Join us August 19th – 23rd as we nurture community and build resilience amid the intersecting crises of our time. We’ll spend 5 days charting a wilder path together through storytelling, skill-sharing, songs, ritual, and homegrown feasts.

Are you seeking a place-based life that weaves accountability with land and community? What do we discover when we deepen into seasonal living that learns from and serves the watershed? What are the cultural practices that honor our interlocking communities, pasts, and futures? What are the earth skills and land practices that grow our resilience while helping us heal our bodies and renew our spirits and minds?

Together, we will tend all of these questions and sow seeds for a world beyond crisis and collapse We will reckon with the obscenity and severity of historical and current levels of oppression, so as to dive into the grief work needed to usher us through this age of premature death and competition, toward a culture of life-affirming cooperation with the regenerative powers and sacred mysteries of the earth. Together we will practice deeper intimacy with our food, our shit, our waterways, and the seasonal arcs that recycle us. Meals will weave abundant connections, integrating foraged ingredients with locally grown, storied food. Together we will experiment in creating a new/old bioregional culture attuning to the land, our bodies, the collective, and sacred presence.

We welcome all faith traditions, cultural lineages, gender expressions, and experience levels with these ideas. We will center the experiences of those disproportionately impacted by our racist state and actively build trust and capacity for collective liberation.

Logistics

We come together for five days, August 19th – 23rd, starting Wednesday afternoon and concluding after Sunday’s lunch. That’s four nights under the stars and 12 meals together. There are full-group experiences at the start and end of each day, and smaller-group learning breakouts in the afternoons.

Meals

All meals are included from Wednesday dinner through Sunday lunch. We can accommodate your dietary preferences. Our meals will be a treasured part of your experience as they are abundant, locally sourced, and delicious! 

Sleeping

Camping is included in the event registration costs. Campers have access to showers and toilets at the Mothership. There are guest bedrooms in the Mothership and additional residential dwellings on the land that carry additional costs. A list of available beds on site, as well as other local options, is available at this link.

After registering, you will be immediately invited to reserve accommodations on site.

Schedule

There are regular breaks in the scheduled program to get to know each other, take dips in the river or pond, or for spontaneous organizing or offerings to emerge.

Wed

• Registration opens at 1 pm – Land tour & time for setting up camping.
• 3 – 5:00 pm Break Out into small groups for land projects (Optional Ice Breaker)
• 6 – Dinner – 
• 7:30-9 pm – Opening Evening

Thurs

• Optional early practice or asynchronous rituals
• 8 – 9 Breakfast
• 9:30 am – 12 pm Morning Session
• 12-3 pm Lunch/Break – optional activities
• 3-5:30 pm Afternoon Session (Split into two or more groups)
• 6 Dinner
• 8- Evening Cultural Event

Fri

• Same structure as Thurs w/ different offerings

Sat

• Same structure as Thurs and Fri w/ different offerings and an afternoon space for emergent opportunities.

Sun

• 8:30 Breakfast
• 10 am-1 pm Morning Session and closing circle
• 1-2 pm Lunch
• 1:30-4 pm – Goodbyes and Departure

Workshop Examples

* Mead-making * Songs for Resistance * Eco-Socialism * Mutual Aid * Wildlife Tracking * Traditional Canoe Skills * Plant Propagation * Wild Edible Weeds * Green Burial * Conflict Resolution * Cooking over Fire * Food Preservation * Forest Ecology * Nixtamalization * Community Preparedness / Resilience

Childcare and Youth Programs

We have an experienced youth leader and childhood development professional available to lead activities for youth and kids during portions of the event. There will be an afternoon workshop that is appropriate and available for youth participation.

Work-trade and Accessibility

We are available to set up a payment plan if needed.

Work-trade is available for additional kitchen support and facility cleanup at $15/hour.

We have a limited number of partial and full scholarships awarded on a rolling basis as funds allow, and priority will be given to those who have been disproportionately impacted by racial capitalism.

To learn more or submit your interest in payment plans, work-trade, or scholarships, please visit this form.

You may also reach out to Aliza at info@dreamingstone.org with any questions about the above.

Registration Costs

We have a three-tier sliding scale, with incentives for early registration.  Please pay the highest amount you can afford. There is an early bird discount of $50 if you register and pay in full by the end of June

Suggested $625.00

Choose this option if you are financially stable (for instance, you have savings and budget for extracurricular activities or travel). This option covers event expenses and labor.

Sustaining $750.00

Choose this option if you are financially well-off (for instance, if you have received inheritance, you own your home and have savings). This option supports lower registration fees for those who need it and makes the event possible. 

Supported $475.00

Choose this option if you wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend (for instance, if you live paycheck to paycheck despite working full time). This amount does not fully cover the event’s expenses, and the number of spots at this tier is limited.

CANCELLATION POLICY:

• Full refund minus a $75 admin fee before July 1st
• 50% refund from July 1st to August 5th
• No refund after August 5th
• Partial refunds will be considered on a case-by-case basis for emergencies and unexpected illness.

Facilitators & Guides

Tevyn and Jay Beast are life partners, collaborators, and co-producers of many faith-led, earth-honoring, art-for-social-change projects.  Jay is a percussionist, vocalist, and educator who has been performing, teaching, touring, and recording professionally for over 25 years, including as a member of the bands Psalters, Phillybloco, and many others. Tevyn is a cultural organizer and movement artist known for her one-woman show, Leaps and Bounds, a theological teardown of global capitalism, that reached 150 audiences around the country. Together, Tevyn and Jay co-directed seven residencies of the Carnival de Resistance- a traveling arts carnival, education initiative, and eco-village demonstration project- all focused on earth justice and collective liberation. Now, they are residents of the Dreaming Stone community, and Tevyn is the Director of the Arts and Ecology Center. 

Dr. Sarah Nahar (she) is an organizer, scholar, activist, nonviolent action trainer, and interspiritual theologian. An emerging expert of Excreta Infrastructure Technologies, her doctoral work centers on ecological regeneration, community cultivation, and discard studies. Previously, Sarah was a 2019 Rotary Peace Fellow and worked at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center in Atlanta, Georgia. She has been the Executive Director of Community Peacemaker Teams, an organization committed to building partnerships to transform violence and oppression worldwide. She has a PhD in Environmental Studies through the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry and a PhD in Religion from Syracuse University. She now teaches at the University of Michigan in the Program in the Environment.

sarahnahar.com

Zev Friedman has worked as a permaculture designer, writer, researcher, and teacher, specializing in hands-on, in-depth education in permaculture and earth skills. Almost a decade of study with world-renowned teacher Martín Prechtel helped feed his passion for regrowing our own diverse lifeways through youth initiation and ritual. Zev serves as Director for Cooperate WNC, a regional mutual aid and cooperative economy network that grows collective power, community trust, and belonging in service of a cooperative future rooted in solidarity and care. 

cooperatewnc.org

Chris Grataski is a naturalist, wilderness guide, farmer, and grassroots educator who’s spent nearly two decades working at the intersection of social and ecological issues. Rooted in a reverence for the mystery and complexity of the earth, and with an enduring commitment to justice and decolonial futures, his work revolves around sowing seeds for a world beyond crisis and collapse. He is the founder of Stone River Institute, a guide and educator, passionate about weaving connections between ecology and embodied practice, and helping folks discover their innate kinship with the wild.

Stoneriverinstitute.org

Saro Lynch-Thomason is an award-winning singer, song leader, folklorist, documentarian, and illustrator from Asheville, North Carolina. She has studied and taught traditional song and balladry from Appalachia, the American South, the British Isles and Ireland for over a decade. Saro believes that old songs can help us understand the beliefs and struggles that shape human history, and that in turn, these songs enable us to build a more compassionate and just future. Saro leads Asheville’s Pagan Choir, has taught a year-long class on “Singing The Wheel of the Year”, and is a co-organizer for Asheville’s chapter of “Singing Resistance.”

sarosings.com

Jonathan McRay is a father, farmer, facilitator, and writer. He grew up in the Appalachian Mountains of East Tennessee and now lives in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. He farms with Silver Run Forest Farm, an agroforestry nursery rooted in living soil and living well to propagate beautiful and useful tree crops and plant allies that cross-pollinate food sovereignty and ecological restoration. He supports grassroots groups and social movement organizations as a teacher and mediator through conflict transformation, restorative justice, and participatory decision-making. He resists and builds with local organizations, regionally with Southern Movement Assembly and the Mycena Agroforestry Initiative, and internationally in Palestine.

April Rainsong is a mother and kitchen creatrix living in the mountains of western North Carolina. Her greatest culinary passions are centered around preserving seasonal produce and all things fermentation! Starting with a life-changing jar of kimchi from a friend’s garden over a decade ago, her fermentation journeys have ranged from pickles and sauerkraut to cheeses and vinegars to tempeh and miso, with plenty in between. April freelances as a community and event organizer, as well as private chef and caterer. Nurturing and nourishing community connections is a multifaceted process—feeding the people might just be her favorite path to take.

Trainer Bee (they/them) is a genial generalist who lives intentionally & ambivalently unsettled as a non-binary PGM (Person of the Global Majority) raised on occupied Omaha & Báxoje lands. Bee has experience in community medicine ranging from wilderness first aid/responder, tactical ‘survival’ medicine, disaster relief, encampment accompaniment, direct action protest campaigns, “street medic” ideology, search & rescue volunteering, integrative medicine, unhoused outreach, traditional practical herbalism, East Asian bioenergetic medicine, manual bodywork modalities, and practices with friends and family in a woo-not-woo fashion.