Ariel J

I’m excited to share a new backpacking journey @wildtender is offering this spring! I’ll be guiding this with my dear friend and fellow guide, Mike Smith. ~Radiant Awareness~ will be three nights of backpacking in the Ventana wilderness plus two nights of thoughtful integration and rest at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. 🌄 In these turbulent times, our program offers an opportunity to take refuge in our greater community of kin. As @gnome_life wrote in a recent community letter, “We take refuge in the living world. Not as escape, but as deepening of self and story; as fortification and nourishment; as fulfillment of timeless, ecological, and psycho-spiritual relationships.” 🔗 in my bio for webpage with complete program descriptions and registration info. 📷 credit: #2 @joanitremblay on last year’s Wild Dharma pilgrimage #1, 3 @brandonscottherrell #6 from San Francisco Zen Center/Tassajara Zen Mountain Center website

🇯🇵 🎠 1. tofu lunch with grandma 2. grandpa 3. family grave visit 4. kabuki theater 5. japanese acorns 6. great grandparents 7. mom at her high school 8. bald cypress grove, shinjuku garden 9. winter blossoms and birds 10. cousin + mom 11. airport godzilla 12. takeda women

october: wild beauty, personal growth edges, and deep diving into connection between our body and the earth 1. milky way 2. esalen institute 3. big sur 4. last trail day 5. sunset at the farm 6. two condors 7. stretching with redwoods 8. mugwort dream pillows 9. likely being offered candy 📷 1-3: @heartofarcana 📷 4, 7-9: @callmealpal (@wildtender will hopefully offer this program again in October 2026…keep an eye on esalen and their website 🐛)

1. ventana camp / earthbody somatic backpacking retreat 2. esalen institute @wildtender photos: @callmealpal

Our annual Mountains & Waters Pilgrimage in Yosemite is officially up on the @wildtender website. I’ll be co-guiding with my friends Bryan and Mike and there’s nine participant spots so we’ll be a well-supported and intimate group. The route we take along the Tuolumne River is stunning. 😍 (📷 taken by me from last years pilgrimage) More info in my bio links

🌞 summer solstice 🌞

lessons from my pull-up journey 1. progress will more often be imperceptible, boring, and slow. 2. change happens over years, not days. the instant-gratification, mind cannot grasp that. have faith and trust the process. 3. growth does not happen alone. like most transformation, its not an individualistic process. we are part of a vast ecology of relationships that are gently nudging us in various directions. remember your filaments of connection and all that supports you. 4. the results are cool. the ever-evolving improvisational-intentional path you get to experience on the way to those results is far cooler. (ive been working on pull-ups for years and years. multiple times a week, hundreds of repetitions, a dozen variations. my goal was four by 40 and that didn’t happen last july. i just kept plugging away. a reminder: what you’re often seeing online with folks is their tail-end impressive result of a very long practice period. don’t let it discourage you from your own path and keep going. 🤍)

a new autumn offering: three nights/four days of backpacking in the big sur backcountry + two days @esalen led by my friend/ @wildtender co-founder Noël Vietor and myself. the intention for this program is to offer a slow, spacious container for folks to drop into autumn’s energies. backpacking can be a vigorous and challenging experience, but it can also be approached as a walking meditation and a way to cultivate intimacy with the land and her inhabitants. there’s space for both on this journey. 🍂🍃 “The Earth holds us, breathes with us, moves through us. Since time immemorial, human beings have lived in deep, reciprocal relationship with landscapes—our movements shaped by terrain, our nervous systems regulated by the rhythms of seasons and tides, our sense of self inseparable from the more-than-human world. Yet, in this modern, frenetic age, we are conditioned to see our bodies as isolated, our healing as individual, and “nature” as separate. This retreat is an invitation to remember an older truth: to inhabit our own bodies fully is to reinhabit the living Earth. Rooted in the Gestalt traditions of Esalen and the emergent field of eco-somatics, our four-day backpacking journey will guide us through the wilds of Big Sur—Esselen tribal territory—in an immersive exploration of belonging, awareness, and interconnection, followed by a weekend of retreat and integration at Esalen Institute.” (Link in my bio for extended description and registration details on @esalen website)

wild dharma pilgrimage // @wildtender 1. wild tea plants, deer, tassajara creek 2. hummingbird sage + her friend 3. mike 4. alligator lizard 5. tassajara wilderness 6. california tortoiseshell caterpillars 7. dried mugwort 8. wild moxa 9. bryan + cordage 10. oak galls 11. lupine + poppy 12. guides, friends 🤍

Last Japan 🎠 We spent most of our trip on the island of Shikoku, away from cities and crowds. We stayed in Kotohira, Takamatsu, Naoshima, Iya Valley and Kochi. It was my first time driving in Japan. Not nearly as scary as I anticipated! If you’re looking for a more off the beaten path experience I recommend skipping Tokyo/Osaka/Kyoto and exploring other areas like here.

I remember the first time @gnome_life introduced me to mugwort. I closed my eyes, cupped them in my hands, and took a slow, deep inhale. They smelled incredible. I felt cleansed and grounded. My path to learning more about plant kin didn’t start with books, apps, or websites (although can be very useful). It started experientially through stories, through my senses, through curious observation of where they lived, their expressions throughout the seasons, and all the threads of human lore and relational experiences of past and present. It was like making a new friend you really appreciate and delight in, versus a static acquisition of knowledge. I fell deeper in love with this earth through my connection with plants. 🌱 Which is why I’m so excited to co-facilitate this @wildtender workshop at @esalen in August. Please consider joining us in Big Sur, or spread the word with loved ones who you think it would resonate with! A bit of our workshop description: “Join us to meaningfully engage with the lore and lives of pan-culturally significant plants — such as oak, nettle, mint, mugwort, elder, and rose — attuning to their presence in Big Sur’s wildlands while cultivating our botanical and cultural literacy. Through hands-on collaboration and an approach of reciprocity instead of extraction, we will craft herbal medicines, natural pigments, fibers, and tools in a manner that benefits the land and plants. Ceremony will invite us to discover these plants’ archetypal dimensions, revealing their roles as teachers and healers. As guests on Esselen tribal land, we will root our explorations in respect and reverence, honoring the relational worldviews of all our land-connected ancestors. Guest faculty Ariel Johnson will offer somatic practices to help guide us into embodied kinship — grounding us in gravity, sensory awareness, and open-hearted presence with our floral relatives. Through these efforts, we remember our belonging, and we are remembered in return. The plants know us, after all, and welcome us back into our ancient traditions of botanical kinship.“

It’s Shunbun No Hi (Spring Equinox Day)! 🌸 What better way to celebrate Earth’s stirring out of Winter’s slumber than to walk through the woods and greet ancient waterfalls, Osprey, mushrooms, cedar, pine and spruce trees. Rejoicing in the blooming cherry blossoms and Japan’s strong bath game. 😮‍💨