The story so far
Aurora Retreat is a family-run guesthouse in the far northlands of Sami-Sweden. 5 gorgeous people, stars, await your arrival as you travel through the winter dark; they are: Maya, Mikael, Uma, Sita and Sonya, and in the winter they tend to move around on wobbly skating kick-sleds, skis and beautiful gut-strung wooden snowshoes.
Their guesthouse simmers with warmth on the coldest of nights, and sits on the banks of the Torne river. In winter, the river freezes over to become a giant, frozen, ski-able snow snake which then provides access to their Three Rivers camp—a cosy assortment of candle lit cabins and a log-fired sauna.
We've previously worked for the guesthouse as guides, and in February 2019, we'll run our first-ever winter performance in the nearby Muddhus National Park. For full details, see below!
Upcoming performance
NORTHERN CONNEXIONS
February 6th -17th 2019
Welcome. This can’t wait, it’s lit! There’s a furnace of thought and creative possibility burning deep behind and through this. It’s a long-time honed offering, borne in trust and a spirit of adventure, and shaped through shimmering connection and collaborative dreaming.
Invitation: YES! This is an invitation for YOU to join us. You will join in the capacity of being a performer - as one in your own story, and in the story of those other persons and wild entities you’ll meet along the way, and, of course, in the story that will emerge, co-created, between us.
Where? It will take place in the winter wilds of Muddhus National Park—a vast tract of old-growth boreal forest and bogland in Sweden’s northern hinterlands. We think you’ll like it.
Tell me more, please; this is making my heart thud a little harder: GOOD! We’re glad to hear it, ours too. That’s why we’re doing it. We LOVE life and we want to dream something wonderful, impossible, daring and beautiful into existence. And the good news is, it’s already begun: winter last, three of us joined up with Aurora Retreat in Junosuando, Sweden to explore what our winter dreaming consisted in the frozen forests of Muddhus National Park. We camped out for 5 nights at -30, tested our limits, sparkled with creativity and entwined our minds together to create new narrative that’s:
☆ Ecologically reverent
☆ Healing and growth-enabling to the self
☆ Held within a discourse relevant to the region’s society
With those discussion now well under way, we’re looking outwards and inwards, inviting expansion and inclusion in equal measure. We'd be joyed if you'd join us.
“Meanwhile, implausible life shapes silent through the forest frozen night; reindeer, bristling with fire in their veins, remind us that only with their winter performance were humans historically able to exist here. Can we be open to the reindeer’s affect once again; what happens to our own dreaming in relation to theirs?”
What’s the plan?
Ok, you’ll need to get yourself to north of Sweden where we’ll meet and stay at the gorgeous Aurora Retreat Guesthouse in Junosuando on Feb 6th. We spend the next 3-4 days acquainting ourselves with each other and the surrounding terrain. We’ll open doors and invite the wild landscape to become our own. We’ll ski slide through the forest and make good our preparations. We’ll share stories and visions, have fun, listen and connect, and we have a feeling, smile rather a lot.
Then we’ll car journey to Jokkmokk market, a yearly gathering of traders, travellers, Sami crafters and rough clad tricksters. It’s a good place to buy your winter thermals, experience local culture and stock-up on provisions for the adventure ahead.
And into the park we go for next 5 days. An opportunity to learn new wilderness skills; to push your physical limits; to experience old growth forest and blintering star skies; to open yourself to winter’s affect; to spot signs of implausible life; to share yourself generously; to sing, laugh and cry; to simply, stop and listen.
Post-park, we return to the guesthouse in Junosuando for 3 nights—a place to transition back, and respond creatively with each other.
“Can you hear your heart beating as your eyelashes grow long with ice? Cackle crackle goes the fire. Crunch of snow underfoot, a dance with the aurora then to bed-down in a fired up log-cabin”
What are some of the themes we’ll be exploring?
Ecology and Conservation
Muddus is part of Rewilding Lapland and Natura 2000 network, a network of protected areas across Europe which promote nature-based tourism as a economic alternative to industrial development, especially mining. The performance is designed with the support of the National Park and while together, we will be exploring ecology and conservation through the lens of science, policy, storytelling and Sami tradition.
Practical wilderness skills
Burst open the civilised self and in its place welcome your wild gods to the feast. Fire, cooking on fire, using local ingredients, camping cold, keeping warm, exploring and being at ease with the dark, ski and snowshoe wilderness travel, and surviving, probably, just!
Personal
☆ Exploring at the edge, both personally and collectively
☆ Connect with others and the more-than-human world
☆ Develop strength on the physical, emotional and spiritual planes
☆Explore creativity and what that means for you
☆Bring poetry, myth and story into your life
☆ Breathe
Sounds a lot, hey? Don’t worry, we got it covered; we’ve spent years honing our craft of facilitation, deep listening, storytelling, adventuring, exploring, dreaming and creating. It's our honour to assist and guide you into this wild place.
Payment scale:1000-1,495 Euros
Max group size: 8-10 + 2 guides
For any questions: please get in touch
To join: please submit an online application form
© Breath crystallising at -30, Sweden, Henry Fletcher
Muddhus Night, by Henry, Sweden 2018
When breath spangles, ice in smoke
When the fire’s yoke out shimmers the cold
Stark night
Eyes turn inwards
Then out, connected to their root
No flight or fancy
Fragility impressed on skin made brittle
The crack of frost
Seeps deep and breaches
To expose and expose again
The selves found shoaling through the moon-lit night
Stars arc and entreat an understanding
Of something sensed
~ a possibility
To live inside the earth’s mad sky
Yet your roots lie frozen, soaked in soot
And your eyes hook the night
Agitated and ablaze with the thought of death
A struck match
And birch curls round swollen fingers
Yes, there’s time, still
To rock with tempo
To hold those sooted hands that smoke and smoke again
Then claw their way forward and through
The thick of night
To the dazzling day
And breathe.
