SHI Wilderness Immersion

Into the Desert: Learning to Listen as a Practice of Leadership

by Ann Armbrecht, SHI Founder and Director

We turned off the main road in the late afternoon, heading deeper into the Anza Borrego Desert in southern California. And drove along a sandy road to a spot Tyler Wauters had discovered several years ago when he first came to this desert. We were coming from the chaos of Expo West, the natural products trade show that brings 60,000 people from around the world to Anaheim, California, to spend three nights in the desert for the first Sustainable Herbs Initiative (SHI) Wilderness Immersion.

Our intention was to spend our time listening deeply to the land and the plants and to allow that experience guide our work at SHI. I first learned to sit and have a conversation with plants as a student of herbal medicine. Sharing these journeys can feel quite private, not relevant to leadership or decision making.

Yet a few weeks after our time in the desert, I heard Nipum Metha, founder of ServiceSpace, speak in a session for the Presencing Institute about inner coherence — attuning ourselves deeply enough to let the more-than-human world speak through us. “We need to do less, to be more, and have deeper trust in coherence,” he said.

I recognized immediately what we had experienced in the desert.

Listening to Plants

Our home for the next few days was a flat valley ringed by rocky hills. We turned off the cars and were met by the deep stillness of this place. I had imagined a desert as only sand, but desert plants spread across the valley: cholla cactus, with sharp thorns that caught the morning and evening light so the plants looked like they were glowing. Ocotillo, an amazing Dr. Seuss tree I’d never heard of or seen: long spiky branches rising from the base, deep red flowers blooming on the end. Agave. Desert lavender, so much wilder than the lavender I know. So many plants spread across the valley floor, growing in sand, abundant but not crowded. There was space, stillness, sky, wind, which when it came could be fierce enough to blow away our tents, so we added stones to the stakes to keep them secure.

We had a loose structure that guided our days. Each day was structured around a plant sit. For these, we would walk into the desert, find a plant or a series of plants, and ask: “What is it you would like to tell me? What is important for me to know?”

Then we would just listen. For some of us that meant drawing or singing or moving. Or it could just be sitting quietly and observing the plant. After some time, we would come back and share what we heard.

What the Land Said

Ben Nahar grew up in this kind of landscape. And so on our first plant sit, he walked straight across the valley floor, toward an ocotillo forest against the hills on the far side of the valley. I wanted to follow, but I’d never been to the desert before and was too afraid of snakes and scorpions and spiders and whatever else might be hiding in the sand. So I stayed closer to the sandy road.

I often sit with plants and ask them for guidance. But this landscape was so foreign to me that it was hard to find my way in. I first stood next to ocotillo, nothing. Maybe it was the wrong plant, I thought. So I tried another. Still silent. Maybe I was doing it wrong, I thought, so I asked a different question. Still silent. I shared my gratitude. I shared my hesitation. But mostly I could only hear my doubts and questions.

I finally tried to set my questions aside and just notice what was here – the wind, the sun, the sand, the sky, the vibrancy in this land that I always imagined to be empty. Letting in the amazing gift of three days in the desert sitting with others who also believe that the path forward for our work together begins with listening to voices that aren’t our own.

Finding the Thread

That evening around the fire, I passed around archetype cards, each of us drawing one in answer to a question we held. My question was how to find my way back to connecting with plants and how that can guide me in leading SHI. I drew The Thread: a person’s arm emerges from darkness holding a deep red cord that reaches toward a rainbow in the sky.

“The path,” Kim Krans, the creator of the deck writes. “Life is a tangle. So much happens simultaneously and circuitously, leaving us grappling for meaning and direction in a network of distractions. When we connect to the energy of The Thread… our whole being responds to its tug. We remember who we are and what we came into this world to do.”

Prickly Pear

And so, the next morning when we went out again for a plant sit, I followed the thread. This time, I left the sandy road and walked deeper into the valley floor toward the ocotillo forest. Asking where to go. Following signs: a stick pointing in a different direction, following the stick, following what caught my attention without overthinking where I was going. And then I came across a prickly pear growing on its own in the sand. It was smaller than the other plants growing nearby: creosote, cholla, ocotillo. All of them near but not too close. The prickly pear seemed on its own. One or two flowers were in bloom, a deep magenta. Several buds, even more lovely than the flower, were almost ready to bloom, the dark purple pink of the petals emerging through the green.

So, I stopped.

To not need to be the center, but to hold the center. I have small thorns to invite respect, but more for a pause. To pause as you enter. Not intended to hurt, like the thorns of cholla. And my flowers so beautiful and abundant. I hold a presence. I hold my place. My flowers just are. I just am, shaped by the soil I’ve grown in, the water I have and haven’t had. The sun and the wind. I don’t need to tell stories about that. I just let my flowers bloom.

Feel into me. Feel into my stillness. What you notice when you come into this valley, that quality of presence. That quality of stillness and aliveness. It’s from all of us, but I especially hold it. Do that in your work. Own it fully.

Who knows how it works or what actually transpires when we sit next to a plant and ask for guidance or insight. But I received what I needed in that conversation. Insights into questions I was asking about how to lead SHI, about what sort of container to hold. Wisdom into how to be.

You all are writing a new language that begins with resonance. It begins with vibration and with bringing together those who sense and respond to vibration.

Trust that. And build. Tend gardens in different ecosystems that arise from and respond to the vibration of that place.

Learning the Language of this Land

Later in the circle we each shared what we learned. Ben spoke of the difference of speaking for the land and speaking from the land, having the land speak through each of us. Others added their own images: the strong flexible spine of ocotillo. Vulnerability that allows others to see and be open. Branches not resisting the wind but singing with it and in the singing, creating something more. Thorns that create boundaries – that say pause, don’t trample what is living.

On the final afternoon, we each sat on our own to listen to the land and let the land inform our work together at SHI. As I sat on a rock in the late afternoon light, I thought about the shift between my two plant sits, and how I found prickly pear because I was able to listen more deeply and to trust where I was led.

I saw that the gift for me from this time in the desert was about learning more deeply what listening for that emerging future means. That leading SHI isn’t about implementing a strategy as much as it is about defining a way of traveling. A practice of following the thread of my intention, and then paying attention, listening, seeing what I notice, trusting that that process will lead me, and in turn the Sustainable Herbs Initiative, where we need to go.