2026 Retreats and Workshops
Weaving Wild Story: Finding the Threads of Belonging
June 24 —June 28
Ocamora Retreat Center, Ocate, New Mexico
In ancient stories the world over, women have returned to the loom when chaos descends and the web of life unravels. Could these guiding myths about the nature of creation and creating hold clues about where we might catalyze renewal in our own urgent times through our writing?
From the Greek texto, we know there is a profound connection between stories, weaving, and the web of life. What is the relationship between story and the wellbeing of the land? Might the land be dreaming and storying through each of us? How? … And how can we become available to these unseen possibilities and to these forces—what indigenous author and teacher Martin Prechtel calls the “wild holy in nature”—to reweave our own belonging and renew the world through our stories?
Well beyond the confines of traditional nature writing, we will track the wilder realms of story—attuning to the land and listening for all that may guide us to the beautiful thread we are each carrying within to create new texts.
Key to our explorations is the notion of stepping off the path—both the familiar trails of our writing processes and habits, and the ways we typically encounter the wild by having set destinations and summits to scale. Instead, we will step off the path and wander to discover our primal sources—deeper wells of inspiration and wonder.
Rather than a workshop, our time together will be an expansive immersion in story, creative practice, community-building, and the land itself.
Our days will include solo time for writing and reflection along with communal sharing. Sessions will include group and individual practices: sit spots, mindful wanders and deep listening in place; journaling and responding to the stories we bring with us and the experiences that are arising on the Ocamora site.
You are welcome to bring work-in-progress, and we will offer the opportunity to discuss this one-on-one with a facilitator, but our main focus will be on site-based practices and new writing experiments, oriented more toward process and inspiration than finished product.
We’re also planning a handwork project (no experience required) to bring together the real and metaphorical power of wild weaving—the warp and weft of existence, an invitation to connect to long mythologies of creatrices at the loom, bringing new worlds into being.
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Erika Howsare is the author of The Age of Deer, a 2025 finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, as well as a finalist for the Library of Virginia Nonfiction Award and People’s Choice Award in Nonfiction.
Born and raised in southwestern Pennsylvania, Erika earned a BA at Oberlin College and holds an MFA from Brown University. She is also the author of two books of poetry and one of my essays was named a notable mention in The Best American Food Writing of 2020 and The Best American Science and Nature Writing of 2020. Along with her husband and two daughters, she lives in the Blue Ridge of central Virginia, where she works in local journalism and teaches writing privately.
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Christian Leahy lives and dreams in El Prado, New Mexico. She is a story midwife, developmental editor, facilitator of radical imaginings and healed futures, and the writer of little stories of wonder. Most often, she can be found reverently wandering the high-mountain forests, tracking with all that is wild and holy.