wild self, remembering the wild song of your own heart and feeling wholly a part of the natural world.
00:04:51
Speaker
Susie, what does it feel like to be your wild self on that land? What is it to be not just in nature but of nature? I feel so very much myself, so wholly myself when I'm on the land or in the land at Inana at the foot of the mountains surrounded by the forest and the garden and the orchard and the silken pool which is the
00:05:21
Speaker
watery ecosystem that we've created together, that John and I have created together. I feel like I'm learning to be inextricably linked and supported and have a reciprocal relationship with that particular piece of land. And I have just noticed since recently travelling that
00:05:48
Speaker
When I'm away from it, my capacity to drop into relationship with other land is really diminished. I'm really becoming particularly connected to that land. And I think I'm drifting more into an indigenous way of relationship with that land that I hadn't anticipated happening, really, and surprised at how
00:06:12
Speaker
tricky it is to have that depth of spiritual connection with land other than where I live. What does that feeling of indigeneity mean to you as a white woman?
00:06:24
Speaker
I think it goes back to everyone's cultural heritage of being Stone Age hunter-gatherers. That's where everyone has come from. And if we go back far enough, all the disparate people on the planet, brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts, there was that relationship. And we've spread out from that and we have that common ancestry. And for some people, the Stone Age is much closer. And that way of being in the world is
00:06:54
Speaker
much more embedded in them through growing up on a piece of land, having elders who already understood that land, whose immediate ancestors understood that land. But then there's that relationship of being homo sapien and having that Stone Age hunter-gatherer subsistence relationship with land as
00:07:19
Speaker
everyone's cultural heritage and I've really believed that and I've really believed that actually being inland, being in country, is what teaches you to be in relationship. For me, saying that I have a more Indigenous relationship with the land that I inhabit, it's about a deepening sense of
00:07:46
Speaker
place where when I'm not in relationship with that land, when I'm away from that land, that I feel a sense of something's missing. The wholeness of me isn't with me when I'm not, when my feet aren't on that ground. And it's, it's been a deliberate practice to peel off the layer upon layer upon layer of information and go deep and deep and deeper into that place.
00:08:17
Speaker
to learn from it, to have it be my primary teacher, to have it be that which informs my sense of being human, to have the land be my teacher in that way.
00:08:32
Speaker
And I think the surprising thing when I went traveling over the winter and I was away from that particular piece of land that I couldn't get that deep spiritual connection with any land that I passed through was so surprising because I felt that I'd started to tether myself in a way that was quite possibly how
00:08:56
Speaker
people that have lived for generations on a particular piece of land have a sense of tethering and a sense of wholeness to place. And I was surprised at that, that relationship, even though it's what I've been sort of striving towards for 20 years or more.
00:09:20
Speaker
I guess it was just this beautiful recognition that I am inextricably woven into that landscape now and it is so significant to me and being away from country.
00:09:35
Speaker
is like being away from my centre or my spirit or my soul or whatever words you want to use to describe that and there's an aspect of self which is missing when I'm not when I haven't got my feet on that land or I'm not in that forest. Beautiful and the coming away gave you the space to feel that
00:09:55
Speaker
Yes, yeah, it was reassuring. It was that belief that I had that it is our cultural heritage to have relationship with land, a deep relationship with land that actually seemed to reflect back to me as, yes, it's not just a belief. It's more of a knowing, a body, a whole body knowing. Yeah. And are you able to connect that to the work that we need to do in order to be more responsible
00:10:23
Speaker
inhabitants of this earth and this planet. How does that sense of indigeneity and belonging and tethering to place positively shape our behaviour? I think fundamentally most humans have lost connection to country and that that loss of connection to country, whether it was a number of centuries ago in Europe or in Africa or wherever it might be,
00:10:54
Speaker
that loss is such a fundamental loss and grief that I think the majority of people carry and the majority of people are quite possibly not aware that that's even something that they're carrying. And so I think when you start to form a relationship, a deep relationship, intentional relationship with a landscape over a number of months, years, decades,
00:11:24
Speaker
then you start to, that grief starts to dissipate because you start to be sustained physically, emotionally, spiritually by that land in a way that you didn't know you even needed. And so when that grief is not the basis of who you are in relationship with other humans, then I think it potentially gives you the capacity to
00:11:52
Speaker
behave with more compassion towards both your species and all creatures on the planet because there's not that underlying wound which is untended and unrecognised and informing perhaps a lot of your unconscious choices and behaviours. Do you think that grief and that wound drives the crises that we're facing into now?
00:12:17
Speaker
Absolutely, I think there's such a feeling of insecurity when we don't have that fundamental relationship with that which supports us with food, with clothing, with shelter, when we don't have that. When it's something that has to be purchased, like it's not an inherent birthright, you know, you're just on the back foot, you're just in a place of
00:12:44
Speaker
Great scarcity, like through the cultural idea that land has to be purchased, that it can be bought and sold. You don't have that security of land as your birthright. And I think that when you do start to develop that, even if you haven't, even if you're not living on land that you've been born on, but you start to develop that deep relationship with country,
00:13:08
Speaker
You get to forage, you get together and I think we're hardwired to do that and if you're not doing that you'll do it in the supermarket or in the clothing shop or in the shoe shop or wherever because something's missing and you're not getting it from the source that you need to get it from.
Life's Path: From City to Countryside
00:13:26
Speaker
There are a lot of different ways I describe you to people in my life who haven't met you before but potentially the simplest one is Susie Muir is the
00:13:38
Speaker
the wildest woman of my acquaintance. And I would love to hear your version of your life story, how you became the woman I see as a very wild, or at least a wildish woman, more to the point where you've come from and if you've been called to the land for a long, long time, or if that is something that has grown over time.
00:14:01
Speaker
Yeah, my family's history is recent history is both my parents came from farming backgrounds. So they both have relationship with land that sustained them in terms of food and monetarily. And growing up, they, mum and dad both had a great interest in growing food in the vegetable garden.
00:14:27
Speaker
So knowing that you can eat from the ground beneath your feet has always been a part of my family culture, like it's not a recent development in myself. And then as a child, my mother fed me with the most beautiful literature about people in relationship with land in wild places. And she read to me and then started to each Christmas, I would get books about people in relationship with land, in land that was relatively unpopulated
00:14:57
Speaker
And they obviously, you know, sparked her imagination and she shared that with me. So I think that's really formed my desire for that beauty of relationship with healthy wild ecosystems. And then who am I?
00:15:14
Speaker
relation to that. Who am I when I'm in that without the constructs of social graces and common laws and you know those things that sort of compress you and
00:15:33
Speaker
stop you from being allowed to feel those things which you feel very strongly in yourself until they just sort of get suppressed. So my urge to be in the forest is because I can just be myself without that external human pressure. And I feel it really strongly. I feel really boxed in by that. I feel like my
00:15:56
Speaker
Being my personality just gets compressed by the expectations of human society. So there's such incredible freedom for me just to drift through that forest landscape where there are no boundaries apart from the natural geography like the horizon, the escarpment, the river.
00:16:16
Speaker
whatever it is that might be creating some sort of boundary which feels like something that I can move over or through or around without any sort of emotional dampening. I have a question about crossroads and that actually feels like a completely inept metaphor when we've been discussing beautiful naturally formed demarcations or
00:16:42
Speaker
forms in the landscape but I'm wondering if you've had crossroad moments in your life where things could have gone a dramatically different way if there are crossroad moments that spring to mind sharing some of those with us and also is there a parallel life Susie who's ended up somewhere completely different and what would her life look like? The parallel life Susie doesn't wear any clothes
00:17:07
Speaker
and lives in a jungle, yeah, so even more wild. So she's not in an office? No, she's not in an office. She's even more wild than my sort of one toe in the wild and one toe in human society, yeah. Was there a chance that you would take a more ordinary path in life? I did go to university and study applied science, which I think actually has been fantastic for my capacity to think critically. Yeah, I really have just started to appreciate that.
00:17:36
Speaker
But I was miserable the whole time I was studying. I was in the city. I'd moved from a little country town and we were on land of about 10 acres where I grew up. And then I moved to the city to go to university and I truly wept for those three years that I was in Melbourne. My horizon, my physical horizon was so small and it was square and it had hard edges and it was concrete.
00:18:00
Speaker
and it was noisy and the other people moving through it weren't people who made eye contact with me. So it was a very isolating, cold, lonely experience and was very ugly. Yeah. So I tolerated it for three years and just went, nah, nah, I'm not doing this. And then what happened? Then I moved to Manirapalese and lived in the dirt in a tent under a tarp actually and went rock climbing for
00:18:30
Speaker
a number of years and worked in an organic vegetable farm just down the road where I did a day's work and got my vegetables for an entire week and then went back climbing. Is this where you met John? I did meet John at Arapalese. I did meet him there. He was part of that climbing community and he lived in Natimuk which was a little satellite town about 15 k's from the mountain. So he'd moved to the Mount
00:19:00
Speaker
about 10 years, 15 years prior to me turning up there and had just come down from Wollongong.
00:19:09
Speaker
was going to stay at the mountain for a couple of weeks climbing and ended up living there as what seems to happen to a lot of people. They go for like a two-week climbing trip and they just never leave because Manirapalese is such a complex sandstone escarpment that rises up out of the Wimmera wheat fields and it's just this incredible
00:19:34
Speaker
Oh it's so beautiful this Metamorphose sandstone which is orange and glazed and hard and it feels so good under your fingertips and there's so many ways to move your body over that rocky landscape and for young for young people like who
00:19:49
Speaker
I've realised that they want to inhabit their body and move in relation to the landscape. That inhabiting the body and that body moving over a landscape, Manirapalese just lends itself to that so beautifully. It's such a complex, convoluted landscape of stone and so sensuously satisfying and it just hooks
Sustainability in Action: Life with John Muir
00:20:13
Speaker
people. Some people, it just hooks them. Yeah.
00:20:17
Speaker
In my head, I sometimes tell myself that this podcast is the confluence of permaculture, rewilding and cheesy self-help. With that in mind, I'd like to dig a little deeper into your relationship with John, if I may. I'm curious to know how you found each other and what makes your partnership what it is.
00:20:40
Speaker
I think John and I recognised something in each other the first time we saw each other and there was a fair bit of resistance in me about that recognition. We were partnered with other people at the time but it was a strong sort of spark of something. It felt very, very potent.
00:21:05
Speaker
And we knew each other socially through the climbers at Manirapales and who lived in Natimuk. So there was a sort of a small subculture there. And we'd go on trips together down to the coast and go on big rambling walks in the moonlight, you know, like 10 people.
00:21:25
Speaker
together with a ghetto blaster, someone who carried on their shoulder. And yeah, it was it was pretty beautiful, amazing time. So I got to really see how he interacted with other people and who he was in a relatively wild place and how happy he was in relation to that. And that was a very common passion or thread for us.
00:21:51
Speaker
And 11 years after I first met John at the mountain at Mount Arapalese, I was living in a small country town called Harrow, about a hundred kilometers south of Mount Arapalese. And I'd built a small passive solar house and a permaculture garden and orchard around that house. And I got a phone call on my 34th birthday.
00:22:22
Speaker
and was John and reconnected with him in that moment. And it was a total body buzz, like this total being experience of, I don't know, it was sort of like being struck by lightning. I was just so energized.
00:22:41
Speaker
Um, I was, um, essentially single and, and John was absolutely single. I did have to take a little while to unravel from the relationship that I was in at the time, but it was like reconnecting with John was like remembering what's possible in terms of a relationship with someone.
00:23:08
Speaker
And after our first meeting at that point in time, discussing our values and what we thought about marriage and children and trust and monogamy, you know, those sorts of crucial common values, if you have them or you don't have them, like this sort of integral to
00:23:33
Speaker
a relationship surviving really. I went away from that and it was a full moon. I went back to my little house that I'd built and I went out under the full moon and I was sitting with the sage, the purple sage bush that was sort of like my spirit plant or my totem plant or my intimate other in that place. And I was just saying to the sage, I really want that
00:24:04
Speaker
Quality of relationship with a partner it might not be John But I want that quality of connection that I have remembered is possible through this briefing counter with John It's like that's that's the connection. That's the Whole body knowing that This person
00:24:28
Speaker
Oh, what is it? I don't even know if I can put it into words actually. It's difficult. It's difficult to describe that other than a whole body knowing, which is a whole being knowing for me. That also includes my mind and my spirit and my emotions. And when I say the whole body, it's that whole, it's everything. Just a knowing that, what is it? It's like,
00:24:58
Speaker
It's like the beautiful intensity of the purple sage plant under the full moon. It's a relationship that has that beauty about it. Which is not to say that the last 20 years of being in an intimate relationship has not been without its struggles and learnings and challenges. It's not a freeze-frame happy ending. No way. Nothing that's valuable is. Well, thank you for sharing that.
00:25:28
Speaker
I'm feeling curious now, I'm wondering and wondering into the realm of resilience and relationships and the connection between those two things, if there is one. I often see activists potentially neglecting their intimate relationships or not putting a lot of stock in that zone zero, their household. That's a sweeping generalization, but I wonder if we overlook the potential for our most intimate
00:25:58
Speaker
connections and relationships to be their own form of activism and resilience. And I wonder if you have any thoughts on what it really means to nurture those in the same way that we'd nurture our principles and idealism and dogma. I think the value that I place on my relationship with John is that together we're able to create
00:26:26
Speaker
a food system, an energy system, a water system that sustains us in a way that is through direct relationship with the land that we live on.
Home Building Adventures
00:26:36
Speaker
And then there's an invitation for people to come onto that land and to help us with those systems and to learn about how to manage and develop those sorts of fundamental
00:26:50
Speaker
things that we need as people, how to develop those things for themselves in their own lives.
00:26:59
Speaker
It's generally younger people that come and spend a number of weeks or months with us on that land and seeing those moments when they make some connection between, that's a carrot seed and that's a carrot. I never knew that was a carrot, what it looked like in the ground, that that's the sort of leaf it had and they're so excited about that revelation and it's a simple thing but
00:27:24
Speaker
I just know that it's going to have far reaching implications for the quality of their lives moving forward and their capacity to sustain themselves moving forward and for their potential relationship with land and I know that John and I working together in concert are able to provide that capacity or that learning capacity for people which feels
00:27:53
Speaker
Although it's not exactly environmental activism, it really improves the quality of life of some individuals. And I'm sure there's a ripple out effect from that sense of security or sustenance that those younger people might be able to then have for themselves.
00:28:10
Speaker
recently I took my sink apart or the plumbing the little I don't even know what it's called the pipes under my sink to flush them out because there was a lot of congealed goo under there because I don't have a catcher thing on my sink as you well know as the dishwasher in residence I was really proud of myself because I'm not a tinkerer I don't consider myself a practical person I wouldn't know how to build something to save my life whereas you built a
00:28:34
Speaker
a home for yourself when you were 28 I believe. I'd really love to know the story of building that home and what skills you had coming into that project and what you developed along the way and can anyone do that? Anyone can do it, yeah. I guess you probably would need to have a somewhat healthy body and a somewhat, you know, you would need to be able to, your mind would need to be able to be rational and
00:29:02
Speaker
So I guess when I say anybody can do that, there are some limitations, but most people could do that. I think the single thing which really made it possible for me was seeing as a very small child, seeing my mum and my dad build two houses. So from the age of
00:29:32
Speaker
three through to five, I watched them build a brick veneer house together. And I played amongst the building materials and saw how my father held the hammer and how my mother held the saw. And then we moved out to a 10 acre block of land and they built a wooden house, a log cabin out of Western Red Cedar. Oh my goodness.
00:29:56
Speaker
that was a treasure to grow up in, that smell of cedar, this fresh cedar. Incredible. So seeing them do it again and just being around that and just knowing so deeply that it was possible to build one's own shelter. And so that knowing made everything else possible because I knew it could be done. I just had to find the information, I had to find the
00:30:22
Speaker
I had to learn a language, a building language, I had to find the tools, I had to find the materials to build with and those were really difficult things and I did all of the architectural design for the house myself and took it to council and it was approved by engineering so you know I looked at other people's plans and I got the Australian Building Standards for Structural Supports and worked off that. It was before the internet so
00:30:50
Speaker
You know, you had to be pretty creative in trying to find information and asking other people who had done various things like that was a really good way to get information.
00:31:03
Speaker
But I do remember the incredible decisions that I had to make again and again and again in that two year building process where I was just overwhelmed by should I do it like this or should I do it like that and this is possible but and I had also had this incredible ideal that I didn't want to use any plastic in my house.
00:31:23
Speaker
And I had to make those concessions because, I mean, how do you do your plumbing without plastic? I know it's possible you can use terracotta, but that's another whole skill to use, you know, how to form, how to get the right clay and how to form it and then how to fire it.
00:31:39
Speaker
how to glaze it so it's impervious to water, those sorts of things, I just went, oh, I'm going to get plastic. So I had to make compromises. I couldn't do that whole thing by myself. I needed to use some of the ready-made industrial materials to make it happen. And I remember during the building process of just, so I built it out of stone and earth and recycled wood. And I remember during the building process just
00:32:07
Speaker
falling down on the ground with overwhelm and just crying. I was like, I just can't do
Survival Skills and Overcoming Fears
00:32:14
Speaker
this. It's just too hard. There's too much responsibility. It's just going on for too long. It's physically difficult.
00:32:24
Speaker
And then I would get up off the ground and I would keep going, you know, because I wanted that shelter. I wanted that roof over my head. And I had so seen it like doing the architectural plans. I saw it. I could see this thing that was invisible suddenly take form on a piece of paper.
00:32:43
Speaker
And then I could see it in 3D as I started to put out the string lines to make the foundation. It was like, yes, this is what it's going to look like in a three dimensional form. Even before it was built, there was the ghost of the house sitting there just waiting for the pieces to go into place to to create the solid structure. Feels unfathomable for someone like me, which is why my mind goes to your life as a nature guide.
00:33:11
Speaker
And knowing that you spent time with people in the land and taking people out onto the land who may never have sat, sat out there for an extended period of time. And I imagine shelter building is part of that, that journey as well. What do you see when people learn to build an emergency shelter or a shelter from found materials? And sometimes I imagine sleep in it overnight.
00:33:35
Speaker
What do you see when people claim that fundamental tenet of sacred survival? Because it's up there, isn't it? Is it number one? Water, I think. Yeah, shelter. Yeah. Yeah, food. I think water, it depends what your landscape is, doesn't it? Yeah. I mean, if you come from a place where there's so much water, then shelter's the first one. But where I live, which is sort of on the edge of semi-arid, then water's the first thing. Yeah, and then shelter.
00:34:05
Speaker
What do I see when a person who might have been on a picnic before comes and spends some time on the land and learns how to build a shelter for themselves and sleeps in it overnight and then comes back the next morning. I see this radiance in their face. I just see this
00:34:24
Speaker
Incredible joy like I did this I stay I built a shelter for myself. I stayed out there overnight I sat with my fear of being alone in a wild place and I I stayed I stayed the course and they come back the next morning. It's it's it's an overnight experience and yet
00:34:44
Speaker
Their faces are so open. There's just such confidence and radiance in those typically young people, young women who I have worked with in that particular context. Oh, it just makes me so happy. Like it's just such a reward. Yeah.
00:35:00
Speaker
and on the fear front what are people afraid of and what should we be afraid of? Look I think most fears are imaginary and it's because we don't have the experience of relationship with wild places and the unknown is very frightening. They don't know what I mean we don't when we don't know what's out there in the wild or what the experience might be it's the fear of the unknown so it's sort of an imaginary fear in a way but what we should be afraid of are just the
00:35:30
Speaker
I'm not even afraid, that's probably not the right word, aware of, are those things which pose a real physical risk or a real psychological risk to the human in the landscape.
00:35:47
Speaker
Have you ever been afraid when you've been out wandering or exploring? I was terrified of the dark as a child and I grew up in a Christian household where it was
00:36:05
Speaker
you know, a given that there were things called demons and devils. And that, that really frightened me. You know, I, I thought the ghosts and demons and devils were really something that might come and attack me or get me or, you know, take me away or do, do awful things to me or frightened me or just, and it's been really hard to
00:36:32
Speaker
not be afraid of the dark. Like that's been the hardest thing. And that's the imaginary fear that I'm talking about, which is, you know, I think common to being human really. I was recollecting, recalling that I spent a night
00:36:48
Speaker
out on a mat as part of my course in a national park. And I had a lot of trepidation about the overnight part because less than being afraid of the dark, I suppose I'm afraid of things in the dark or concealed people in the dark. But as I spent that day in the twilight and saw the changing of the guard, of the animals from the daytime animals to the crepuscular animals to the nocturnal animals,
00:37:18
Speaker
my eyes were seamlessly adjusting and I was seeing with great clarity the things around me even when the darkness was fully, I was fully enshrouded in darkness and I had that sense of, I am the creature here and I am the one who can see exactly what's going on, hear someone coming, I'd hear them a mile off, I'd see them. I've got the higher ground, the upper hand, the, I'm the person in the bushes and that flip,
00:37:48
Speaker
was extremely empowering for me to feel that at home-ness and the ring-tailed possums were my friends and allies in that time. We were part of the same space and system because my greatest fear is other people, not so much
00:38:11
Speaker
ghosts or noises or anything like that. It's legitimately the woman afraid of the predator. And I feel that that is, it's been time and again legitimized by the violence we experience as women. I don't know what the question is here, but I find myself a little thwarted in my longings to wander and longings to be on the land
00:38:39
Speaker
by that fear of other human people and wish that they didn't exist for a minute so I could commune with the more than human. Understand exactly what you're saying and the example
00:38:56
Speaker
There's so much to speak to about that. I feel that violence against myself, against women very strongly throughout my life. I have experienced it. In fact, I've been hunted by men with guns at one point in time. And I think part of the way that I've dealt with that is by learning to move quietly and silently through the forest.
00:39:17
Speaker
and how to merge into the shadow of a tree and how to be the one whose circle of disturbance is so much smaller than my circle of awareness. So my awareness is right out there and I'm being quiet and I'm moving subtly and I feel really safe in that.
00:39:38
Speaker
Both John and I heard this really strange story. We thought it was strange from a friend whose son got benighted in Venice or somewhere like that. The place he was supposed to stay in was shut and he had to spend the night on the street. And his father's advice to him was stay in the well-lit areas.
00:39:57
Speaker
And John and I, our internal reaction to that was, oh no, be in the dark areas and be the one who's looking into the light areas, be the one who's hidden and has the advantage of the dark to see what's going on around you. You know, it was exact opposite to how we would have behaved in such a situation. To become invisible is such a skill, such an incredible skill for a prey animal. Yeah. And that
00:40:24
Speaker
was on display just yesterday when you came back from a walk and said, oh, I just glanced a bird with my foot, which as anyone who roams in any capacity in the natural world would know, birds absolutely hoof it when they when they know that a human is clomping through their their turf. So for you to actually encounter with your body another creature in that way, a wild creature,
00:40:49
Speaker
instantly spoke to me of your quietude and lack of disturbance. How does one cultivate that?
00:41:00
Speaker
practice moving quietly. Can I move through this landscape without cracking a twig? Can I move through this landscape without rustling a leaf? Can I move through this landscape without the birds all going, there's a human there, there's a human there, you know, like that whole alarm system going off. Can I move in such a way that they just
00:41:20
Speaker
Yeah, I'm nothing to them, you know, and it's a practice and it's really fun. I love it. And have you been hunting? I have done some rabbit hunting, like shot a few rabbits with a gun over the years and I don't really do that anymore. I'm more hunting to understand the animals, the creatures that are around me and to learn from them.
00:41:50
Speaker
what their beings are and how that relates to being human and what I have to learn from that. So I'm hunting, I'm hunting learning from the animals that I stalk. So I'll follow a deer for two weeks in the forest, but I'm not hunting it to get that food sustenance. I'm hunting it to understand what does the deer have to teach me about being human?
00:42:14
Speaker
And that really feeds into the whole women being prey animals because when I was working with the young women from Melbourne University who were between the ages of 20 and 25, they were really adamant that it was their right to be able to walk down the street at night time and be safe. And so they were going to do it. And I was thinking, well, yeah, it is your right. But the unfortunate reality is that
00:42:42
Speaker
to some men you are a prey animal and they hunt at night in cities and that's just what happens and
00:42:51
Speaker
So I was remembering this little snippet of information about how deer medicine was good for young women and I thought what does that even mean like what is deer medicine? So I started to follow the deer in the forest and try and learn from the deer and have relationship with deer to learn their medicine or their teaching that they had for me as a
00:43:15
Speaker
human as a woman who might be working with younger women and perhaps have something valuable to pass on to them that the deer had taught me.
00:43:25
Speaker
And I came across them as soon as I started with that intention of following the deer in the forest. And you might see them maybe once a month, but that very day that I started tracking deer in the forest, two deer, went across my path and I just thought, yes, I'm on the right path here. I'm going to follow deer for a while.
00:43:45
Speaker
And the two pieces of information that I took from that, seeing deer tracks and observing their behaviour through following their tracks and learning about how fast they were walking and whether they were male or female from their tracks, all of this information that was coming together
00:44:03
Speaker
What I took away was that deer are incredibly good at being invisible and they're incredibly alert. And so they're, again, it's that awareness of what's happening around you. It's not alarm. It's alertness. It's awareness.
00:44:19
Speaker
They use their ears and their looking and they stop chewing and they look and they listen. So it's that exquisite awareness of your surroundings, which is the number one thing that I learnt. And then the second thing was that if they're backed into a corner in such a way that they can't flee or they haven't been able to get away,
00:44:41
Speaker
before the hunter or the predator turns up, they'll fight and they'll fight really hard. Like in America, I believe the most deaths from an animal from an interaction with a deer. So they will push really hard when they have to. And so the two things I wanted to pass on to those young women was have that exquisite awareness. Don't be seen, you be the one that sees.
00:45:07
Speaker
And then if you have to fight, go hard. Go really hard. You know, go for the jugular. Go for the groin.
Nature's Wisdom and Emotional Resilience
00:45:13
Speaker
Just, you know, don't worry about how much noise you make. Be your wildest being in that fight for survival. Yeah, don't be embarrassed about it. Don't be a good girl. Like, go for it. Yeah. Helps to have hooves. Yeah. Yeah.
00:45:32
Speaker
You speak a lot about being in relationship with beings other than humans. What does that feel like and what are some of the most particular or special long-term relationships that you have in your life, whether that's plant or animal or mineral?
00:45:50
Speaker
Look, the rocks, the stones, where I live are probably that which I have the most enduring relationship with because they're, to some extent, inanimate. I do believe that they are animate, that they have their own life within them. A matter of atoms that vibrate and move.
00:46:12
Speaker
And I've really felt from particular rock faces that I visit regularly near my home.
00:46:22
Speaker
particular feeling in that place that it emanates out from the rock it's almost like an energetic aura or something and when I'm close enough to that rock I can feel that that rock feels really different from the rock that's like 20 meters in the in another direction and I can feel it inside my own body it's almost like if someone's feeling angry or afraid and you feel their anger or their fear inside your body it's like the
00:46:51
Speaker
The presence of this particular rock has a particular feeling inside my chest. My body and its body are energetically connected to each other. Difficult thing to articulate again. But that's the best I can do with that. And I'm getting the benefit of your movements and your physicality in this conversation that unfortunately other people can't see.
00:47:20
Speaker
I saw it in my mind's eye with your gestures as well. Is this the work that we need to do in this period of time? We, human, bipeds, this subtle, sensory, somewhat intangible learning. Is this important work in the context of
00:47:50
Speaker
the calamity with the capital C. It is. It's really important work but I would probably rephrase it to say it's really important play and perhaps we've forgotten that the curiosity and the imagination and the sense of ease and
00:48:19
Speaker
fluidity and space that we create for ourselves when we drift off into some park or sit underneath a tree in the city and lean back against it or go into a forest somewhere and sit by a stream. Those things, those places, those beings that are surrounding us can feel like your family, your extended family, they can feel like
00:48:50
Speaker
creatures and beings who you have a sweet relationship with that just nurtures you in a way that concrete and steel and automobiles and rushing and making money just doesn't nourish.
00:49:07
Speaker
And I think we really need nourishment at this point in our history as people. If you can grow some food on your balcony or go to the local kindergarten and help set up a food garden there or grow a tomato on your windowsill or sit by a river or lean against a sun-warmed rock.
00:49:30
Speaker
All of those things are about relating directly to food beneath your feet or on your windowsill and relating to nourishment within the more than human world and knowing that you're surrounded by and supported by and
00:49:53
Speaker
For me, it's just like my heart's desire is met in those places. If I'm overwhelmed by my human interactions, what I might have said or done or felt coming from another human
00:50:08
Speaker
I just go to those places where there might be just a few trees or a little bit of water or a view of the sky and some crows you know just even if that's the only glimpse of the more than human world that I can find.
00:50:24
Speaker
I'll go and focus on those places and that uncomfortable feeling in myself will just unwind and dissipate. And so it's an opportunity to be sustained and to reset. So to be sustained physically, to be sustained emotionally, to let go of tension which interferes in human relationship. And it's just ultimately nourishing. I don't really know how else to describe it.
00:50:54
Speaker
I want to read a quote from Mary Oliver's poem, Wild Geese, and this is something I've heard you reference a couple of times. And it's a little bit naff to read poems on podcasts, but I'm going to give it a shot. Mary writes, you do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
00:51:23
Speaker
What is that slice of priceless Mary Oliver wisdom say to you, Susie? I think that quote speaks to me because there is such gentleness and such sensuousness in that and such allowing within that. And I think as a people in the Western industrialized societies or any society that's industrialized,
00:51:52
Speaker
The emphasis has been to shift away from a body knowing or an embodiment in our physical selves and to move to a brain space, a head space, a mind space which is somewhat disconnected from what the body really wants and we forget that there is so much intrinsic intelligence and wisdom in our body that knows how to guide us through our lives
00:52:17
Speaker
without all of the thought processes. It's almost like the body's the foundation of wisdom or knowledge or connectedness to the more than human world. And our mind and our intellect is something that helps guide us through that
00:52:36
Speaker
life's journey once we tune into what our body is telling us we need. I think it's a much stronger real solid indicator of what it is we need in ourselves and I think the capacity to value the body and to feel the feelings that the body's having and to use them as
00:53:03
Speaker
beacons or guides for how to respond. I think that capacity is very diminished in us as a people. And so I think that's why that quote appeals to me, because it's so much about the wisdom of the soft animal body, knowing what it wants and knowing what to do. Well, before you pad quietly off in the direction of your burrow, I would very much like to hear from you about resilience.
00:53:31
Speaker
which is supposedly the premise of this podcast, but as is always the case, we take lots of lovely little trails through the gorse and broom. What does resilience mean to you? I think it's an ever-changing
00:53:52
Speaker
landscape for me, a deepening of understanding or a shifting in perspective that's continued to change through my life. And at the moment, resilience for me is about feeling those very intense emotions that I feel as a human being, my anger, my rage, my anxiety, my joy, my empathy, my compassion, all of those things, all of those emotions
00:54:19
Speaker
And allowing them to be okay. Allowing the sorrow and the grief to be alright. Allowing the anger and the rage to be okay. And finding ways to be with those intense emotional states so that my body is supported whilst
00:54:46
Speaker
my emotions and my mind are dealing with those.
00:54:53
Speaker
experiences so the way that I support my body through those emotional waves is I go and reset by sitting by a creek or sitting with my back against a tree and letting myself have a good cry and feeling really fine and dandy about having a good cry you know it's healthy it's really healthy too and then you know if there's anger and rage
00:55:22
Speaker
wow there's no better place than a wild forest to go and just have a really good scream or thrash around on the ground you know the three-year-old tantrum without it impacting upon anybody else at all just releasing that and not judging the rage or the anger but just letting it be what it is and I think that's part of that wildness that you might might have been referring to before it's that um
00:55:51
Speaker
really knowing the animal self. And then obviously because I still want to be in connection and communication with people is how to be with that animal self and let it be its most expressed self without interfering with my relationships with other people. And in fact, I think that acceptance and expression of all of those sometimes difficult emotions
00:56:17
Speaker
is what allows me to connect deeply and intimately with other people. So for me at the moment, that's personally what resilience is about. And next week it might be something different. I actually think I'm on this little journey with this emotional expression and understanding and acceptance for a while and then there'll be another layer of resilience that appears. Yeah. As someone who's living, what I see is a very connected and resilient life, life way.
00:56:47
Speaker
what would you say are the things that are most easily adopted by the average Jane or Joe or Jeremy or Jack?
00:57:02
Speaker
You know, I shift immediately away from emotions when you ask me that question and I see a tomato plant growing on a windowsill and I think, you know, starting to have a relationship with seed and putting it in soil and seeing it turn into a plant and getting the food from that plant. To me, that's the beginning of human resilience and security.
00:57:28
Speaker
When I really drill down into what I care about the most and what is my number one priority in life, I get to the point, in all honesty, that it's breakfast. It's food. It's nourishing myself. So I think the tomato plant on the windowsill is a pretty good entry point.
00:57:50
Speaker
Absolutely. It's food beneath your feet. And if you're in an urban environment, there's so many opportunities for that. There's the windowsill, there's the balcony, there's the old person who lives next door and has got a front yard or a backyard who might already be growing vegetables and might need a bit of support with, you know, moving some dirt around. There's the local kindergarten that might want a kitchen food garden, or there's a community garden that's already established that might just welcome you into it.
00:58:17
Speaker
There's a vacant lot. A group of people might get together and start a garden there. There's just so much potential. There's rooftops. There's so much potential in the city for growing food on the ground beneath
Recommendations and Reflections
00:58:31
Speaker
your feet. And I think that's the fundamental thing that makes people secure. That and water. Very, very lastly.
00:58:43
Speaker
I would love to know what you would love to share with people, what you would point them in the direction of, whether that's a song or a favourite book or a colour or a taste, any recommendations from Susie Muir about living this beautifully articulated life that we've been talking about.
00:59:05
Speaker
Look, two books spring to mind. One would be Braiding Sweetgrass. And unfortunately, someone else is going to have to find the author's name for that. Robin Wall Kimmerer, I believe. Beautiful, beautiful. Thank you, Katie. And Retro suburbia, you know, Dave Holmgren and Co.
00:59:29
Speaker
Well, David wrote it with a team of wonderful people supporting him. Wow, retro suburbia. Susie Muir. What a plug. Brilliant. Just going with what came to mind first and those two things came to mind. They seem like great complimentary manuals actually. Well, thank you so, so very much for sitting opposite me and
00:59:58
Speaker
expressing all of those sentiments and stories. So very welcome. I feel like the opportunity to share that information feels purposeful for me. And so it gives me a sense of, oh yeah, that's good. I like that. So thank you for that opportunity. Is there anything else that you'd like to say that you were really burning to speak to that I didn't ask?
01:00:23
Speaker
You know, get an egg carton. If you're not a gardener, get an egg carton and fill it with some soil and pop some beetroot seeds or radish seeds in there and do it with a kid and then water it and keep it moist and give it some sunlight and watch those seeds come up and enjoy that magic with that child. Egg carton pun, it's so good. Yeah. Thank you, Susie. You're welcome. Thank you, Katie.
01:00:53
Speaker
You can find more of Susie's work and offerings, including her and John's books, programs and accommodation on their website, grampiansnatureprograms.org. And yes, you too can stay in Shannon the beached yacht and commune with the emus and stars. I'm interested to know what you gleaned from this conversation, what struck a chord. So send me a message or email or take these themes and run with them on your social media.
01:01:21
Speaker
I've been incredibly touched to find positive reviews for the podcast on iTunes and Spotify, proving that some of you really do listen all the way to the end and are also generous enough to go the extra mile and give resilience a wrap. It does help other people find these conversations, makes the ripples go a little bit further. So even though I'm not always a fan of going further or bigger or expanding my reach, it sure is validating to know that the podcast is landing with you.
01:01:51
Speaker
I actually spend up to 20 hours on each episode, so your reviews and engagement are a real encouragement for me to keep going.
Closing Remarks and Future Episodes
01:01:59
Speaker
Thank you so much. I think you're going to love next week's guest too, a person I've recently had the pleasure of meeting in person after watching his films for years and years and years. I'm sure many of you are big fans too. Maybe some of these films have influenced how you live your life. I'll be chatting with Jordan Osman.
01:02:20
Speaker
who is one half of Happen Films alongside Antoinette Wilson. They have nearly half a million followers on YouTube and millions of views, which tells you something about our collective hunger for stories of positive change. So for the creatives out there, the small footprint folks, the van life rogues, the tiny home admirers, the storytellers, the wanderers, or anyone who wants to traverse this crunchy civilizational moment in bare feet.
01:02:49
Speaker
next Monday's episode is for you. Tune in then and until then have a sweet and resculiant week.