My Story

The Return
Over time, as I watched my health improve, I also learned more about my ancestors — largely English and Celtic — and how intimately their practices and rituals were tied to the ecological world. I read, listened to, and studied under Indigenous and Black folks who had retained more of this knowledge across time. I started paying more attention to all the other ways nature operates, convinced that it was more than just sunlight that humans were meant to be in tune with. And I became obsessed with closing the gap between myself, the land, and all the things that sustain my life.

I started seeing trees as kin. I heard plants speak. I believed rocks were elders. The whole of nature came alive, animate — a vast, interconnected web of abundance that feeds my life as I feed it in return.

And I began learning more "old ways" in earnest, aware that I'd resurrected something essential. I deepened my fermentation practice. Began learning butchery, herbalism, permaculture, bow hunting. And I started documenting the whole thing — not because I'm an expert at any of it, but because I'm often a few steps ahead on the path, learning in real time. I want others to see that this life is real, possible, and maybe both necessary and inevitable. Our current systems are crumbling. As I see it, the only way to build the new world we need — one that's regenerative, rooted in community, and rebuilds our relationship with the living world — is to start living inside it.

The more I learned, the more I realized I was filling a gap no one else seemed to be holding. The ancestral skills world teaches people how to hunt, forage, and start a fire, but they rarely know the biology — why reconnecting to nature literally heals us. Meanwhile, the circadian biology world understands the science, but their view of "returning to nature" is narrow: improve your light environment, touch your feet to the earth, drink clean water. It's more about optimization and constant health improvement. Basically, it's capitalism and colonization repackaged as "wellness": buy another product, tweak your daily routine, stay endlessly worried about what you're still missing. It's not about returning to wholeness — yourself, your community, and the land. It doesn't see nature as a relationship; it sees it as a resource to use for our own gain.

So I'm standing in the middle, holding both. I teach the biology first — here's why sunlight matters, here's what happens in your mitochondria when you step outside at sunrise — because that's the permission most people need. It validates what their body already knows: there's a literal, measurable reason they feel better outside. That moment, when someone's face lights up and they say, "Oh my god, that's why I crave this," is one of my favorite things. It's profound every single time.

And then I walk them further. Because once your body experiences the tangible change that comes from aligning with nature’s critical signals, you start to ask: what else? What other rhythms am I severed from? What other relationships am I meant to be inside? And that's when the real return begins.