204. Finding a Deep Nature Connection with Claire Dunn of Nature's Apprentice

The Good Dirt: Sustainability Explained

This episode originally aired on November 4th, 2022.

Today's guest is Claire Dunn, here with us to dive deeply into the mysteries of nature and psyche through the pathways of deep nature connection. Speaking to us from Melbourne, Australia, Claire is a writer, speaker, barefoot explorer, rewilding facilitator, and founder of Nature’s Apprentice, a platform for education and guidance in rewilding our souls and the planet. For the last 15 years, Claire has been facilitating individuals in ancestral earth skills, deep ecology, ecopsychology, soul-centric nature-based practice, village building, dance, ceremony, and contemporary wilderness rites-of-passage. Claire is the author of the memoir, My Year Without Matches, which tells the story of her year living wild – and the recently released memoir Rewilding the Urban Soul exploring how we might embody wild consciousness even while living in the setting of a city.

Topics Covered:

• Rewilding as a new human movement
• Cultivation of a "Wild Mind"
• Claire's childhood and background in the environmental movement
• How Claire's introduction to primitive earth skills led her more deeply into the human nature relationship
• Richard Lou The Last Child in the Woods
• Vitamin N (Nature)
• Tom Brown's Tracker School in New Jersey
• Australia's first Independent Wilderness Studies Program
• Claire's one-year self-initiated deep nature immersion
• The sacred order of survival
• Bill Plotkin
• Claire's emergence from her immersion, and sharing the immersion experience with the world
• Nature's Apprentice
• Rewilding the Urban Soul - Claire Dunn
• My Year Without Matches
• Jon Young's Core Routines of Nature
• Common threads of people who come to Claire for instruction
• What is a vision quest?
• The urgency of climate change
• Bringing back the species of the wild human
• Active Hope by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone

Connect with Claire:

• Her website, naturesapprentice.com.au/
• Claire's Books:
• Rewilding the Urban Soul
• My Year Without Matches
• Follow her on Instagram @_natures_apprentice_
• Claire's Facebook

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Original music by John Kingsley. Editing and podcast production by Fast Forward Production.

🌿 The Good Dirt Producers:

• Wendy Gray