Terra Wicha Journeys to the Heart and Lungs of Planet Earth
It’s 9.30 pm, and I have finished writing a story for my blog. I check FaceBook and see a promotion for Pachamama Alliance’s Awaken the Dreamer course. I click, and get drawn into the wisdom within.
The online course is 2 hours so although I was planning on winding down to get ready for restful sleep I dived in and completed the course that night.
The first step is one of mindfulness and respect for Indigenous wisdom. I knew I was in the right place.
My mind was alight with ideas, positivity and hope. Despair and depression at the rising rate of extinctions and ongoing destruction of Planet Earth was escalating around me yet this was held gently aside as a new story for humanity became evident. The videos were so easy to watch and the articles fired me up. A next step was inevitable.
That next step was the Game Changer Intensive. Living in Australia meant that only one group-time was available to me. Sunday night for the US was 9am for me. This would mean turning up to work late, or not being able to attend if I had to fly to the remote community where I was working early on a Monday morning. I signed up and several weeks later met the rest of my group. It was small and several people never turned up, however, at least three to five of us routinely dialed in to discuss the week’s readings and video viewings. I wrote on the Game Changer Intensive public response board and enjoyed reading other attendees responses. I was surprised though that not many people chose to reflect and write there. My thoughts were “Wow, if only everyone could do this course”. It definitely awakened the Game Changer in me.
Exploring the Pachamama Alliance website I found many more ways of increasing my knowledge and connection with the Amazon rainforest. I attended some online teleconferences and watched the videos promoting the Amazon eco-cultural trips. I knew I wanted to go. I looked at the obstacles and possibilities for making this a reality. Obstacle 1 was the distance and cost of flights from Darwin, Australia to Ecuador. I was renting a unit and my work was based on short contract periods that were renewed depending on funding. To be practical/economical to fly all that way I would be best served to go for several months. Accountability to the people I served on the remote community was probably consideration number 2. I had only been in the role 9 months but knew the community from previous roles over 4 years. I had been adopted into kinship family so I had responsibilities beyond work. To allow another 7 or 8 months I planned to go on the August trip however conditions at work and contract periods for the unit lease and work led me to make a snap decision in early February to leave work at the end of March and join the trip planned for early May.
More serendipitous meetings led me to team up with a couple of American (US) guys travelling to Australia. I shared my knowledge of outback-central Australia and took them on a 4 night camping trip from Alice Springs via Kings Canyon and Uluru. We stopped and meditated at the renowned energy point on the way to Kata Tjuta (the Olgas). My journey to powerful, natural earth and plant energy had begun.
A few weeks sorting house-hold belongings into my container and surfing my previous home-break and the famous Point Sinclair Surfing Reserve area (Cactus) took me up to Easter and my departure to Chile via Adelaide, Melbourne and Auckland. Surfing the coast of Peru from just south of Lima to the northern border was an amazing experience. I never knew that the coastal plain and hills were so barren. Cities were overflowing with plastic garbage and it was mostly a sorry site, but the waves were great.
The bus trip to Guayaquil, Ecuador was comfortable (I paid for the more deluxe seat) and I teamed up with a stranger to get to the airport on time to catch our connecting flight to Quito. After two days exploring I met up with the small group travelling to the Amazon Rainforest under the guidance of Pachamama Alliance.
There were many highlights of the trip; these are a few.
The first amazing experience was our interaction with Cristóbal Cobo, founder and 
creator of the Quitsato sundial. Cristóbal shared his passion to share the true location of the equator and mysterious stories of a time and people unknown who built monuments that correlate geometrically with the equinoxes, path of sun and many other celestial events. As I stretched my arms skywards, and stood to see where my shadow fell to tell the time, I felt a deep connectedness with the invisible stars above. Knowing that both the Southern Cross and the Big Dipper constellations could be seen from this point was amazing. I loved his ‘new world globe’ where Australia is no longer ‘Down Under’ but alongside the US. This was a great start to totally expanding my mind.
In another blog I will share my experience with the mother and son Shaman couple we visited on the way to San Clemente. I am sure a lot of healing took place there. We were all in a great ‘mental/psychic’ place to spend time with the Andean Indigenous people who open their homes to visitors, educating and feeding them with traditional wisdom. 
Everything is based in nature, the cycles of the moon and the sun. We separated home- grown amaranth and quinoa seed from its husks and watched the laborious methods used to ready theses ancient grains for yummy breads and soups. Plants used for medicine and food grows wild in the ravine. Work is done by human and animal power; no machines are used for crops. Keeping culture strong is Mindawie’s dream and motivating passion for the visitor-project. The encroachment of urban development and consequent fast-food consumer culture was in existence, and the number of families involved in the project is small, but significant for them and us. It was a memorable experience that has had positive impact on my life.
After an overnight stay at El Jardin, the tourist-frontier town to the vast Amazon forest we boarded 2 six seater planes in the town of ‘Shell’ and flew firstly across farmland and sites of mining development and then over the meandering rivers and huge trees. 
Arriving and waiting while the courageous warrior spirited Archuar leaders completed an elder’s meeting, I marvelled at the importance of keeping this area pristine and the culture strong. Guided walks to sacred trees, learning about traditional plants for healing and making things like string from vines was interwoven with meditation and mindfulness. Being so immersed in ancient forest brought the forest alive in me.
And yet, the experience over the next few days with the Sapara people at their Naku project ‘lodge’ on the Conambo River was the ultimate experience in my journey. 
Realisations and understandings of self, relationship with the plants and knowledge of my calling were all revealed there. At the welcoming ceremony I was given the name Terra Wicha. My spelling is how I heard it, but I have not been able to correlate the meaning with it and unsure if it is Spanish or their traditional and unfortunately dying language. I was told it meant ‘mother of ancient Indigenous peoples’. After deep immersion in the forest and several ceremonies I received a deep felt message that I was to return and work with the plants. How this could be possible dominated my thoughts and planning for the following months I spent in Costa Rica. I started to learn Spanish and considered many online businesses to support myself.
I have several plans partly under construction but I don’t know their timeline to implementation, if ever. For now, the present, I am in Mandurah, Western Australia caring for my parents in their twilight years. I am taking the opportunity of my at-least-1 year permanence to start facilitating Pachamama Alliance courses, starting with the one that has arisen from the work of Paul Hawken and his team of 200 researchers and advisors: Project Drawdown. Today, Earth Day is the launch of the new program. It has been several months in the pilot stage and has been named “Drawdown Initiative”. The aim is to bring thousands, if not millions of people into the conversation about reversing Global Warming.
The first event is “Reversing Global Warming: Introduction to Drawdown”. It is a 2-hour work-shop that invites participants to see the possibility and the role they can play. For those people who want to go deeper it is followed by a 5 session series called “Drawdown Solutions: Getting into Action”. This series will support participants to find their unique contribution whilst being held by a supportive community of similarly-inspired people.
Preserving and re-foresting the tropical rainforests is an essential component of reversing Global Warming as well as being socially and ethically important for the Indigenous people who have care-taken the forests for thousands of years. I have joined TreeSisters and gift back to Earth by donating to and volunteering for the organisation. There are many other actions that are opening up as my knowledge and understanding grows. As Paul Hawken says it is “Game-on, not Game-over” and we all have our own unique part to play.
I invite you to come along and explore your potential.
Top tip for Global Nomads to offset carbon miles
Travelling the world usually entails a flight somewhere even if you use public transport a lot for local areas or even across borders. I am conscious of the amount of jet-fuel used and carbon dioxide that is emited and consider what I can do for planet Earth to restore some of the damage we have done and continue to do.
Paul Hawkins in his highly researched book ‘DrawDown’ rates airplane travel as number 43 solution to address to draw down carbon. The 20,000 airplanes in service emit 2.5% of world emissions and this is predicted to rise. Fuel efficiency will have to rise if we want to reduce emissions. NASA has designed a more efficient jet carrier plane and although energy for jets is reported to be the hardest transport to convert to a renewable source scientist are working on a biofuel from algae. http://www.drawdown.org/solutions/transport/airplanes
Some people decide not to travel by plane and I admire those intrepid travellers using camels and ocean yachts. I watched a short video of Taj Burrows, World Title holder – surfing, speaking out about the dangers of fracking and a person criticised him for all the travel he does to surf around the world. I encountered a person in my group of the Pachamama Alliances Game Changer course who criticised those who travel, and said she wouldn’t travel to the Amazon because of the fuel it would use. Points taken, but I prefer a more positive solution. For those of us who are not travelling sustainably we can off set our miles.
Airlines have been offering this option at the purchase point of the ticket but I always wonder if it really goes to any worth while use. Many off-sets go towards mono-species plantations. I was dismayed to see that many forest reserves in Ecuador were actually mono-species plantations. These do sequester carbon but are limited in other benefits, especially depleting the soil and organisms that are alive and run communication networks in natural forests.
Referring again to Paul Hawkins book and web site “Drawdown”, afforestation – planting forests where there weren’t any before, for example on mining sites or degraded agricultural land comes in as solution #15. Current practices are controversial as many are mono-species plantations purely for profit. Different methods of afforestation have been designed that encourage bio diversity by using native species. Food, wood and medicines can still be gathered from them however, in a way that doesn’t undo all the good when the trees are harvested.
In comparison stopping the deforestation of tropical rain forests and re-foresting them rates highly as a solution to drawing down carbon. It is placed at number 5. Paul’s research found that in theory 751 million acres of degraded tropical forest could be restored. However, their calculations suggest that reaforestaion could occur on 435 million acres, some natural regrowth by stopping destruction from agriculture, mining and plantation crops, and other actions such as deliberate planting of seeds and trees, could sequester 1.4 tons of carbon dioxide per acre annually. As a forest system regenerates it becomes a thriving inter-related web or ecosystem that fosters inter-dependent species from the micro-organisms in soil that send messages via fungi on roots and support the needs of plants, to the massive trees with deep roots that hold soil together to avoid erosion, control water flow (transpiration – under, within and above the soiled affecting rain fall) and provides animals including man with a ‘life-giving habitiat’. http://www.drawdown.org/solutions/land-use/tropical-forests
I have considered the acres of re-forestation (erosion control, biodiversity, wildlife corridor) I did on a property in an arid coastal area of South Australia as covering some of my debt but I feel I should do more. 
I visited the tropical forest areas of Amazonian Ecuador and have been living in coastal rain forest in Costa Rica for five months. I am revitalised by it and will find it hard to leave at the end of the month. But the time has come to leave. To get home will take about 24 hours of flight time (39 in travel time with airport lay over times). I am only one passenger on the large jets but I am still contributing to the fuel use and carbon dioxide emission .
For many other reasons, such as my love for nature, but also a solution, was to become a TreeSister and donate regularly each month so that the organisation can support local people in tropical areas to reforest areas that have been depleted. The organisation’s actions address at least two very high ranking “Drawdown” solutions; 1. Reforestation of tropical forest #5 solution and 2. Women smallholders (ranks as number 62) TreeSisters works with Indigenous women partners to plant the forests and empowers and educates them at the same time. Educating girls rates as solution number 6.
TreeSisters results are amazing with the target of a million trees in a year being reached. The trees are being planted in tropical zones such as in Madagascar where mangrove trees were planted and are tended to by Madagascan women. Now, Clare Dubois and her team have set a target for a billion trees. It is a bold and much needed target, and they expect it will take longer than a year. The Amazon is an area in need of preservation from mining, agriculture and damming. Indigenous Chief, Almir Surui, (Brazil) has had to leave Brazil due to a bounty on his head as he is an active promoter of all tribes in the Amazon saying no to gold, oil and timber extraction and yes to reforestation of their areas. Due diligence is being done to see if TreeSisters; women seeding change can partner with them and their efforts to reforest areas of the Amazon.
If, like me, you would love to see this happen I invite you to visit TreeSisters Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/treesisters
click what you like (the whole page?) and check out the invite to The Call to Dream Ceremony. This invite is much more than asking for likes and money. The aim is to help people change their perceptions and move from a consumer species to a restorer species. https://www.facebook.com/events/121261045295181/
TreeSisters journey to a Billion Trees
Dear compassionate sisters
I am reaching out to you as I stand rooted in passion for healing Planet Earth as a TreeSister.
Inspired by Pachamama Alliance and the courses I did online with them I journeyed to the Ecuadorian Amazon. I spent time with beautiful Amazonian Achuar and Sapara peoples and felt the jungle come alive in me. 
I felt the connectedness and sacredness of the jungle; our lungs and heart. For without the majestic Amazon forest the rain circulation systems would be in total chaos (the heart pumping life fluids) and the carbon could not be converted to oxygen for us to breathe.
I listened to Shamanic wisdom and prophecy about the shift in perception that is needed. After leaving the jungle I listened to podcasts and webinars. I heard messages that Nature is calling Feminine creativity to restore the balance and create a restorer species and let go of our consumer species tendencies.
This is when Clare Dubois came into my life. Clare had a vision after hitting a tree in her motor vehicle that led to her creating TreeSisters. Her goals are bold. Her passion is like none I have seen. She invited me to feel my grief along with her and cry for what we have done, for what we have lost already and what we stand to lose, which is life on this planet. Her whole body conveyed the urgency to sequester carbon by stop extracting and destroying (raping) Earth and to start planting trees. Hers is the most passionate plea I have ever heard. I could feel her grief. It reawakened mine but rather than a numb despair I cried healing tears as I walked along the beach. Clare had said that we will often cry when we lose a beloved pet but rarely would we cry when another species is announced extinct. Are we that far removed and disconnected from our (Human) being-ness?
Alone we may feel despair, but together we can hold place for one another. We can channel our grief energy to change perceptions; to foster a paradigm shift from the consumer species to a restore species. TreeSisters are all about reaching out to support the feminine energy within and around us, by honouring Nature and restoring the forests that are our hearts and lungs; the life force of our planet.
Picture TreeSisters as a twin tree; reforesting the tropics and creating a model for feminine nature-based leadership. 
I joined Tree Sisters and have volunteered to be a Pollinator, spreading the word whilst being supported by others in the hive.
We invite you to come together, to explore, experience and integrate through a series of meditations, passion fuelled events and inspirational information. Ultimately, TreeSisters views this as an experiment to gather women to join in sisterhood to plant a Billion Trees.
I invite you to check out the web page, like and share. https://www.facebook.com/treesisters
One of the first events is the Call to Dream Ceremony- a personal and planetary ceremony of feminine collective awakening, for women who want to tend to the Earth in sisterhood.
Will you join us?
In loving kindness
Merrilee