Crossing the Spiral

A Living Research Journey

Crossing the Spiral is an ongoing research initiative exploring the living relationship between land, story, ceremony, and community.

Through field research, travel, interviews, ecological observation, and immersive learning, the project explores how cultures around the world have developed meaningful relationships with the natural landscape. It asks how these traditions continue to inspire resilience, creativity, belonging, and stewardship today.

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Rather than looking only to the past, Crossing the Spiral asks a simple but important question.

How can ancient ways of relating to the land help shape a more connected and compassionate future?

Research weaves together landscape, mythology, folklore, ecology, spirituality, experiential education, and cultural memory. Each journey is an opportunity to learn alongside local communities, Indigenous knowledge holders, artists, historians, conservationists, and contemporary practitioners. Together, they help keep these living traditions alive.

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Current and future field research includes the forests and coastlines of Canada, the Celtic landscapes of Scotland and Ireland, and the living traditions of Northern Europe, including Estonia. Many communities are renewing relationships with sacred places, ancestral knowledge, folklore, and nature based ways of knowing. These efforts offer valuable insights into how culture and landscape continue to shape one another.

The project also explores ethical harvesting, medicinal plants, ecological stewardship, traditional crafts, and meaningful partnerships with communities. It investigates sacred landscapes, historic pathways, and the ways people have gathered, travelled, and held ceremony throughout history. It looks at how landscapes influence identity, belonging, and our relationship with the natural world.

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The knowledge gathered through Crossing the Spiral is meant to return to the community. It becomes books, articles, podcasts, photography, educational programs, workshops, retreats, public talks, and community gatherings. Research becomes shared learning. Stories become opportunities for connection.

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At its heart, Crossing the Spiral is an invitation to slow down and listen. To listen to the land beneath our feet. To listen to the stories carried across generations. To listen with curiosity, respect, and wonder. From that place, new relationships, new understanding, and new possibilities can emerge.