June 17, 2025

Oh the vibrance

Wyldwards, Summer 2025

Welcome to a summer edition of Wyldwards! 

The summer solstice is just a few days away. We have more light than we know what to do with.

Today’s sunrise: 3:30 AM
Tonight’s sunset: 10:06 PM

Stretching between them is a twilight that never goes completely dark.

The kids are out of school, and a bit unhinged. They run and jump and climb all day long, yet it’s impossible to get them to bed.  

When we try to get to bed at a decent time, we end up lying awake in our room for hours as heat swells and everything sings outside. Not just the birds and the grazing sheep, but ice cream trucks and bicycles racing across our unpaved road. Even the plants seem to be buzzing late into the evening. As if they, too, must take advantage of this short season when the light feels limitless, the possibilities endless.

A couple of things I’ve been foraging:

— wild violets from the forest, which I made a salve with to give to my son’s friend who is struggling with eczema. 

— stinging nettles, which we enjoyed in pasta and omelettes. I also dried a few handfuls and ground them into a fine powder to use throughout the year in finishing salts, yogurt sauces, etc. A quick, easy dose of minerals! 

— lilac flowers, which I infused in sugar/water mixture and cooked down into a syrup form. I use the syrup to make refreshing juices, lemonades and cocktails during the summer. Lilacs have a lovely lavender-like flavor and pair really well with citrus.

Otherwise, I’ve been plant-dyeing my wool and linen fibers again.

First with nettles. 

And with tree bark! Which was a spontaneous experiment.

My kids and I were out in the forest when I noticed fallen limbs and piles of tree bark everywhere. 

I remembered that some tree barks can be used as natural dyes, but I didn’t know exactly which ones. I just gathered what was being offered – chunks of rotting bark from oak, pine, ash, birch, apple, juniper, hazel, etc. This might sound strange, but it was as if some pieces were literally barking at me, inviting me to take them, try them out. 

I brought the tree bark home and soaked them in river water for a full week.

It smelled awful. My kids complained about it daily. Especially when I brought the pot into our kitchen and put it on the stovetop. The tree bark and river water simmered there for a couple of hours. I then strained out the bark, giving it to my garden, and was left with a steaming pot of brown liquid that literally smelled like an outhouse. 

Did I question myself at any point? Yes, I did. Especially at this moment, staring into the stinky brown void. Was I really going to subject my lovely wool and linen fibers to this? Yes, I was. 

Partly because I’m so damn stubborn. Or too curious perhaps. But also, I felt I owed it to the tree bark that had invited me to try them, as if they too wanted to know what was possible by getting to experience a different potential of themselves. 

This is the beauty of working with nature. It’s like a conversation. Oftentimes, I’m not creating anything at all, I’m merely revealing the potential or the patterns that were already there.

To be honest, I didn’t expect much from the tree bark. I thought the wool and linen would, at best, turn a shade of brown or beige. But I put them into the pot and let them simmer. After 20 or so minutes, I gave them a stir and saw that they were indeed turning brown. I put the lid back on and went on with my day.

2-3 hours later, I went back to turn off the heat. When I opened the lid, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The liquid was a deep purple color. The color of eggplant. Or plum. 

I got my tongs, lifted the wool out of the pot, and gasped.

How on this beautiful, wild earth did a pot of decaying tree bark turn plain white fabric into these stunning purple hues? 

I was totally in awe. And in love. 

I’ve been creating with them ever since.

Hand-stitching with plant-dyed fibers has become my main creative practice these last few months.

It’s become integral to everything I do – especially as my professional work becomes more intellectual. After 15 years in the creative industry, I’ve returned to science.

As much as I love scientific inquiry, it’s easy to get stuck in my head. With all the research and data coming in, especially when it’s about consciousness or the origins of life, I can miss the point of being alive at all. Which isn’t about finding answers. Though we really want to know, don’t we?

Hand-stitching is slow and meditative. It quiets my mind. Thread by thread, form by form, it brings me into the rhythm of life. Gradually, I become more embodied. A being just being.

Then I can surrender my idea or vision to whatever wants to come through.

It makes me as much as I make it.

Embodiment isn’t celebrated in our information-driven society. Which is unfortunate because so many things cannot be known in our heads. They can only be experienced, understood deep in the inner soil of who we are.

For generations, we’ve tried to think our way through life when the heart is actually a more powerful organ than the brain. In fact, new research shows that the heart sends more signals to the brain than the brain sends to the heart.

The heart is about 100,000 times stronger electrically than the brain, and 5000 times stronger magnetically. It has its own nervous system, its own memory and form of intelligence. Its powerful electromagnetic field radiates out 3-4 feet (about 1 meter), interacting with everything it comes in contact with. Clearly, the heart is designed as a primary guide to help us navigate this world as embodied beings.

Even the Earth has a heartbeat, as recently confirmed by satellite data.

When I first heard the Earth’s heartbeat, it took me back to each of pregnancies, listening to the heartbeat of life taking form in my body – in a place so deep I couldn’t see what was happening. All I could do was keep myself healthy and whole as I trusted something much greater than I.

My midwife would say, The baby’s heartbeat synchronizes to yours. It’s like a metronome that will become his internal rhythm.

In the same way, we are held in the body of mother Earth, whose heart beats every 26 seconds for reasons that remain mysterious to us. She echoes through our bodies and constantly reminds us that we don’t just have a life. We are life.

So, friends…

May we be drenched in aliveness this summer. May we find that wild life force pulsing in the soil, both without and within. Let’s put our hands and feet in there, get dirty and sweaty, bruised and bitten. What a time!

xx
Beth

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STUDIO BITS

• I might try posting more to Instagram because there are too many things I’d like to share that won’t fit into a seasonal newsletter.

• Also planning to put some of the hand-stitched pieces in the Wyld shop soon. Would you like to be notified?

• There’s a new Wyld playlist called Baby blue on spotify if you’re interested!

• And a baby blue moodboard to go with it. (Blue was my color for a while.)