WILD VOICES

Becoming a Song Carrier

June 16 - 20, 2027 

Spirit Hollow, North Bennington, VT 

with Sara McFarland and Tracey Forest

of Keepers of the Flame Music

For song catchers (and those who feel called to be), soul travelers, earth listeners and singers, sacred poets and musicians

WILD VOICES immerses participants in what it means to be a song carrier on behalf of our Beloved Gaia, of our Muses, and of Mystery.

By entering earth-centric consciousness and learning how to listen with not just our ears, but our full-bodied sensing, dreaming and deep imagination, we become attuned to the wild voices allowing them to move through us.

We let ourselves be sung, allow the songs to be written through us, rather than being in control as the songwriter. What if the songs we hear are the ones that our soul’s place in the web of life are shaped to catch?

We learn how to hear the songs that Earth is singing through each of us as unique expressions of her dreaming and how to carry them into the world.

Our practices include–

  • Improvisational singing practice with the wild and other humans

  • Deep imagination journeys

  • Working with our Beloved Muse

  • Grief as a doorway toward our full voice (keening, lamenting, wailing together and alone)

  • Dreamwork

  • Attuning our bodies as instruments through somatic practices

  • Council (words, gestures, songs and vocalizations)

  • Metabolizing blockages and obstacles to our full voices

  • Finding our unique ways to “catch” songs out on the land

  • Solo and group wanders in the sacred forest 

  • Full-bodied listening

  • The interplay of sound and silence

  • Learning the sacred responsibility of being not just a song catcher, but also a song carrier

  • Muse time with journal, instruments etc. working on individual and collective songs

  • A final “concert” we collaboratively design and perform FOR the wild ones

IN Collaboration with the Sacred Land

We will catch songs of water, earth, tree, creature, wind and sing them in call and response with the wild ones. We will boldly and authentically return to the circle and share what we have heard. We will let ourselves and the song be worked through dream, movement, art exploration, improvisation, letting it be crafted into a portal, a spell. Then we will share them in a wild concert, singing back the songs we were given for the wild ones and the circle of humans that have gathered. Out beyond right or wrong, beyond good or bad, beyond being a musician or a singer we will meet in the depths of soul artistry and ritual performance.

 

We encourage you to bring your instruments, ceremonial adornments and altar items, as well as a heartfelt offering for the land.

Tuition

Please pay in full when you register.

Early Bird: $695 (by March 15, 2027), including 4 delicious catered dinners (breakfast and lunch are bring your own)

Regular Tuition: $770 including 4 delicious catered dinners (breakfast and lunch are bring your own)

 

Food and Lodging

All camping included. If you want to stay in a yurt, $15 per night. Space limited.

Coffee and tea will be provided all program long. You will have access to our outdoor kitchen and a guest refrigerator for breakfast and lunch. Please bring easy-to-put-together or reheatable foods (premade might be best) as we will not have time for extensive prep and cooking.

We have two hot outdoor showers.  We have four outhouses for your use.

A What-to-Bring list will be sent upon registration. 

Please make your payment and fill out the registration form below:

PAYMENT PORTAL
REGISTRATION FORM

YouR GuideS

  • Tracey (KeyTurner) is a soul initiation guide, who is passionate about helping others step through the doorway into the mystical and the mythical, the sacred and the sublime, the earthy and the erotic, the dark depths and high heights. She is a fearless and compassionate facilitator who has “been to the mountain” and descended into the abyss to lament for the earth, to celebrate the beauty and pain and who knows the rich gifts that lie in the dark to be mined. She stands in the portal, holding a lantern, singing ancient songs, dangling a key, inviting you to step through into the vast landscape of your Soul. 

    Director of Spirit Hollow, the center where she lives and guides in SW Vermont, she is a healer and teacher, yoga teacher and singer of soul-stirring songs. She is a graduate of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies Three-Year Program (1998) in Advanced Shamanism and Shamanic Healing under the direct teaching of Dr. Michael Harner; also, she’s a Certified Yoga Teacher at the 200-hour level, having studied with transformational teacher, Shiva Rea.

    With 30 years of experience guiding others, she been studying with Bill Plotkin for the last nine years. She is a Certified Level 1 Wild Mind Nature-Based Underworld Guide with the Animas Valley Institute.  KeyTurner just graduated from the multi-year Soulcraft Apprenticeship and Initiation Program with Plotkin where she learned the nuances of Soul Initiation Guide and cultivated many tools to assist in the wholing and healing of this broken, beautiful world.  Visit her at KeyTurner Forest

    KeyTurner is a Certified Wilderness First Responder.

  • Sara McFarland (she/they) is an improvisational nature-based singer, storyteller and ritual performance artist, naturopath, wilderness guide and mentor. Sara is a core team member of Starter Culture (www.starterculture.net), as well as a Wild Mind and Soul Initiation Guide for Animas Valley Institute (www.animas.org). 

     Sara travels the Hologram of the Golden Web of Life in many ways; one is through listening to the melodies that Earth and the Ancestors sing through them; another is through Somatic Gnosis; catching the wisdom of her ancestors and Earth Community; a third is ritual performance and trance story telling; a fourth is collective rituals of paradigm transformation. She bridges the ancient ritual practices of being in conversation with the wild Earth and the More-than-Humans with the present world. Their work is to help hospice the current culture as a Death Doula for the Great Dying, in order to create the fertile ground needed to birth a future human culture which embodies the Dreaming of Earth, one which we who are alive now will most likely never see, but for which we pray for their thriving in 500 years time.

     As a guide, Sara welcomes Humans of all genders, sexual orientation, colors, race, and every other "identifying characteristic" with honesty and curiosity, devotion and loving fierceness in service to Soul. They are a queer both/and creature who accompanies you on your Soul Path, to discover your unique and interwoven essence, through the places that scare and enliven you- both the golden and the sinister. Along the way, you will be supported to heal the trauma of civilization through the practices of coming home and belonging to Earth Community as well as developmental/relational trauma through Sacred Wound Alchemy. Sara works with individuals who long to know who they truly already are and their place in the Golden Web of Life; bringing all of their gifts, powers and abilities to their people and in service to Earth, through the process of Soul Initiation. In her guiding, both one on one and in groups, she utilizes elements of energy medicine and ritual, consciousness shifting techniques, sound and voice, dream work, deep imagination journeys, trauma healing, nature-based parts work and more. 

Keepers of the Flame Music

Calling songs, magical soul weavings and blessings for the future ones
Listen to Our Music!

Sara and Tracey have been catching songs for decades -- listening to songs from the places we live with and pilgrimage to. Tracking Mystery and Soul’s call, we met in our training as Soul Initiation Guides, traveling in the depths of psyche, soul and the Wild Earth. Our album: Beyond the Known is in production now, with four singles released (two more in mixing), and 7 more to be recorded in 2027