Women's Walk Project
September 21st-30th 2024
The Journey...
This project takes place on Gumbaynggirr Country and has the active support of elders: Uncle Micklo Jarrett and Aunty Bea Ballangary.
The Walk will take place through the beautiful and isolated Guy Fawkes River Country north-west of Dorrigo. The terrain varies from steep descent (track) to easier meanders by the river with some uphill stretches. The walk is approximately 65 kilometres.
Walking through country, sculpture, poetry, sketch and song to identify our stories. We have on our backs all we need for nine days. By virtue of the journey we become resourceful, creative, and spontaneous and allow the wild and beautiful environment itself to dictate how we can live harmoniously as part of it - what we can take from it and what we can give back. As soon as we step away from our usual lives it is as though walking through Country, and all that it involves, is in itself a creative medium - the art of living simply.
All women participating in this journey develop a rewarding level of physical fitness and at the same time no-one carries beyond their physical capabilities. Some of the most profound elements for the women participating in this journey is literally just having ‘time to be’, to sleep under the stars and wake up outside to the colours of dawn, to sit by a fire with other women and to have time to reflect amidst the symphony of impressive landscape.
We meet with the thin and powerful threshold places of intense laughter, wonder, grief, and sensual engagement with the land.
If possible there will be one 2 night stop over with a full day of silence as well as short periods of silence, facilitated creative process, journalling and meditation.
Walking and living simply in a wilderness environment involves re-opening the senses - not just smell, sight, touch and hearing but through re-energising these senses we then renew the deeper senses of the soul - a sense of connection with each other and with the earth and cosmos - a sense of life’s journey and of being on that journey - a sense of the feminine at the interface of a re-newing earth consciousness - a sense of responsibility for holding this consciousness in our lives - holding it for our growing children and for the earth.