Why Wanosh?
The transition to the name Wanosh Forest Gardens from Abuela Gardens carries a lot of deep reflection and consideration of the plight of our times around cultural genocide through colonization. The original calling to name the land Abuela and the softness that it was bearthed from had a very different impact for folks than the intention it resonated with. It is our prayer that Wanosh will carry the resonance with which we work to connect our inner reflections to the way we meet the outer landscape. Guiding us in the unpacking of our ancestral and cultural baggage and turning the grief and joys we find there into an offering of our life force to be a strand in the weave of humanity that remembers our original agreements to care for the sacred and holy wild.
The Story of Wanosh
The origin and annunciation of the name Wanosh was given to Blair Phillips, the founder of the forest gardens, in a dream around 2003. We choose to use the pronouns she, and her to reference Wanosh but believe that she is all genders. At the time of being introduced to Wanosh, Blair was doing service work planting fruit trees throughout the state of California in schools and community centers (you can see more about that work at www.commonvision.org). Blairs world view, having no land of his own, growing up in a well off middle-class family, and living on a bus and or out of a backpack for many years, everywhere was approached with the care and love as if it were his own backyard. This time was a culmination of many energies intersecting.
One profound energy that became explicit during this time was the truth of systematic racism and white privilege. A journey that he shares humility around with the fact that 20-some years later he is still discovering what it means and what role he plays in it. Wanosh came to Blair many times during that period in wordless dreams making light of contrasting forces through patterns of resolution. Mostly these dreams explored an ineffable relationship with clouds and sunlight with the name Wanosh echoing into waking life. Since then Blair had leaned on Wanosh as a personal presence and name for the spirit of resonance and interconnectedness. In consideration of the journey of healing self, other, the collective, and the land, Wanosh, being accessible to all who look, has made it clear to us that honoring the name will support us and the greater collective coming into deeper remembering of who we are, where we come from and why we are all here. We invite you to tap into your own relationship with Wanosh where ever you are or look into our offerings and spend some time exploring this relationship with us.
Wanosh (WhA-Knowshhh)
She is the spirit of resonance and interconnectedness.
Her presence is strong when humidity is illuminated
She resides in the threshold
Of the veld between us and our wild soul
the colors embodied where light meets dark
she is the black that holds the rainbow
and bright white light both
she carries the stories of the seeds
where we have forgotten how they are braided with our own
she belongs to no cultures but to all culture
she is the sound of feathers meeting the invisible
and the flock flying out of the canyon
she is the creek giggling in the rocks
she is a musician and the instrument
you can her song in the windy forest
you might say the Wanosh is strong
or simply Wanosh…
or strong Wanosh
when she makes herself known.
She is the weave between our lineages
and the clays they came from
She is the memory of the waters
And the witness of our marriage with the holy wild
She is a soft hand leading you to decay and rebirth
In the seeds you tended and the struggles they survived
She carries the rituals that have been left
For the pace of modernity,
waiting for you to slow
To hush. To ask, to offer.
Quietly… Wanoshhh
Softly,…. Wanoshhh
She is the current of wisdom
Flowing through the elder and the youth
in familial, intergenerational legacy of all landscapes
inner and outer, and their pathways between.
No matter what trauma we hold from severance of our
Indigenous bloodlines or adoption of a colonized way
She will carry the original pollen back into your fields
When your race for purity remembers who we really are
She will move with the swiftness of song
To grieve and forgive your forgetting.
Quietly… Wanoshhh
Softly …..Wanoshhh
Silently…..Wanoshhhh