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About Forest Halls
a grace-note from a dragonsinger
Greetings and welcome!
In 1994, through music and our imaginations, my harp partner Deb Knodel and I discovered Forest Halls. For the next six years, we guided our audiences into this mythic landscape by way of harps, story, poetry, art, and song. Several years later she and I ended up living on an island in the heart of Puget Sound in Washington. For me, this beautiful semi-rural island with its woodlands, farms, shores, and spirited, generous, questing community -- diverse in background yet intermingled and unified in our felt knowledge of our special nature as islanders -- opened a whole forest of awarenesses and experiences. In it, I returned to some alive way of being I'd almost forgotten.
With the island herself (so it seemed!) guiding my way I wandered into a tapestried wilderness of celebration, nature discovery, child's play, radical simplicity, healing artistry, and other fun groves and grooves. As I followed trails, I've picked up various tools, practices, and ideas that articulate ways to revitalize learning, weave whole-nature communities, enliven our sense of self, and restore our connection with the natural world. These practices and perceptions not new ideas -- most of them have been around for a long, long time. They are so easy to share because we are designed to know these things. They are part of our blueprint as human beings engaging fully in the world.
We exist in the exciting, and often frightening time of The Great Turning. We are being given choices about how to respond to the challenges of our times, when status-quo ways of doing things are collapsing. So at times Forest Halls shapeshifts into an experiment in a joyful, sanctuary circle of adventure in which we improvise ways to open to the heart of our nature. We ask each other such questions as: What treasures and stories will we unearth together? What renewed, re-visioned ways of being with each other and with the earth will we discover? , And we often answer each other (with a shrug and a laugh: Who knows, but let's find out!
May the stories, art, music, resources on this website and project offerings inspire you in your own deepening, reweaving, music-, myth- and magic-making. Our earth dearly needs our heartful imaginations and full beings! We too all need this of each other!
Blessings to you on your journey!
Jane Valencia