Shambhala School Students

As I wrote about last week, Windhorse Farm and the Shambhala School have had an ongoing relationship for the last 15 years. It has been a wonderful opportunity for urban and rural to meet and share vision, as well as a rich and challenging experience for students and teachers. After spending 2-3 days at the farm this past spring, students were  asked to answer some questions about their time at the farm. They reflected on what their favorite aspects were, what they would like to do next time and how they felt this experience contributed to their education. Here are some of their favorite things.

“Probably my favorite part was the interaction between everyone. No one was quarrelling with another person. Everyone was friendly. We got to know each other better.”

“Getting out of school and learning in a new environment was great.”

“I particularly enjoyed the night walk because it was so interesting to be quite near everyone and yet it was easy to imagine yourself as being totally alone.”

“The best part of this trip was that we got to learn not only about farming, but also about ourselves during the time alone we had. I loved being alone and discovering the other part of me.”

“My favorite was probably the food we ate. All the meals were delicious. I also really enjoyed the night walk.”

“The most valuable moment was the night walk. It was very interesting to hear people thoughts after walking in the forest. Laying down in the field under the clear sky at night was one of the most breathtaking experiences I’ve had in a long time.”

“I loved being able to just relax and talk to people in the class I don’t hang out with outside of school. Windhorse was an opportunity to get to really know each other.”

“The best experience that I had waas the night walk. Just the sense of vulnerability that I felt while in the night was amazing.”

I have been so inspired by the experiences of the Windhorse community, but I am particularly thrilled to have such amazing young leaders and learners spending time at Windhorse. I hope to have many of them featured on this blog in the future.

Julia Feltham

“Last year, around this frigid February time, I headed with a handful of kids and young adults to Windhorse Farm for a Leadership Retreat. Then, as the Director of High School Programming for a not for a not for profit called Mavericks for Social Change, I was put in charge of running the retreat and happy to see everyone boggled by the beauty of Sunshine House. We arrived before many of the kids so I played a chilly cello on the deck to claim the space for my own, overlooking Wentzell Lake and the pasture for horses across the dirt road.

I often run events in a collaborative style, and, though I had some of the scaffold planned for the leadership retreat, I left much of the programming open-ended. In running the weekend that way, it left a lot of room for personal transformation. Being in such a beautiful and contemplative place, I began to realize it was funny that I (who had never even considered titling myself a ‘leader’) was running a Leadership Retreat. Why did I renounce that title? How was I to tell other people what it meant, and they should be one, if I wasn’t even sure what it meant to me?

So, over the course of the weekend, Windhorse housed many of our life-changing discussions with youth from 13-25 and diverse backgrounds: Over what it means to be a leader, using examples from Hitler to Ghandi, Stephen Harper to High School Student Council while we talked about what our visions are for our own future and what are our responsibilities as visionaries. Tears were shed, stories told, our cold bums were warmed in the sauna, and Sunshine House made us feel like we were in our family home: Our own lil’ Mavericks weekend family. Even if many of us didn’t even know each other before that weekend. Things perpetually surprised me– as work in-kind, we silently harvested birch bark with reverence for the trees and laughed ourselves silly knee deep in snow, the heart wrenching and warming tales we shared at night brought us close together and took us all off guard and let us know we were not hiding. When Jim took us on one of his famous Night Walks, I was surprised that many of the Haligonian youth had never been silent for that long and had never been in the dark once in their entire lives, let alone in the woods in the dark. Some thought it was one of the best things in their lives, others were terrified but glad they had done it. The horses were beautiful and friendly, we often chased the ‘handsome’ and rugged barn cats, and teased one girl who was irrationally terrified of the chickens and had to explain composting toilets many times.

Over that weekend, I realized that, by being myself, doing what I think needs to be done, I am being a ‘leader.’ To me, it suddenly just meant that being the best I can be just gives other people permission to be the best they can be. So why clip my own wings? It would be a grand disservice to others, let alone myself. Sometimes I only act when I feel destiny slaps me in the face, and leading the way has been scary to me–because I would hate to lead the way were I to realize I was blind, or had planned something wrong. But mostly I realized, doing what is right was the end of excuses. I could no longer be lazy or blame others for leading me astray. I had to be responsible to myself and the world. That weekend re-framed what I thought leadership was, what I think success and failure are, and now I always keep flexible visions for the future so I could stop being so lazy about my own direction and cultivating the visions of others–I began to trust myself as an actor in the world. I could actually accomplish much more and stop being afraid about trying to make my dreams come true. In that beautiful place, which I shall always hold dear to my heart, I began writing this song.

Thanks for all that you are, Windhorse. I am indebted to your delight!”

Vickie Gray

Vickie wrote to me after returning from a group retreat at WHF. Her snapshot was inspired by a night walk led by Jim. Here is her beautiful description. “The snow was crystalline, clouds drifted past a basket moon, and the walk took us on a metaphorical journey in darkness from the safety of a bonfire to the unfamiliarity of a wooded path past a river that we knew was there only by its sound, into a wide open field of possibility, and then through a difficult gate back into dark woods and finally home. The walk became a metaphor for the journey the organization was going through, and enriched our work together.”