Greetings from rural County Carlow, South East Ireland,
from Mount Leinster with Storyteller Ronni Gurwicz

Dear Reader

Some wonderful midweek news! 🌿

I know for readers living in Ireland, the sun is shining today, but it was different one day last month.
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​Thanks to the wonderful podcast host and storyteller Ronni Gurwicz —of The World is Storytelling— for capturing and sharing our unexpectedly hilarious day last month on Mount Leinster, in the so-called Carlow Alps 😊 — the beautiful mountain we live with, here in South East Ireland — in this 15-minute mini-podcast.

🎧 Click here to listen​

If you’ve followed mine and Martin’s stone sculpture work, you’ll know the landscape around us is more than a backdrop — it’s central to everything we do with the care of Earth-in-mind.

• From the transformation of Hollywood Forest since 2008 (from a monoculture to a birdsong-filled, biodiverse forest),
• To my work in developing holistic ecoliteracy curricula and community at Haumea Ecoversity over the past 6 years,
• To our creative-geo-restorative, community-building work at Drummin Bog since 2017,
• And Martin’s long-standing commitment to using only locally sourced stone in his sculpture work — a deep, place-based practice in itself...

On that blustery day, Mount Leinster and the local weather gave Ronni a full alpine experience — complete with an unexpected snowstorm, and I taught Ronni how to make snow angels while Martin made a huge snowball.

Ronni is on a Storytelling Mission to meet People and the Mountains they live with across Ireland. ✨

He’s inspired by the invitation from Māori and Pasifika communities in Aotearoa New Zealand to know your pepeha — your cosmo-ecological story — and to learn to regularly express gratitude to your nonhuman and human kin: the mountains, rivers, forests, skies, ancestors, and teachers who sustain you.

Pepeha is a beautiful form of introduction that I often start my talks with a brief version, as it expresses the arc of ecoliteracy we must learn in modern cultures if we are to survive and thrive. I remember the joy of talking online with Rose, a Cook Islander at my first college in Hamilton, Aotearoa some years ago, when I asked about Maori protocol to write and share my pepeha. She was thrilled with my interest (and thanks to Dr Rhys Jones for organising our meeting). Like many Indigenous people, there is a warm invitation to all to learn practices that instil ecological wisdom - ecoliteracy. In Ireland, we have a similar word: Dinnseanchas — the deep stories that arise with people and the places that support them.

Eco-Poet, writer and essay film-maker Grace Wells, as I shared in my last newsletter, is currently exploring this in her own work 'Becoming Wolf' and is very involved in Hometree’s Creative Ireland Dinnseanchas project — a two-year invitation for creatives to listen and respond to people's stories of place.

Ronni’s work honours this spirit too — sharing life-affirming stories of living well with the land, stories that nourish people, place, and future generations and listening out for the sheer fun in the great work to live well with the wider community of life. (And as he says — Ireland may not have many mountains, so he’s keen to hear from people living with beloved hills too!)

What’s the deeper invitation to learn our cosmo-ecological stories? 🌍

Most of us working in sustainability and ecological education carry some level of grief, sadness, frustration — especially with the painfully slow pace of change. Some days, it can feel like we’re moving backwards. The science confirms it.

But there is a gem in all this.

These emotions can be composted and transformed when our work aligns with what we care most deeply about — and when we link arms with others. We don’t deny the suffering. But something powerful happens when we step with all of our creativity into the Symbiocene — the era of interconnection — instead of staying in the mindlessness human-centeredness of Anthropocene.

That’s why I always close my newsletters with the words joyful perseverance... because our collective Storytelling has incredible social power - it can powerfully speak to people's hearts and does activate people to join in, in ways that facts and figures can’t.

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With warmth from the Carlow Alps (actually, the sun is splitting the stones here today, as we say here), ​
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P.S. Got a story of a hill or mountain you live with? Ronni would love to hear from you. Just reply to this email and I’ll pass your name along!
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PPS Another new friend, Dr Grian Cutanda in Spain, the director of the global Earth Stories Collection shares how storytellers and story scholars are sharing the buried ecological wisdom from world stories that align with the many decades work of the people's Earth Charter. His book highlights the power of storytellers.

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How can I join the Haumea Ecoversity Community? ​
Our new independent peer-to-peer ecoliteracy learning membership community, guided by the principles of the Earth Charter

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Or Become a Monthly Supporter for Haumea Ecoversity:​
If you can support us (small regular donations or sponsoring a creative practitioner), all are so welcome!
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